Advance notification for anyone planning to use the Dartford Crossing after October this year. The barriers are going so you'll need to find another way to pay your toll.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/d...remote-payment

http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/roa...ayment-scheme/

We have a DartTag to help with LHD car and single occupancy. Saves randomly throwing money into the Kent coutryside & is cheaper! I cannot see what will happen with existing credit on your account and the new scheme of things. Anyone spotted it?

"Existing DART-Tag account holders

It will be easy for you to move to a new Dart Charge account. There’s no need to do anything yet.

The Highways Agency will contact you in September and October 2014 with details of how to move to the new account, so please make sure the contact information on your account is up-to-date.

You won’t lose any credit and remaining funds will be transferred or refunded."

From the first link. Just make sure your contact details are correct.

Handy hint:

You can save on the toll by driving all the way around the M25 to reach the same destination.

Much more expensive though. All that fuel (£1.40ish a litre) compared to £2 to cross? Are you that rich?

take the tunnel.

carefully

I wasn't actually being serious...

Thanks Medea - that wasn't there last time I looked (when the Beeb announced the new system).

So there is no bilateral agreement with Switzerland. Is there a realistic chance of getting a fine in Switzerland?

for smashing through the barriers?

I thought that's what this thread was about? That they are removing the barriers?

when there are no barriers to smash through, you'll be OK

Not that I condone it but I think I forgot to pay the London CC once.

I'm doing Dover to Watford and it only saves 10 mins and a few miles going via Dartford so will just go the other way!

Why don't they just have credit card machines like every other toll system I know?

The idea is to do away completely with the need to stop at toll booths, with can result in miles of queues frequently for the tunnel & bridge. I made the mistake once of going there after a world superbikes meeting at nearby Brands Hatch, and there were thousand of bikers all having to stop and undo their leathers to find their wallets to pay for the toll. Took ages to get through.

They didn't have to pay, motorbikes are free for the crossing. It's just that they had to wait for the barriers to be lifted for each individual bike to go through. It's called how to make an even bigger traffic jam in one easy lesson.

depends when bikes didn't used to be free, but during rush hour they would often let them through to speed things up, then they gave up and just made them free.

As I understand it they will be able to go after foreign drivers, the whole point isn't to speed things up, as far as I can tell, but to make a hell of a lot more money and keep TFL and Capita rolling in the money.

auto fines in the post, lovely jubley

Only if you want to sit in endless queues and waste fuel!

I think part of it is to help speed things up. Evidently the bridge is carrying 17% more traffic than it was designed for (no surprise there) which is obviously contributing to longer jams. Given that this way they can also get rid of the staff at the booths and won't have to pay them profits will go up anyway.

The tolls where supposed to go when the bridge was paid for, that is what we where promised, but it never happened, the bridge was paid for (iirc) over 10 years ago.

Have you seen how high the fines are if you don't pay? And how high they go up? This has nothing to do with keeping traffic flowing, nothing at all