SEStran, the regional transport partnership for the South East of Scotland, is soon to examine the possibility for bus priority measures, including a segregated bus rapid transit corridor, on the A90 from Edinburgh to the Forth Bridge, following the plan to remove tolls from the crossing.

In what partnership director Alex Macaulay described as “an interesting scheme”, he said that the partnership will examine the possibilities for bus priority on the A90, both “what you do on street and maybe what we can do segregated [from other traffic] further out [from the bridge].”

He said: “We’ve got a degree of inbound bus priority but no outbound [northbound from Edinburgh] bus priority, and we’re looking very carefully at what we can do to get more bus priority on [the] road.”

He added that there is also work ongoing to look at bus provision following the removal of tolls from the Forth Bridge. Speaking before the bill received the majority approval of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee in the Scottish Parliament, Macaulay said: “There’s a fair amount of intensive modelling going on there to make sure that we don’t end up with a situation that the buses end up in a traffic jam.

“There is a bus stop actually on the [toll] plaza at the south side of the bridge that the express buses stop at, and we want to keep that and we want to ensure that the bus can get in and out of that stop and not have to sit for 15 or 20 minutes while the traffic whizzes by uncontrolled across the bridge.”

A spokesman for the Forth Estuary Transport Authority confirmed that it is discussing with SEStran the plans for the re-modelling of the approach to the bridge following the removal of tolls, which could include a northbound bus lane.

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