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Only one bidder for £300m Scots motorway contract



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Published Date: 10 October 2006
THE £300 million contract to build the controversial M74 extension in Glasgow has attracted only one bidder, it emerged yesterday.
A consortium of the building firms Balfour Beatty, Morgan Est, Morrison Construction and Sir Robert McAlpine is the only one to have expressed an interest in building the five-mile road.

The contract accounts for the lion's share of the £500 mill
ion project, which is Scotland's biggest current roads scheme.

Opponents who failed in a court bid to halt the project described the news as "a sad day in the discredited history of this white elephant of a road".

Transport Scotland said the tender from the consortium, which calls itself Interlink M74 Joint Venture, would be compared against a "robust cost estimate that reflects current industry rates and prices" to ensure it represented value for money.

But David Spaven, who chairs the sustainable transport campaign group TRANSform Scotland, said: "The independent inquiry reporter threw out the economic case for the M74, and he supported our environmental arguments against the road."

The project to extend the M74 to south of the Kingston Bridge by 2010 is aimed at diverting through traffic travelling between the south and west of Glasgow away from the busy M8.



The full article contains 225 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

 
1

rpb,

10/10/2006 07:24:54

This project is not about diverting traffic off the M8

It is about a blinkered transport policy by vote seeking elevated toon cooncillors. In this day and age what other towns/cities are in the process of building a further motorway through urban areas?

Glasgow has a declining population; Inverness is growing. One gets motorway number 3; the road from Perth to Inverness is a death trap. Of course no votes in the North.... I understand that Scotland's bit city also has its highest unemployables...sorry unemployment- I guess this publicly funded project might help.

What a narrow interest public transport policy!

2

HIS,

Edinburgh 10/10/2006 08:35:26

"Glasgow has a declining population; Inverness is growing"
2001 census: Glasgow's population over 600,000; Inverness' population just over 40,000, which one do you think might need a motorway most?

3

Alasdair,

10/10/2006 08:35:57

..except that Glasgow's population recently recorded its first rise for however many years.

4

Rob me blind,

10/10/2006 09:10:55

Well just look at the make up of the consortium, who is left to tender a bid unles we want some French or Itialian company it was bad enought when we let them design the Parliament let alon build a motorway

5

Brad,

Glasgow 10/10/2006 09:21:18

Bemused, Glasgow's population is not declining, it is growing again. Whether the M74 will help or not remains to be seen... it is a 1960s leftover project that no-one today would think was a good idea.

The reason that Glasgow gets more transport investment than Inverness might be because it is TWENTY-SIX times bigger in population terms...
www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files/04mid-year-estimates-settle...

6

Brad,

Glasgow 10/10/2006 09:22:47

HIS, good point - but don't be blinded by municipal boundaries: the population of the Glasgow 'settlement' are is twice that of the city councils.

7

mr chips,

10/10/2006 11:59:14

They should have given it to BOVIS and got a spanish design team, and just ignore any other bids.

They did the last time.

8

Wisnaeme,

Coventry 10/10/2006 17:05:01

Hmmm. Just one bidder? This seems to follow a pattern first used in the Skye bridge scam. A firm called Miller Civil engineering had a large part to play in that fiasco. A National Audit Office report on the ineptitude of senior civil servants and others overseeing that PFI and its tendering process makes for dismal reading. I haven't heard much about Miller Civil Engineering recently, Ah wonder where they've disappeared to? Perhaps we should ask Mogan Est that question? Indeed.Ah smell something fishy about this tender.

9

rpb,

10/10/2006 20:18:55

fair enough about the size; but why no significant investment in other parts of the country?

independent report says don't build the M74 extension - yet SE ignore and build.

independent report says don't ship the public sector jobs to Glasgow - too expensive. SE ignore.

Anyone see a link here per chance? Use public sector money to feed the West coast economy at the expense of the rest of Scotland...

Just out of interest who pays for all the public transport train lines/underground/ motorways/ abolishing Erskine Bridge tolls in a certain city

I heard that there is a new international finance district - it's stuffed full of public sector jobs!!!

Can Scotland really afford this centralised socialist nightmare of an Executive that's obsessed with pouring Scotland/UK resources into the West of Scotland economy so that the status quo of introverted, inadequate political rule can be continued to the detriment of economic value add generated in the private sector that should benefit the areas where wealth is created?

Or should all income generated be aimed at the post industrial failings of the west of Scotland (coincidentally mismanaged for decades by local cooncillors, now elevated to MSPs to ruin Scotland on a much larger scale....?)

10

Marianne,

Polmont 10/10/2006 20:27:46

#6. I agree with you Brad.

If Glasgow's city boundary was drawn as generously as Leeds' and Edinburgh's are then it would be a more accurate and true picture of the whole city, more socially balanced and fiscally healthier.

