Banff - Macduff Active Travel Bridge

We are awaiting approval of funding from the Sustrans PfE fund to carry forward design option 1. You can read more about the results of this engagement here.

Project Summary

Currently the communities of Banff and Macduff are only connected by the Banff Road Bridge. Whilst this A-listed bridge serves both a historic and contemporary purpose for the area, it presents a range of issues for users. The narrow carriageway and narrow walkways present an environment that is unsafe for people walking and cycling and prevents many people from travelling actively.

The aim of this project is to create a new river crossing that is safe and suitable for everyone to travel actively. This new bridge will separate pedestrians and cyclists from vehicles and should integrate into the surrounding infrastructure in a way that is safe and convenient.

The project also aims to increase and diversify the number of trips made by walking, wheeling or cycling for everyday journeys and to improve safety, accessibility and community connections for residents in Banff and Macduff. We hope to achieve this through delivering a programme of behaviour change activities and continuing to deliver active travel infrastructure that will tie into the new bridge.

The A-listed Banff Road Bridge from above. The new proposed active travel bridge would sit north of the current bridge towards the estuary.

Consultation

In 2021, the public were presented with four bridge options to choose from including downstream and upstream options. The results of this consultation and feasibility studies concluded that downstream is the desirable solution.

Two solutions were developed by Arcadis (Engineers) & Moxon (Architect). Aberdeenshire Council asked the communities of Banff and Macduff to choose their preferred option between these two designs.

The public consultation included an online questionnaire that was open from September to October 2023 and two drop-in engagement events at the Community and Sports Centres in Banff and Macduff which were held on 25th and 26th September, respectively. The results of the public consultation were collated and shared with Arcadis and Moxon.

Arcadis analysed the results using a scoring system to determine the preferred design option to carry forward. This determined that Option 1 was the clear preference among the public. This design will sit closer to the road bridge and has a deck arrangement that follows the arches of the original bridge to allow the clearest views. The scoring system and visualisations are available in the Options Report.

We applied to the Sustrans Places for Everyone (PfE) fund on 10th January 2024 for funding to carry forward design Option 1 into detailed design and technical design stage. There was not sufficient funding available to support this project in the first round of funding therefore this project has been carried over to the second round of funding. After awaiting a result for the second round of funding, we were advised at the end of August that the programme had been paused and no further projects would be awarded funding this year. We are now in discussions about alternative funding options to continue the project.