<P> The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland . The bridge, opened in 1964, spans the Firth of Forth, connecting Edinburgh, at Queensferry, to Fife, at North Queensferry . It replaced a centuries - old ferry service to carry vehicular traffic, cyclists and pedestrians across the Forth; railway crossings are made by the adjacent Forth Bridge, opened in 1890 . </P> <P> The Scottish Parliament voted to scrap tolls on the bridge from February 2008 . The bridge was nearing the end of its life in the 2010s, and a parallel replacement was built . On 5 September 2017 the bridge carried its final private cars, as the vast majority of traffic was transferred to the new Queensferry Crossing . Following a few weeks closure for repairs, the new role of the Forth Road Bridge will be as a public transport corridor, open only to buses, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians . At its peak, the Forth Road Bridge carried 65,000 vehicles per day (vpd), which is now expected to drop to only a few hundred following the opening of the Queensferry Crossing . </P> <P> The first crossing at what is now the site of the bridge was established in the 11th century by Margaret, queen consort of King Malcolm III, who founded a ferry service to transport religious pilgrims from Edinburgh to Dunfermline Abbey and St Andrews . Its creation gave rise to the port towns of Queensferry and North Queensferry, which remain to this day; and the service remained in uninterrupted use as a passenger ferry for over eight hundred years . There were proposals as early as the 1740s for a road crossing at the site, although their viability was only considered following the construction of the Forth Bridge in 1890 . </P> <P> The importance of the crossing to vehicular traffic was underpinned when the Great Britain road numbering scheme was drawn up in the 1920s . The planners wished the arterial A9 road to be routed across the Forth here, although the unwillingness to have a ferry crossing as part of this route led to the A90 number being assigned instead . </P>

When was the first forth road bridge built