The Inveramsay Bridge is a new bridge carrying the A96 over the

Aberdeen to Inverness Line Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeenshire, but is now separate from the council area of Aberdeenshire. Aberd ...

. The bridge was constructed by Balfour Beatty. It was inaugurated in March 2016. The existing bridge has a 4.4 metre height restriction and cannot fit two tall vehicles under it because of the arch which goes under 3.7

metre The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

s high in places so

traffic lights Traffic lights, traffic signals, or stoplights – also known as robots in South Africa, Zambia, and Namibia – are signaling devices positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings, and other locations in order to control the flow o ...

were put in place so only one row of vehicles could go under the bridge at once, the traffic lights caused bad congestion at

rush hour A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour (Australian English, Indian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice e ...

. For decades this bottleneck was a major problem in the North East's infrastructure with delays being caused on both the A96 and the

, caused by the speed limits imposed on the line following any HGV colliding the bridge, until the bridge could be inspected by a structural engineer. Despite this there was no political will from the three main UK parties ( Conservative Party, Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats) all of whom had been in power in Westminster and/or Holyrood, it was not until the

Scottish National Party The Scottish National Party (SNP; ) is a Scottish nationalist and social democratic party. The party holds 61 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, and holds 9 out of the 57 Scottish seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, ...

(SNP) were in power that local MSP,

Alex Salmond Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond ( ; 31 December 1954 – 12 October 2024) was a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014. A prominent figure in the Scottish nationalist movement, he was Leader of the Sc ...

then

First Minister A first minister is any of a variety of leaders of government cabinets. The term literally has the same meaning as "prime minister" but is typically chosen to distinguish the office-holder from a superior prime minister. Currently the title of ' ...

and Keith Brown then Minister for Transport and Veterans announced on 10 February 2011 that tenders for design works to upgrade the Inveramsay Bridge have been given the go-ahead. There are 1.5 kilometres of new road leading to the bridge. SuDS is in place at either end of the new part of the A96 leading to the bridge. The old bridge is still usable for local access. There is an underpass on the A96 to the south of the bridge which connects the old A96 to Inveramsay.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Transport Scotland, Inveramsay Bridge

Bridges in Aberdeenshire Transport in Aberdeenshire Bridges completed in 2016 2016 establishments in Scotland