BY ROGER WATSON
There was a time, not so long ago, when crossing the Humber felt like an occasion. You approached the Humber Bridge with a certain ceremony, slowed your pace, fumbled for coins (or later, a card), and exchanged a nod, sometimes a word, with the attendant in the booth.
It was not merely a crossing; it was a small, ritualised pause between the two halves of Humberside, between the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. Now, as the toll booths are consigned to history and the cameras have taken over, one wonders whether something rather more than infrastructure has been lost. For example, without the toll booths, the scene in the Only Fools and Horses special episode To Hull and Back where Rodney is horrified at having to pay to get into Hull would not have been possible.
The Humber Bridge opened in 1981. At 1.4 miles, it was, for a time, the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world, until 1998, before being overtaken by the Japanese Akashi Kaikyō Bridge. These days, its span has been eclipsed many times, particularly by the vast engineering projects of China and Turkey where the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge spans 2.2 miles.
When I arrived in Hull in 1999, it cost £2.50 to cross the Humber Bridge in either direction, relieving me of £5 each time we took the family over to Lincoln. It has never made a whole lot of sense to me why, when my road tax is paid, I should pay to use any part of our public road system. But the Humber Bridge was built at huge cost, paid for by government through structured loans. The tolls collected were designed to repay the debt.
Run by the Humber Bridge Board until 2012, the government decided to write off the remaining debt of £150 million on the bridge and put its operation into the collective hands of Hull City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, North Lincolnshire Council, and North East Lincolnshire Council. One tangible and welcome outcome of this change was a reduction in the toll fee to £1.50 in either direction.
The next change for frequent bridge crossers was the introduction in 2015 of the HumberTAG, which was attached to the inside of the windscreen, recorded crossings, offered a 10% discount and deducted payment from the driver’s prepaid account. The HumberTAG necessitated a dedicated lane but left three manual toll booths in operation. HumberTAG remained in operation until recently, but in 2020 the tags were no longer issued, and new accounts had to pay via an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system.
The inevitable drift to digital payment had begun and, based on absolutely no evidence related to the spread of viruses via coins and notes, in 2020 and the insanity of the COVID-19 years, currency payments were suspended in favour of compulsory digital payment. As a gift to the conspiracy theorists, digital payment remained the only method of payment until 2026 at which point the booths were removed and the whole system was replaced in February, by a new, fully automated system with cameras that read licence plates, allowing cars to cross without stopping. At the time of writing, there has been no official announcement regarding a specific number of redundancies amongst staff employed at the Humber Bridge related to this transition.
Notwithstanding the other gift to the conspiracy theorists of being subjected to compulsory digital surveillance, this new system, which was heralded with words such as ‘free-flow’, ‘convenience’, ‘smart’ and ‘streamlined’, is far from convenient for drivers. There are several ways to pay, including an account, an app, online or by phone. The latter two methods are described as methods for ‘guest crossings’ which, one supposes, includes visitors from overseas.
I went online after a recent visit to Lincoln intending to pay my £3 for the two crossings. The only option I could find was to set up an account and pay a minimum of £15 from which was deducted £3 leaving £12. We made another visit to Lincoln last weekend and the next payment was duly deducted. But I have since been informed by text and email that my account is now ‘dangerously low’, despite the fact that I have enough for three further crossings, which I will probably not make before the end of 2026. I explored the app method of payment, duly downloaded the app and found that, using my online credentials, I could not login to the app. The app account and the online account are not linked.
I have no idea how overseas visitors will fare trying to pay for crossings. The online route seems to necessitate opening an account and depositing the minimum £15. And good luck with the telephone method, if the experience of my Aussie cousins who used the Tyne tunnel recently is anything to go by. The Tyne tunnel uses a fully automated system like the Humber Bridge; they duly phoned to make a payment but the bot at the other end could not understand their accents. It took nearly an hour to make a simple one-way payment of £2.60.
The Humber Bridge remains, solid, graceful and dominating the Humber Estuary. I flew over it the other day on a return flight from Hong Kong. It is a significant landmark and a welcome feature as you approach Hull from West or South. But somehow, now, it is lifeless. The experience of crossing it has shifted from the physical to the invisible. The shift may represent efficiency and automation. But like our country, it is just a little less human than it used to be.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.