Motorway to close for new bridge

The largest crane in Britain will be used to drop in the new footbridge

Part of Scotland's busiest motorway will be closed on Friday from 1900 BST while a new bridge is installed.

The M8 will be shut overnight between Junctions 4 and 5 so the huge structure can be lifted into place.

The largest crane in Britain will be used put in the new £5m footbridge at Harthill in North Lanarkshire.

It will be sited a few metres away from the existing glass panelled footbridge that has joined two service stations for the past 40 years.

The old bridge has become a well-known landmark for the hundreds of thousands of motorists who regularly use Scotland's busiest motorway, which runs between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Glazed walkway

The new bridge is an innovative spiral structure formed from tubular steel.

It has been fabricated off-site and delivered in seven sections where it has been welded together, received its final aluminium silver paint finish and had its fully enclosed glazed walkway put in place ready for the lift.

If everything goes according to plan, the section of motorway will be open again by Saturday at 0600 BST.

Diversions will be in operation to get drivers around the closure.

The road will be closed overnight again at the end of the month to take down the old bridge.

John Andrew from contractors Raynesway said it took 45 vehicles to get the crane on site and it took a week to put it together.

He said: "The bridge itself we are lifting later will be something in the region of 230 tonnes.

"The jib, the long stick that is coming out of the crane, that's now 90 metres in the air and it has a radius of 50 metres, so it is actually picking it up and turning it around - so from one place to another it is about 100 metres it is carrying this over the motorway."

Ainslie McLaughlin, head of major transport infrastructure projects at Transport Scotland, said it was a much-needed replacement.

"It is time we got a modern, high-amenity structure to help encourage people out of their cars and encourage the use of Harthill as an important park and ride interchange."