Dartford toll hikes: just the beginning

This week saw the government slap a 40% hike in toll charges for the Dartford crossings, raising the basic cost for a car from £2.50 to £3.50. It suggests that perhaps we’re not so far off the mark when we said tolls would have to triple if the Lower Thames ‘smart’ motorway Crossing (LTC) is built using private finance. At the very least for private individuals, there will need to be another 20% hike as any toll company will have to charge VAT. That would bring the charge to £4.20, heading towards a doubling of the charge before construction has even started.

In her statement to the House of Commons, Minister for the Future of Roads, Lilian Greenwood MP, said that: Current charging levels are no longer sufficient to achieve their stated aim of managing demand so that the Crossing works well for users and local people.

She then went on to say: The need to increase the charges to manage traffic highlights the need for the additional capacity that LTC, for which the Government confirmed new funding yesterday, will provide.

Flimsy reasoning

This second statement applies to every road across the country where there is congestion. Yet there is no way we could afford to lay enough tarmac to cope, let alone whether it would be desirable for a whole range of economic, social and environmental reasons. Maybe, if toll charges had risen with inflation since 2014 (the last time they were raised) then perhaps there wouldn’t be so much congestion at Dartford and there wouldn’t be the need to waste money on the Lower Thames Crossing.

While the Dartford crossings are important for HGVs and transporting goods, it is clear a lot of local traffic uses them, with many people close to the crossings receiving significant discounts. As Lilian Greenwood MP also said that: The Dartford Crossing is the only fixed road crossing of the River Thames east of London.

Where is the public transport?

This is true but what she’s not said is that there is NO permanent public transport link across the River Thames east of London, aside from HS1 which doesn’t serve local travel. Therefore the obvious conclusion would be that there appears to be a need for a permanent public transport crossing as we set out in our report Essex-Kent Superlinks. Especially as there are a quarter of a million households in Essex and Kent without access to a car. This would provide people with a choice in how they travel and help reduce the large volumes of local traffic using the Dartford crossing.

Equally, the government’s recent bung of a further £590m for the LTC, which doesn’t even start its construction, could have paid for nearly all the rail upgrades needed in the wider South East to get more freight (HGVs) onto rail. This includes the Ely Junction upgrade that has a benefit cost ratio five times greater than the Lower Thames Crossing. Not only would these reduce congestion at Dartford and improve reliability for importers and exporters, on rail and road, but would also make our roads safer with fewer HGVs on them. The government’s professed support for freight on rail seems nothing more than lip-service.

Why has Labour changed?

Before Labour came to power, it used to say that the best way to help motorists was to improve public transport, so that less people would need to use their cars. However, now Treasury groupthink is dominating the government, it seems to think that any low value road scheme is ‘essential’, while investments in public transport and active travel, with far higher economic returns, are sidelined. Of course, the LTC does nothing for a quarter of million households without access to a car.

Are there other reasons for raising the tolls?

There could of course be other reasons for raising the toll charges now. One could be to prevent a displacement of traffic from the Blackwall Tunnel where tolling came into effect earlier this year when the Silvertown Tunnel was opened. There peak toll charges (06:00 – 10:00 and 16:00-19:00) are £4 a car, which remains higher than Dartford but not by a lot.

Another more cynical view is that the government needs to raise toll charges to show that it can bring in more cash and make the Lower Thames Crossing more appealing to private investors (any private operator would have control of tolls over both crossings: Dartford and the LTC). It has been likened to fattening the cow before it is sold. Whether it succeeds or not remains to be seen.

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