Traffic volumes across River Mersey continue to grow

CROSSINGS over the River Mersey via the Mersey Gateway and Silver Jubilee bridges reached a new high this summer, with over 6.51 million journeys made by residents, commuters, and visitors from July-September 2023.

This is the highest number of crossings recorded since the Mersey Gateway Bridge opened in October 2017, breaking the previous record of 6.35 million crossings from April-June 2023.

The opening of the bridge sparked controversy back in 2019 when former Warrington South MP Faisal Rashid tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling on the government to urgently remove the Mersey Gateway Bridge tolls to relieve the financial strain on local commuters.
Meanwhile, the newly released quarterly figures from merseyflow include trips made across both the Mersey Gateway Bridge and the Silver Jubilee Bridge, both of which are covered by the same merseyflow toll/charging system. They cover July – September 2023, and show that:

Crossings over the River Mersey continue to break records – 6.51 million journeys were made over the Mersey Gateway and Silver Jubilee bridges between July – September 2023, the highest quarterly figure since the Mersey Gateway Bridge opened.
Traffic levels on the Silver Jubilee Bridge are back to normal – 340,000 journeys were made in September 2023 on the fully reopened Silver Jubilee Bridge, the joint highest since it was changed to one lane in each direction.
79,000 vehicles now cross the River in Halton every weekday – with 85% of them using the Mersey Gateway Bridge.
Over 97% of journeys were paid for on time – the vast majority of people are paying for their journeys by midnight the day after they cross as we approach the sixth anniversary of the opening of the Mersey Gateway Bridge.

Mike Bennett, Managing Director of the Mersey Gateway Crossings Board, said:“It’s reassuring to see traffic levels on the Silver Jubilee Bridge returning to normal after a period of temporary closures. More people than ever are taking advantage of the time savings offered by both bridges and are continuing to pay for their crossings on time using the many automatic and discounted payment methods available.
“We have a busy period coming up for renewals for Local User Discount Scheme plan holders in Halton, and although we’ve had a fantastic response by residents signing up to the new auto-renew scheme we would like to encourage any eligible residents due to renew their LUDS plan to visit the merseyflow website and switch to auto-renew today.”

Neil Conway, Chief Executive of merseyflow, said: “We’re coming up to the sixth anniversary of the opening of the Mersey Gateway Bridge now, and customers are continuing to take advantage of our Pre-Pay plans with auto top-up to make paying for their crossings easier and decrease the risk of receiving a Penalty Charge Notice. In our recent customer satisfaction survey 89% of this group said it was easy or very easy to pay for their crossings.
“Overall 71% of our customers in the same survey found the standard of merseyflow’s service to be excellent or good, which is a really positive reflection on the hard work of our team and the value of the automated payment options we have in place to make paying for a journey as easy as possible.”
The quarterly merseyflow dashboard provides a range of in-depth statistics and graphs which show information on the number of crossings made, average daily traffic, number of PCNs issued, methods of payment, payments made on time, total revenue, and what percentage of this comes from PCNs.
The full dashboard can be viewed here