Kevin Keane Fife reporter BBC Scotland news website

Tolls have been collected on the Forth road bridge for 44 years

It has taken almost five years for Scotland to become toll free since plans were first put in place to abolish the charge on the Skye bridge.

The Erskine bridge became free two years later and now the Tay and Forth.

It has not been a cheap decision. Traffic crossing the Forth brought in �225m by 2007 and that money must be found by the Scottish Government.

Lone protestor

Since opening in 1964, the Forth Bridge has collected tolls from almost 500 million vehicles. Motorists paid in both directions until 1997, when south-bound collections were abolished.

It is estimated that about 614 million vehicles have crossed the bridge in both directions.

Tolls last increased on the bridge in May 2005 - but only after a public inquiry which was prompted by a single letter of objection from Fife man George Campbell.

Anti-tolls campaigner Tom Minogue said: "Obviously we're very pleased. We didn't think it would happen so quickly.

"The tolls should have been off in 1995 when the bridge was paid off."

'Excessive and unreasonable'

It cost �19.7m to build the Forth bridge, which included a �14.6m loan from central government. By the time loan repayments started in 1984, �7m of interest had been accumulated.

Between its first and final full years of collecting tolls, the number of vehicles using the bridge increased from 4.6 million to 23.6 million.

By 2007, that had allowed the Forth Estuary Transport Authority to collect �225m at the booths.

Amongst the politicians who have called for the fee to be abolished over the years is the prime minister.

In 1985, as MP for Dunfermline East, Gordon Brown described the tolls as "excessive and unreasonable".