Skye Bridge
In 1989 Conservative junior minister Lord James Douglas-Hamilton announced a bidding round, requested tenders to construct a toll bridge.The Miller-Dywidag proposal (designed in collaboration with civil engineering firm Arup) was for a single-span concrete arch, supported by two piers resting on caissons in the loch and using Eilean Bàn as a stepping-stone.Construction began in 1992 led by Project Director John Henderson and the bridge was opened by Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth on 16 October 1995.The two caissons that the main span stands on were cast as hollow cylinders in the old Kishorn Dry Dock and floated to site where they were sunk onto the prepared loch bed.Hingston told the BBC "As a fiscal I was stuck with that evidence but as a private individual I found it stunning",[3] leading to renewed calls that the convictions of the toll protesters should be quashed – to this the Crown Office reiterated that appeals on these grounds had already been rejected by the courts.On 3 June 2004, Jim Wallace, the Enterprise Minister in the Scottish Executive announced that he hoped the bridge would be bought out, and tolls abolished, by the end of 2004.[4] In line with this, on 21 December 2004, Scottish Transport Minister Nicol Stephen announced that the bridge had been purchased for approximately £27 million, and toll collection immediately ceased.