As it is Glasgow is constrained within a gerrymandered, narrow boundary for political reasons.

If the boundary was drawn properly (as it should be) then the inner city and all the wealthy suburbs would be inside the official city boundary.

If Edinburgh's boundary was drawn around it the same way as Glasgow's is then Corstorphine, Barnton, Cramond, Portobello, Gilmerton, Fairmilehead, Colinton would be 'outside' Edinburgh...

Glasgow is greater than the sum of its parts, always has been. Apart from over 1.1 million in the real/whole city, the population of the entire built up city conurbation - from Dalmuir/Erskine/Paisley to Airdrie and from Milngavie/Bishopbriggs to Newton Mearns - is well over 1.7 million. That kind of puts things in perspective.

Glasgow's current city council area (with a population of around 600,000) is a joke, like Manchester's (a city regarded as being the 2nd biggest in England yet it's official population is only 435,000!).

With all the new flats and houses which have been built in Glasgow and are being built now/planned the population is growing for the first time in decades. Not quite as bleak as often portrayed, especially by Scotsman group papers!

11

Marianne,

Colinton 10/10/2006 20:47:00

Re. 9. - "fair enough about the size; but why no significant investment in other parts of the country?".

So spending well over of a billion squids on an over-elaborate airport rail link for Edinburgh and a white elephant tram line, plus expensive by-pass for Aberdeen isn't "significant investment in the rest of the country"?

"I heard that there is a new international finance district - it's stuffed full of public sector jobs!!!"

Not true, you should really get your facts right before commenting 'bemused'. The International Financial Services District (IFSD) in Glasgow is proving very popular with the private sector, that's why new buildings are planned/going up within it.

The rest is just typical east coast paranoia, born out of ignorance of the reality of our biggest city. It's very easy to sit in Edinburgh and throw insults at Glasgow, possibly due to Glasgow being viewed as a threat to Edinburgh's capital status perhaps.

Something that Edinburgh as a city and the natives of it have never come to terms with is the fact that around half of the country's population lives in and around Glasgow and being such a large city, much bigger than Edinburgh, is something that people here don't seem to be able to get their heads around.

I speak as a born and bred Edinburger who has lived in Glasgow, have many friends there and love the city - because *I have got to know it* and appreciate it. It's a different place when you see the bigger picture and stop thinking the country/world revolves around Edinburgh, it doesn't.

Time we stopped all this childish, immature and constant sniping and throwing insults at Glasgow. Of course it is going to have the bulk of public transport investment, have more new projects going on and it should the funding it requires from the Executive. It is the focus for half (or more) of our country, it is our *largest city* (by far).

So stop all the constant anti-Glasgow

12

Mark,

Hamilton in Glasgow 10/10/2006 20:54:25

I cant believe people still believe this bull about a declining population in Glasgow. The only reason it looks like its going down is because the “Scottish” executive are constantly making Glasgow’s boundary smaller, a complete disgrace.

Glasgow’s REAL population is something like 1.7m with 2.5m in greater Glasgow area. Forget the crap the executive and this paper spew.

13

rpb,

Scotland 10/10/2006 21:43:37

Diana,

What gives you the impression I'm in Edinburgh? A typical Central Belt view that the world is split between Edinburgh & Glasgow. Diana, you have much to learn- the world is much bigger than your Southern Scottish blinkerdness.

I do not live (thank goodness) in the grim reality of the (dead) politically infested central belt.

I merely observe from a far and see my hard earned tax ££s being squandered by the type of people you vote for. Again and again. Until Scotland has been killed by Lanarkshire politicians.

Doing the (English) Tories dirty work all by yourselves!

14

Realist,

11/10/2006 12:53:17

Only one bidder.

Get ready for a long long building schedule and a crap road folks!

15

Brad,

Glasgow 12/10/2006 17:56:56

bemused, we don't know where you are but if you look up the Parliament Finance Committee's report on spending on economic development, which I think includes transport, you'll find that it reveals that spending per head is about 2.5 times higher in rural areas than in urban.

The more densely-populated parts of the country subsidise the rural ones in numberous ways: although it is the same charge to send a letter everywhere in the UK, it costs far more to support such a service in remote areas. Look at the GDP figures for rural areas: far less wealth generated yet they often get the same or better public services. On transport, you'll find that the Erskine Bridge tolls were lifted because the debt had been paid: can you say that about the Skye one? The subsidy per passenger paid for rail services in the central belt is surely much less than on the sparsely used ones elsewhere? Given the high fares and huge patronage on the Gla-Ed route, I suspect that it subsidises others. Executive grants for road maintenance are also relatively higher outside the cities because they do not fully account for traffic levels, as opposed to A/B classifications. Glasgow's and Edinburgh's bus networks are almost entirely unsubsidised - can this be said of most parts of Scotland?

Your comments about the IFSD are entirely inaccurate.


 

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