The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. The bridge opened in 1964 and at the time was the longest suspension bridge in the world outside the United States. The bridge spans the Firth of Forth, connecting Edinburgh, at South Queensferry, to Fife, at North Queensferry. It replaced a centuries-old ferry service to carry vehicular traffic, cyclists and pedestrians across the Forth; railway crossings are made by the nearby Forth Bridge, opened in 1890.

The Scottish Parliament voted to abolish tolls on the bridge from February 2008. The adjacent Queensferry Crossing was opened in August 2017 to carry the M90 motorway across the Firth of Forth, replacing the Forth Road Bridge which had exceeded its design capacity. At its peak, the Forth Road Bridge carried 65,000 vehicles per day.

The Forth Road Bridge was subsequently closed for repairs and refurbishment. It reopened in February 2018, redesignated as a dedicated Public Transport Corridor, with access to motor vehicles other than buses and taxis restricted; pedestrians and cyclists are still permitted to use the bridge.

The first crossing at the site of the bridge was established in the 11th century by Margaret, queen consort of King Malcolm III, who founded a ferry service to transport religious pilgrims from Edinburgh to Dunfermline Abbey and St Andrews. Its creation gave rise to the port towns of Queensferry and North Queensferry, which remain to this day; the passenger ferry service continued without interruption for over 800 years. There were proposals as early as the 1740s for a road crossing at the site, although its viability was only considered after the Forth Bridge was built in 1890.

The importance of the crossing for vehicular traffic was underpinned when the Great Britain road numbering scheme was drawn up in the 1920s. The planners wished the arterial A9 road to be routed across the Forth here, although the unwillingness to have a ferry crossing as part of this route led to the A90 number being assigned instead.

There was more lobbying for a road crossing in the 1920s and 1930s, when the only vehicle crossing was a single passenger and vehicle ferry. Sir William Denny championed the expansion of that service in the 1930s, providing and operating on behalf of the London and North Eastern Railway two additional ferries to supplement the nearby railway bridge. Due to their success, two more ferry boats were added in the 1940s and 1950s, by which time the ferries were making 40,000 crossings annually, carrying 1.5 million passengers and 800,000 vehicles.

With the then newest and nearest bridge spanning the Forth (the Kincardine Bridge, built in 1936) still around 15 miles (24 km) upstream, the upsurge in demand for a road crossing between Edinburgh and Fife prompted the UK Government to establish the Forth Road Bridge Joint Board (FRBJB) by an act of Parliament, the Forth Road Bridge Order Confirmation Act 1947 (10 & 11 Geo. 6. c. iv) to oversee the implementation of a new bridge to replace the ferry service. The authorities on both sides investigated in 1955, and drew up an alternative scheme for a tunnel beneath the estuary. This was known as the Maunsell Scheme, and was projected to run somewhat closer to the rail bridge than the present road bridge. The scheme was abandoned as too ambitious, and a bridge was built instead.

The final construction plan was accepted in February 1958 and work began that September. Mott, Hay and Anderson and Freeman Fox & Partners carried out the design work and a joint venture of Sir William Arrol & Co., Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company and Dorman Long constructed the bridge at a cost of £15.1 million. The resident design engineer was John Alexander King Hamilton FRSE (1900–1982).