Keeping up to Speed with the Dartford Crossing

If you’ve driven around the M25 in the Dartford and Thurrock areas in the past year will have noticed significant changes with the Dartford Crossing. To help avoid confusion (and penalty fines) given the removal of the familiar toll booths, Highways England have released a new info-leaflet on how to pay – read on to find out how you can keep up to speed at this once notorious bottleneck.

Completed in February 2016, a major overhaul saw 27 lanes and accompanying toll booths replaced with four free-flowing lanes in each direction. With barriers removed, the updates were designed to ease the flow of the 150,000 vehicles that use the crossing daily, and the government claims that the improvements have “significantly reduced journey times… particularly for people travelling southbound.”

So how do you pay?

If you’re planning on using the Dartford Crossing between 6am and 10pm, you must still pay a toll fee. This can be paid online, by phone, at selected retail outlets, or by post – either in advance or before midnight on the following day. Failure to do so will result in you receiving a Penalty Charge Notice – journeys may therefore require some forward planning.

Highways England has just released an information leaflet covering how to pay, along with the charges for each vehicle type. Click here to download the PDF.

Keep up to speed

For traffic information, and notification of closures due to accidents or bad weather, you can follow the crossing’s Twitter feed and Facebook page.