News release
14 January 2025

Busiest month ever recorded as traffic volumes across the River Mersey in Halton continue to grow

 

Residents, commuters, and visitors made over 2.34 million crossings over the River Mersey in Halton in October 2024, making it the busiest month ever for the Mersey Gateway and Silver Jubilee bridges.

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 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 October - December 2024, and show that:

  • OCTOBER 2024 IS A RECORD MONTH FOR CROSSINGS – 2.34 million journeys were made over the Mersey Gateway and Silver Jubilee Bridges in October 2024, making it the busiest month on record.
  • OVER 80,000 VEHICLES USING THE BRIDGES EVERY WEEKDAY – with over 85% of vehicles using the Mersey Gateway Bridge to cross the river
  • MORE CUSTOMERS CHOOSING TO REGISTER WITH MERSEYFLOW AND USE THE AUTO TOP-UP SYSTEM THAN EVER – shown by over 93% of customers using digital or automated payment methods.
  • PCNs DECREASED SLIGHTLY 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: “The run up to Christmas is always a busy period and 2024 was certainly no exception. October was our busiest month ever and journey levels have continued to rise steadily each year. This demonstrates how people value the role that the bridges play in continuing to provide time savings and reliable journeys for residents, commuters and visitors in the region.”

Neil Conway, Chief Executive of merseyflow, said: “When we look at the year-on-year figures it’s very pleasing to see traffic numbers increasing whilst at the same time the number of PCNs generated has slightly fallen. This means that more and more customers are making use of things like our discounts and pre-pay auto top-up systems for registered customers or our quick pay app for occasional bridge users.”

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.

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