The transit to Fife and Dundee involving a ferry passage from Granton was a serious inconvenience, and a bridge had long been proposed. In 1890 the Forth Bridge opened, crossing the firth at Queensferry. This immediately supplanted the Granton ferry, except for local journeys to places immediately served from Burntisland. The line's purpose as part of a trunk route had vanished, but local travel on the north side of Edinburgh had grown, and coupled with goods traffic to and from the harbours, that now became the traffic on the lines.