Dartford Crossing
Published by James E on Sunday, May 11, 2008.
Please visit this site and sign the petition. This government are raking in £50,000,000 every year (that s nearly one million pounds every week) while we sit in miles and miles of traffic caused by the tolls. And if we don t do something that will increase to £75 million next year. As you can see from the information below they have been charging us for the last 5 years despite the legal authority to do so expiring in April 2003. They want to raise the amount they charge by 50%.
Despite calls to scrap the Dartford Crossing Toll and allow vehicles to move freely across the river, the Government now propose to increase the standard charge from £1.00 to £1.50 for cars later this year.
The charge was introduced in 1963 and was designed to pay for the construction costs of the tunnels and latterly the bridge. These costs were finally paid off in 2002 and the legal authority to charge a toll expired in April 2003. However, the Government decided to continue the toll under the guise of a congestion charge. This petition calls for the toll to be scrapped, as soon as is practicable, on the following grounds:
a)The congestion, which can stretch for many miles on either side of the crossing, is largely due to the effect of the tollbooths themselves
b)The exhaust fumes generated by thousands of cars waiting in line causes unnecessary environmental damage
c)The delays add unnecessary expense to business and transport costs
Despite calls to scrap the Dartford Crossing Toll and allow vehicles to move freely across the river, the Government now propose to increase the standard charge from £1.00 to £1.50 for cars later this year.
The charge was introduced in 1963 and was designed to pay for the construction costs of the tunnels and latterly the bridge. These costs were finally paid off in 2002 and the legal authority to charge a toll expired in April 2003. However, the Government decided to continue the toll under the guise of a congestion charge. This petition calls for the toll to be scrapped, as soon as is practicable, on the following grounds:
a)The congestion, which can stretch for many miles on either side of the crossing, is largely due to the effect of the tollbooths themselves
b)The exhaust fumes generated by thousands of cars waiting in line causes unnecessary environmental damage
c)The delays add unnecessary expense to business and transport costs
I make u right there,s nothing like queuing four an hour or 2 just to pay a toll. as of lately i will only pay with the largest note i have if enough people do this they will run out of change then they will have to lift the barriers
I cannot believe the idiocy of 'Le Crossing' and the Highways Agency in increasing the toll charge by 50p.
I have been a regular user of the crossing in recent weeks both before and after the increase and at varying times of the day and night. When the charge was £1, I was rarely held up in either direction, now it is £1.50 I am held up on every use outside of the free time period, often for half an hour or more. Why? Because people generally only have either two £1 coins or a £2 coin meaning they will always head for the attended booths to get their change.
Pity the poor people who bother to have the correct change to use the auto tolls; they save perhaps a few seconds once they have sat through the same queue as the rest of us and I doubt even the reduced toll cost for Dart-Tag user’s makes up for sitting in long traffic jams.
Let alone the morality of increasing the charge in the first place, all that this has achieved is a considerable increase in journey times, in fuel consumption (resulting in even more cost), in emissions and of course in sheer frustration for the paying customer.
I am not averse to paying a toll charge, I perfectly understand that the crossing has to be maintained, staff need to be paid and businesses need to make money; we would be far worse off without the crossing. However I wholly object to my toll charges going toward the no doubt high salaries of inept bosses (dare I say of a foreign company) who quite clearly have made this decision purely to increase commercial profit. I challenge all of them to take me on and argue this increase as being anything other than that...
Okay so lot’s of problems and moaning, but “quelle est la solution?” (as I’m sure they say in the Le Crossing office). Well that couldn’t be simpler. Abandon the toll booths completely, adopt an ANPR camera system and allow customers to pay the toll charges over the phone or on-line as they would the London congestion charge. A pre-paid account (like Dart-Tag) that has costs benefits for paying in advance can still work, as can a local resident pricing policy and the free toll time period. Le Crossing, we have the technology and it is proven so get your thumbs out of your backsides and start using it – or is it that you really couldn’t care less?
Thanks for the link to the petition - I found this blog via Google as, like Mark Goodge points out, I have seen a drastic increase in the amount of traffic queuing since the price rise.
My solution to the problem is very simple and requires no real financial overheads. Once there is sufficient queuing on the bridge, the tolls should be suspended until such time as the queues have disappeared.
The real cost in terms of people's time to queue 30 minutes each side is much more expensive than the income generated for the government from the crossing.
I will be writing to my MP about this and I urge other people to do likewise.