The company I work for has recently moved to a new office in the centre of Edinburgh. It's a nice, serviced office, much smaller than we're used to but a reasonable size for just the six of us. It's very central, just minutes from Waverley Train Station and St Andrew Bus Station. It also overlooks a major tram construction site.
And it's horrid. The daily noise is almost unbearable as the tram works rip up the road, constantly drilling and hammering. A nearby tartan-tat shop plays nasty bagpipe music all day long, loudly, in the belief that they need to compete with the noise of the tram works. The Edinburgh Trams are our new national folly, a grandiose scheme that has gone way over budget, way over deadline, will only provide half the promised track, and has severely disrupted the retail economy of central Edinburgh. Now, this post is not going to be about the trams, per se - personally, I liked the idea of the tram network and am sorely disappointed that is has gone so badly. After the debacle of the Scottish Parliament, it seems that Scotland, and the UK, is incapable of delivering a large scale building project on time or on budget.
This is a worry, as work has already started on another great engineering project, the building of the Forth Replacement Crossing, a new road bridge to replace the decaying Forth Road Bridge. The existing Forth Road Bridge, which opened in 1964 and was expected to last around 120 years, is suffering from significant structural wear as the suspension cables which hold up the deck are beginning to snap. Though work is under way to slow the decline, the bridge will not be able to sustain its current levels of traffic for much longer. One estimate is that the bridge only has eight years of useful life left - a sorry end to what was once the fourth-longest bridge in the world. With over 65,000 vehicles crossing the river daily, the Forth Bridge is the most important bridge in the Scottish transport network.
So a new bridge is to be built. The environmentalists are horrified at such an expensive scheme designed to enable more and more cars and trucks to pollute Scotland's air, land and water. Surely we should be putting our efforts into public transport - after all, the first Forth Crossing, the grand Forth Railway Bridge, is still standing proud after 120 years, connecting London to Aberdeen by train. I can't argue against this point, and I would like to see more and better public transport systems. Perhaps a tram from Edinburgh city centre to the existing Forth Bridge?
In truth I am delighted to see a new bridge built - the very thought of it fills with joy. I love bridges, and the modern cable stayed bridge, like that proposed for the Forth Replacement Crossing, is an exquisite piece of design engineering. The cable stayed bridge is slender, sleek, tall; it demonstrates the power of engineering, of computer modelling, of material science. I defy you to find an example of an ugly cable stayed bridge.
I long to watch the Forth Replacement Crossing being built. I am deeply envious of my parents, who both got days off school to celebrate the opening of the sadly doomed Forth Road Bridge. My dad, who was raised in North Queensferry, got to see the bridge being built. Of all the great engineering projects man is capable of - soaring skyscrapers, epic damns, artificial islands - to me the bridge is the most worthy, the most inspiring. A bridge is a connector, a distance reducing device to bring people together, a link in the chains which bind a nation. I may sound overly poetic for what is just another bridge over a river which is already crossed three times (the Forth Bridge, the Forth Road Bridge, and the Clackmannanshire Bridge, but I don't care. Let there be poetry in engineering and infrastructure!