The Anonymous Widower

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.

June 15, 2011 Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Bridges, Hull, Roads, Trains | 4 Comments