Friarton Bridge

The Friarton Bridge is a road bridge across the Firth of Tay on the southeastern outskirts of Perth, Scotland, approximately 25 miles upstream of the Tay Road Bridge.

Friarton Bridge

Crosses                      River Tay

Locale                        Perth, Scotland

Design                       Segmental

Longest span             570 feet (174 m)

Opening date            1974 

The bridge forms part of the eastern spur of the M90 between junctions 10 (Craigend) and 11 (Broxden), the most northerly motorway junction in the UK. It also forms part of the important east coast road corridor from Edinburgh through to Dundee and Aberdeen. The bridge spans the river, a row of electricity pylons, the Dundee-Perth railway line, a number of warehouses and the A85 high above the surrounding plain. It is a two-lane dual carriageway; unusually for a motorway (although not unusually for the M90) neither carriageway has a hard shoulder. When it was built in 1978, it was designated as the M85 motorway. When the A85 from the north end of the bridge to Dundee was renumbered in the early 1990s to A90 through to Dundee, the motorway's designation changed to M90 to provide a continuous route number from Edinburgh through to Fraserburgh.