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If you’re east of London (as far out as Kent and Essex) and need to get across the mighty Thames, you have one real options: the Dartford Crossing. The crossing has been open for nearly 60 years now, its double-tunnel/bridge combo seeing up to 180,000 cars cross the Thames estuary everything single day.
Naturally, after nearly six decades the Dartford Crossing needs a little TLC. So far throughout September, the crossing has been closed a couple of times for maintenance, and unfortunately we’ve not yet seen the end of it. More disruption will take place this week.
This time next week the closures will all be behind us, so if you have a burning desire to utilise the Queen Elizabeth II bridge in the wee small hours, you might be best postponing your plans for a few days. Here are the exact dates and times when the Dartford Crossing will be closed over the next week.
Dartford Crossing closure dates
From today (Monday September 9) until Thursday (September 12), the Dartford west tunnel will be completely shut from 10pm until 5:30am each night. You might also want to bare in mind that the Blackwell tunnel is still closed on Monday September 9, so it won’t be of any use as an alternative.
On Friday (September 13) it will be closed between the hours of 11pm and 6am, but after that the works in the west tunnel are due to be completed. Not long now.
On Saturday (September 14) it will be the bridge’s turn for a pick-me-up, and it will be inaccessible between the hours of 10pm and 5am the following day. Finally, on Sunday (September 15) the east tunnel will be locked off for the same length of time, 10pm-5am, and there will be no west tunnel diversion access for vehicles over 4.8m tall. You and your oversized car will have to head back on the M25 clockwise to get where you need to go.
In terms of diversions, other than big lorries and vans on the Sunday, there will be routes across the bridge in place the whole time, so this shouldn’t actually cause too much of a disturbance to your journey.
National Highways caution that plans can change, and you should always keep an eye on the official website for the most up to date and accurate information about road closures.
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