Scottish Blog

The Tay Road Bridge is a bridge that crosses the Tay River.

The Tay Road Bridge is a motor vehicle and foot bridge spanning the Tay River between Newport and Dundee. The bridge consists of 4 road lanes, which are an extension of the A92 road, it also has walking and cycling areas for pedestrians. The bridge is currently over 2.2 kilometers in length. It is also sloped downward toward Dundee, with a height above sea level of 38 meters in Newport and just under 10 meters in Dundee.

The construction of the Tay Road Bridge began in 1963, after almost thirteen years of planning and five years of site testing. Physically the Tay Road Bridge consists of 42 sections, created out of over 140,000 tones of concrete, and close to thirteen thousand tones of various steels was used along with a 65 girder. Upon its completion, the Tay Road Bridge cost £6 million and took almost four years to build.

The Tay Road Bridge was officially opened on the 18th of August 1966 by Queen Elizabeth. As part of the opening ceremony celebration the bridge was allowed to be used for four days without tolls. Since then tolls have been enforced when crossing the bridge. Although in 1991 a tolling scheme was introduced whereby only southbound traffic would be tolled, the latest tolls ranged from nothing for motorcyclists to £2 for heavy trucks. More recently, in May 2007, the Scottish parliament voted to longer impose charges onto the bridge.