News release
16 April 2024
Busiest first quarter for traffic over the River Mersey in Halton
Newly released figures from merseyflow show that over 6.22 million residents, commuters and visitors crossed the River Mersey in Halton between January-March 2024, making it the busiest first quarter for traffic since the Mersey Gateway opened.
Over 2 million vehicles are consistently making the journey over the bridges each month, with the vast majority choosing to pay for their crossings using digital payment methods.
The quarterly statistics 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 January – March 2024, and show that:
- 2024 marks the busiest first quarter since the Mersey Gateway opened – over 6.22 million journeys were made over the River Mersey in Halton from January to March.
- 12 out of the last 13 months have seen traffic levels exceed two million vehicles each month – only April 2023’s figure was under the two million mark
- Over 92% of customers used digital payments methods – over 142,000 payments were made using the merseyflow Quick-Pay App in March 2024, the highest monthly figure recorded since the app launched.
- PCNs remain consistent as a % of overall journeys – over 97.5% of journeys were paid for on time.
Mike Bennett, Managing Director of the Mersey Gateway Crossings Board, said: “We’re now consistently seeing traffic volumes over the two million vehicles mark every month. That shows how important the connectivity that the two bridges provide is to our regional economy.”
He added: “The team works hard to keep the network open as fully as possible and to maximise the reliability and convenience for drivers. An essential temporary lane closure like the one we recently had to put in place on the northbound approach to the Mersey Gateway Bridge isn’t ideal, but we’ve worked hard with Merseylink, the consortium that operates and maintains the bridge, to get this work completed as quickly as possible and to put measures in place to reduce the chances of it happening again in future.”
Neil Conway, Chief Executive of merseyflow, said: “We’re always looking to bring in new features to improve our service and make it as easy as possible for people to register with merseyflow and pay for their journeys as easily as possible.
“We’ve just added a new chatbot function to the merseyflow website to help customers who might want to ask questions or need a little instant help or support when online. We’ll be monitoring that closely and looking to extend and improve its capabilities where we can as we move forward.”
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.