The first month of operation generated £1M of revenue from fines alone. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li...
The same article asserts a revenue of £50m+/yr from fines for dartford - same administering firm. With toll barriers this revenue would have been zero.
Looks pretty strategic to me.
Although, bizarrely, if you enter "dartmouth bridge crossing" into Google, it'll return the Dartford one.
There are also a few other places which use ANPR for charging (Betteshanger Country Park car parking springs to mind) but I don't think you can consider those "tolls" in the traditional sense of the word.
Pay within an hour? I think you're exaggerating.
Merseyflow and Dartmouth are both midnight at the end of the day after you have crossed. So that's guaranteed at least 24 hours.
There’s been a trend towards digital tolls - that is, no physical means to pay, you just have to know that you need to go online to their site to pay within an hour of leaving the toll road/bridge.
Thing is, many operators have little signage, poor or unavailable websites, and you can end up in a situation where you don’t realise you need to pay, or can’t pay because their tech has failed, or simply forget. So - instead of paying the £2 toll, you get a £40 penalty, payable immediately, appeals at your expense, etc.
Now, it’s easy to go “conspiracy” but there’s one factor that strongly leads me to believe that this is by design. It’s cost. At £2 per transaction, acquirer and network fees will eat a big chunk - much more than the salary for a human, or the cost of an automatic change bucket. Therefore, they rely on the fines as core revenue.