Dartford Crossing - History

History

The idea for a tunnel crossing was first promoted by Kent and Essex county councils in 1929. A pilot tunnel was completed in 1938, although World War II meant the tunnel was not completed to full diameter and opened to traffic until 1963. Tolls had been in place since the opening of the first tunnel, and were enacted to pay for the construction of the scheme.

After rapid increases in traffic, a second tunnel was initiated, and opened in 1980, allowing each tunnel to handle one direction of traffic. Connection of the crossing to the M25 was completed on the northerly Essex side in 1981 (Junction 31), and to the southerly Kent side in 1986 (Junction 1a).

In an early example of a Private Finance Initiative (PFI), under the Dartford-Thurrock Crossing Act 1988 control of the crossing passed from Kent and Essex county councils to Dartford River Crossing Limited in 1988, who would fund the construction of the QEII bridge and take on the remaining debt from construction of the tunnels.

In 1991 The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge was opened. The PFI scheme allowed DRC Ltd a 20 year concession to collect revenue, although this could be ended early once debts were repaid. Under the scheme, some parties had expected that the government of the time would scrap the toll once the debt had been repaid and a suitable maintenance fund had been accumulated, which was deemed to have occurred on 31 March 2002.

A fee was retained however under the new principle of Road User Charging, which had been introduced in the 2000 Transport Act to use congestion pricing to reduce traffic congestion during peak hours and to fund local and national transport schemes. Under this act, the A282 Trunk Road (Dartford-Thurrock Crossing charging scheme) Order 2002 allowed the continuation of the crossing fee, which officially became a charge and not a toll on 1 April 2003. At the same time, under the terms of the 1988 Act the DRC company was liquidated and management of the crossing was contracted to Le Crossing Company Limited on behalf of the Highways Agency. Under the new user charge regime, Le Crossing collects the charges which are set in statutory Charging Orders under the 2000 Act, with the revenue passing in full to the government for redistribution, and annual public accounts of the operation published showing expenses/revenues of the crossing.

From April 2010 to March 2011, 50,939,941 vehicles used the crossing, at a daily average of 139,545 vehicles. This represented a fall back to pre-2002 levels, from averages approaching 150,000 since the turn of the millennium. The highest recorded daily usage was 181,990 vehicles on 23 July 2004.

On the 13th of September 2009 the contractors of the Dartford River Crossing (Le Crossing) changed to Connect Plus M25, which again is made up of a consortium of Atkins, Egis, Skanska, and Balfour Beatty.