Bailing Out Barbara’s Folly
The Humber Bridge is one of those bridges that ;looked good on paper and to the politicians, but quite frankly it is now becoming an expensive folly. Wikipedia says this about its creation.
The Humber Bridge Act, promoted by Kingston Upon Hull Corporation, was passed in 1959. This established the Humber Bridge Board in order to manage and raise funds to build the bridge and buy the land required for the approach roadsHowever raising the necessary funding proved impossible until the 1966 Hull North by-election.
To save his government, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson prevailed upon his Minister of Transport Barbara Castle to sanction the building of the bridge.
I know quite a few people, who either lived or worked on both sides of the Humber and to a man and a woman, none of them ever use the bridge. I myself, have only used it a couple of times to get to Beverley horse races in the past, but on the last time I went, I took the M62 from Doncaster, which is an easier route.
I suppose too, that the bridge was used to try to unify the unwanted and short-lived county of Humberside, which was abolised in 1996.
I think that the telling statistic is that the Humber Bridge only carries about 120,000 vehicles every week, whereas the similar-sized Runcorn-Widnes bridge carries 80,000 vehicles every day.
Why should we bail out a bridge that no-one seems to want?
It would be better to spend the money in providing better services, where they are actually needed, rather than expect people to cross the bridge to say get advanced medical treatment.
There is a possible long-term solution to the bridge, that has been ducked for years and that is to create a road from the M11 up through Cambridge and Lincolnshire to join the bridge and create an alternative route north to by-pass the congested A1.
I suspect it will never be built, as container traffic is moving successfully to the railways and building roads is now something that no government feels they want to do. Correctly in my view!
What would happen today, if the Humber Bridge was being designed now?
It is interesting to look at the new designs for the new Forth Road bridge. Not only have they taken pressure off the crossing, by building a new bridge further upriver, they have gone for a much simpler and less grand design, if the pictures I saw in Scotland recently are anything to go by. But then the Forth Road bridge has been a success in terms of the traffic carried. This could not be said for the Humber bridge.
The Humber bridge was a badly planned bridge, built for political reasons and now it sits like a white elephant around everybody.
I suspect that the best solution at some point would hae been a modern ferry for local traffic, given that most long distance traffic into the area uses the good east-west roads.
But ferries aren’t sexy, are they? Given that those on the Mersey and the Thames still run and are much loved, I suspect that might have been the best solution.
But now it is too late!
So now we’re left with the problem of what to do with the bridge and its financing!
Looking at the map, I wouldn’t rule out that a new crossing is build to the north of Scunthorpe to improve northern connections to that town, which is suffering somewhat at the moment. After all, transport in the whole area needs improvement, with decent rail links to London, the Midlands and the North.
Perhaps the biggest mistake was not to make the Humber bridge, one that carried both road and rail! I do sometimes think, that someone wanted to design or build the longest bridge in the world. If they did, they created a white elephant.
The Anonymous Widower 
Just because YOU dont use it…or see the sense in it..doesnt mean to say there isnt any.
There are a LOT of things in life that I dont see the sense in…or agree with…or I wont ever use.
There is a major cash drain in London for use sometime in 2012…..that the vast majority of the UK wont ever feel the benefit of…or use or visit, nor can afford to…….but are paying shed loads of cash towards…..and will continue to pay for …for some years to come.
See what I mean?
Comment by Janet | June 15, 2011 |
I haven’t finished the post yet. But the Humber bridge was badly planned and because of this it has been a cash drain on everything else. You could also say that for the Medway, Runcorn, Forth and Severn Bridges. However, those encouaged reasonable amounts of traffic, so they were able to be widened. The politicians of both parties, who tried to unify the area into Humberside are the real villians of the story. It’s up to us now to make the most of this folly. The alternative A1 would have been one solution, but it’s now too late for that. All of the towns and cities in the area like Hull, Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Cleethorpes and Lincoln need help and quite frankly the bridge is little use to them. Hull, Grimsby and Lincoln have got much more benefit from good east-west roads, than the bridge.
As to your comments about the Olympics, it is exciting a lot more people than just Londoners. The site has already become a major tourist attraction already. The site has also been supposedly been sold to the Wellcome Trust for creation of a Science and Technology Park after the Games. The Olympics will do for London, what they did for Barcelona and what the City of Culture did for Liverpool. Except on a much bigger scale! Remember that the Olympic site at Stratford was one of the most polluted sites in Europe and had to be cleaned up anyway.
Comment by AnonW | June 15, 2011 |
I flew over the Oresund bridge linking Copenhagen and Malmo the other day. What I didn’t realise is that off the shore of Denmark the road and train come off the bridge, onto an island and into a tunnel. From the air it looks like the bridge is channeling traffic to a journey to the centre of the Earth.
Comment by Marc | June 15, 2011 |
I’ve only seen it from the Copenhagen side. but it definitely shows that there are better solutions today. I sometimes wonder if the Channel tunnel would have been built differently. An old friend of mine was the project manager on the 1970s Channel Tunnel that Harold Wilson cancelled. If he ever writes up the true story, It would be straight out of Yes! Minister!, but absolutely true.
Comment by AnonW | June 15, 2011 |