A leading figure in the campaign against the Lower Thames Crossing has offered his view on the project's latest developments. Matt Jackson, of the Thames Crossing Action Group says crossing the Thames east of London is quietly becoming a luxury.

WHAT was once presented as temporary tolling to fund infrastructure is evolving into something far bigger: a permanent charging system imposed on entire communities simply trying to get to work, move goods or visit family.

The proposed funding model for the Lower Thames Crossing exposes the contradiction at the heart of modern British infrastructure policy. Ministers claim major projects can now be delivered without burdening taxpayers, yet the reality is different. The cost is simply transferred directly onto users through decades of tolls, private finance agreements and revenue guarantees.

For people living in Essex, east London and Kent, this increasingly feels less like transport policy and more like regional economic punishment.

The logic behind the scheme is simple enough. If tolls on different Thames crossings are not aligned, drivers will avoid the expensive routes and overwhelm local roads. But if crossings such as Dartford, Blackwall, Silvertown and the LTC are all priced similarly, entire communities become trapped inside a high-cost charging zone.

Matt Jackson.

And unlike central London, there are few realistic alternatives. Public transport connections across the Thames in the east remain fragmented, slow and in many places non-existent. Workers are effectively being told to pay more while being offered less.

At the same time, government continues to defend road mega projects costing tens of billions while rail schemes (like the KenEx Tram proposal) and local transport improvements struggle for funding. The comparison with High Speed 2 is unavoidable. HS2 was condemned for its cost overruns, yet at least it attempted to expand national rail capacity. The Lower Thames Crossing risks becoming an enormously expensive project whose long-term success depends on extracting ever greater toll revenue from motorists.

That has consequences beyond household budgets. High crossing costs reduce labour mobility, increase business costs and weaken economic activity across the Thames Estuary. A project sold as a driver of regional growth could instead suppress it.

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Infrastructure should connect regions and expand opportunity. Increasingly, east of London, it feels designed to invoice people for both.