The logo of the Dartford River Crossing Limited (DRCL) with its jolly three shipping flags is no more. With the transfer of operations of the Thames River toll crossing to a new concessionaire the nautical logo of DRCL is being replaced by the roady logo of the UK Highways Agency... MORE
The logo of the Dartford River Crossing Limited (DRCL) with its jolly three shipping flags is no more. With the transfer of operations of the Thames River toll crossing to a new concessionaire the nautical logo of DRCL is being replaced by the roady logo of the UK Highways Agency.
On April 1, 2003 Le Crossing Company (LCC), in which France's Cofiroute and the UK Babtie Group are partners, took over operations at the Dartford Crossing, London UK. The staff of DRLC have been put on the payroll of the LCC
Formally the Dartford-Thurrock Crossing (the Crossing) this, the highest volume toll facility in the UK, consists of twin-two lane tunnels northbound and a southbound 4-lane cable-stayed bridge, which soars above the flat landscape. The bridge/tunnel combination carries London's M25 Orbital motorway across the estuarial portion of the Thames River some 25km (16mi) downstream of central London.
Last year LCC won a $120m (75m pd) three to five year operating contract from the UK Government Highways Agency which owns the facility. Dartford River Crossing Limited (DRCL), the design-build-finance-operate concessionaire had been running the operation since mid-1988 from offices on the southern or Kent side of the river overlooking the 27 lane toll plaza. Its concession was paid up after 14 years.
HISTORY: The first Dartford tunnel which took a single lane of traffic each direction goes back to 1963 constructed by Kent and Essex counties on either side of the river. It then connected local streets. The second tube, also built by the two counties opened in 1980. The four tunnel lanes soon faced overwhelming traffic in the 1980s due to construction of the M25 Orbital "beltway" in the 1980s. Traffic immediately increased from 30k daily to 70k, and queueing became acute with 3-lanes each direction having to squeeze into 2-lanes at the river.
With the motorway connections making the Crossing a national route between Britain-north-of-London and the southeast coast including the channel ports like Dover and Folkestone, responsibility shifted from the counties to the national government. Mrs Thatcher's policy was to enlist investors in infrastructure. Builder Trafalgar House (later Kvaerner), financiers Kleinwort Benson and Bank of America, and Prudential Insurance won a contest with seven other groups for the toll concession in 1986. Their business entity Dartford River Crossing Limited (DRCL) was committed to raising $300m for a project the centerpiece of which was a new bridge to double the travel lanes to eight, as well as to maintain and manage the tunnels in return for the right to toll. DRCL's scheme was termed a "pinpoint equity" financing effectively a not-for-profit deal in which it was entitled to recover its capital plus interest with an incentive for a speedy handback. The contract limited the toll concession to a maximum of 20 years, but DRCL managed to pay off the contract early.
DRCL began collecting tolls from tunnel traffic after the concession agreement came into effect in 1988, and work got under way on the bridge. The bridge named the Queen Elizabeth II opened to traffic in 1991. It is 2.8km (1.7mi) long with a 450m (1476ft) central span and provides 57.5m (189ft) clearance for shipping.
Its an impressive bridge in its size with towers 190m (624ft) high. But to this eye, it's an ugly bridge, mainly because of the discontinuity of the verticals of the towers. Below bridge deck level they are fat and heavy, but above it they are skinny and light. The jog makes the towers look fragile. Its a jarring design.
Windy
High winds regularly sweep in from North Sea across the deadflat "fens" of East Anglia on a regular basis. They require the bridge to be closed from time to time because of the danger of tractor-trailers being overturned. Then the traffic patterns have to be changed. On the approaches either side of the river large central crossover areas of pavement come into play, cones directing southbound traffic to the easterly of the two tunnel tubes. They revert to one tube each direction of traffic, in a throwback to the pre-bridge days - until the weather calms down.
Peakhour traffic is approximately balanced in the two directions, so normally the two tunnels take northbound traffic, and the QE2 bridge southbound traffic, and there is no need for reversible lanes at the plaza.
Average daily traffic is now over 140k with peak days of 155k to 160k with over 10% heavy trucks. Backups at the toll plaza are becoming a problem. A couple of years ago DRCL proposed the addition of toll lanes to the existing 27-lane plaza but the UK Government nixed the idea.
The plaza runs up to 6400 veh/hour through 13-lanes southbound and up to 6400 veh/hr through 14-lanes northbound. In the dedicated ET lane they do around 900 veh/hr, about 450 in coin machine lanes and 300 to 500 in manual lanes.
Electronic tolling (ET) under the trade name DART Tag represents about 23% of transactions total and 35% in peakhours. Half of heavy trucks use transponders, so abou 30% of revenues are collected using ET. But given the scattered nature of toll facilities in the UK, and the high proportion of occasional users, it will be difficult to get the proportion much higher. Like other European toll plazas they have gates at Dartford.
When I visited late March the previous day they'd collected 205k pd split 86k manual, 46k coin machines, 73k ET.
The British tollsters are gradually junking their old ET systems for the 5.8GHz CEN-278 standard, so-called. Dartford recently had CS Route integrate a system based on Combitech tags. But there are no arrangements for interoperability within the UK, let alone with toll systems in France or elsewhere on the "continent."
At Dartford they man 9-lanes each direction except at night and as well as UK sterling, they accept US-dollars, and Euros from truck drivers, but only UK cash from car drivers. No credit cards accepted.
The Dartford Crossing is the highest volume toll facility in the UK, doing an average 140k tolls per day versus the Central London's 100k. Until the Central London Congestion Charging scheme started operations this February, the Dartford Crossing was also Britain's highest grossing toll facility - at $100m/yr (64m pd) just a bit ahead of the Severn Bridge at $95m (which links the west of England to Wales over the Severn estuary.)
Central London is grossing around $200m (125m pd).
On the changeover from the old DFBO concession, the government Highways Agency ordered some toll changes. Most tolls are unchanged, but motorcycles go free. Also there are lower night-time tolls for commercial vehicles. During the day 0600-2200 (8pm) tolls are $1.60 (1pd) for cars, $2.80 (1.80pd) for 2-axle commercial vehicles, and $4.60 (2.90pd) for heavy goods vehicles, trucks and buses. Night-time (2200-0600) all vehicles are charged $1.60 (1pd).
FUTURE: There were some demands that tolls on the Dartford Crossing be discontinued with the original capital paid off. However the tolls provide an important revenue stream to maintain and manage a critical crossing system. Abolition of tolls would also increase traffic by 5 or 10 percent, which might create serious congestion at an already near-capacity facility. The UK Department for Transport plans to add a lane each direction on the connecting M25 Orbital before 2012 which could make the case for a twinning of the Dartford bridge and use of the tunnels for local traffic except in high wind conditions. If the much discussed Thamesgate bridges get built the traffic load on the Dartford Crossing will drop.(see www.dartfordrivercrossing.co.uk www.highways.gov.uk) TRnews 2003-05-09
