Dartford crossing
Transport Minister says he is committed to improving the levels of service experienced by users of the Dartford crossing.
Date filmed: 28 June 2010
Transcript
Narrator: Transport Minister Mike Penning is committed to improving the levels of service experienced by users of the Dartford crossing.
Transport Minister Mike Penning: The traffic and queues behind me on one of the countries most important junctions, pieces of infrastructure on our roads, tells you why I am here. Massive tailbacks, miles and miles of parked cars, parking, queuing, to pay 拢1.50. We鈥檝e got to get the technology together to move it on, so we can have a better flow of traffic through here.
The design capacity for booths, where people are paying, they cannot cope with people taking money or going through machines trying to pay as you go through, that鈥檚 just physically impossible to do. We need to make sure we get the flow of traffic through.
Narrator: A package of measures to help reduce the congestion at the crossing is now being considered by the Department of Transport and the Highways Agency. This includes free flow tolling technology that would enable barriers to be removed and so increase the speed at which traffic passes through.
Transport Minister Mike Penning: We don鈥檛 need to reinvent the wheel, other countries have tried it. We鈥檝e got the technology out of there, what we need to do is bring it forwards, stop saying how it can鈥檛 be done and actually doing it, and that鈥檚 what these people deserve.
Not question of if, but how this can be done to improve road infrastructure for the British motorist.