A six-lane fixed link replacing a west coast ferry will be wider than the island at its far end, documents published this week confirm.
The island has forty-one permanent residents, one road, a jetty and a hall. It measures approximately 400 metres at its widest point. The proposed bridge deck, including hard shoulders, a segregated cycleway and provision for future widening, is 600 metres across.
Asked about the discrepancy at a briefing, the project lead described it as “a rounding issue”.
What happens on landfall
The design documentation is candid about this. Six lanes arrive on an island with one single-track road, and the road cannot absorb them, so the carriageway terminates in a parking and turning facility occupying most of the island’s eastern half.
In practice, the bridge lands and immediately becomes a car park.
“We have forty-one people and a hall. On a good day the ferry brings nine cars. I have asked what the other five lanes are for and I have not had an answer I understood.”
The chair of the island community council
The case for it
There is one, and it deserves to be stated properly. The ferry is old, cancelled in weather that occurs frequently, and the cause of genuine hardship: medical appointments missed, children unable to get to school, deliveries that do not arrive. Islanders have campaigned for a fixed link for thirty years and the campaign is not a joke.
What is at issue is the size. A two-lane bridge was assessed and rejected as offering “insufficient future resilience”.
The crossing
- Island width: approximately 400m
- Bridge width: 600m, six lanes
- Island population: 41
- Peak vehicles carried by the current ferry: 9 per sailing
- Design capacity of the bridge: 84,000 vehicles per day
The ferry
The vessel will be withdrawn on the bridge opening. Its two crew have been offered redeployment to the mainland.
One has accepted. The other, who has worked the crossing for twenty-six years and knows every passenger by name, has declined, and has asked whether anyone has thought about who will help the older residents on and off in the winter, which on the ferry is a thing that happens and on a six-lane bridge is not.
