The Mersey Tunnels & Toll Opened Up Travel Around Liverpool
The problem with some areas around the United Kingdom is that it is all but impossible to get from one location to another using traditional means. Whether it be a large mountain or hill separating two towns from one another or it be a body of water that is impassable in a car, engineers have worked hard to come up with numerous means of making it from place to place.
Elsewhere on this site you can read about the Mersey Gateway, for example, which links Widnes to Runcorn, should anyone wish to move between the two of them.
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For residents of the Wirral who want to work or shop in Liverpool, or simply head to the city centre in order to get a train or plane somewhere else, there needs to a method of doing so that allows them to drive from the peninsula to the other side of the River Mersey.
Similarly, people who find themselves in Liverpool but who might want to head for an ice cream in Parkgate or to the theatre at the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton need to find a way to do so. Enter the Mersey Tunnels, two feats of engineering with a toll booth attached.
The Three Tunnels Under the Mersey
Although there are two road tunnels that this page are mainly about, there is also a third tunnel that we should mention. The Mersey Railway Tunnel was actually the first of the three to be built when the Mersey Railway Company was given permission to create a two track line as part of the Mersey Railway Act of 1871.
Construction of the river tunnel began in 1881 after the necessary funds were raised, eventually opening on the 20th of January 1886, with public services starting on the first of February.
The new route had four stops, beginning at Green Lane and running through Birkenhead Central and Hamilton Square on the Wirral side before reaching James Street Station in Liverpool. A new branch tunnel to Birkenhead Park was opened in 1888, offering a connection to the Wirral Railway, then in 1891 an extension was built from Green Lane to Rock Ferry Station.
A year later and the tunnel in Liverpool was extended from James Street to the newly opened Liverpool Central, initially serviced by steam locomotives.
The Queensway Tunnel
At the time that the Mersey Railway Tunnel was built, the idea of millions of people driving cars was nothing more than a pipe dream. By the 1920s, however, the need to give people the ability to drive from one part of Merseyside to another was a real thing, which is why the Queensway Tunnel came about.
Long queues of cars and lorries at the Mersey Ferry terminal resulted in a parliamentary bill being introduced for the construction of the first Mersey Road Tunnel, with construction starting in 1925.
Working conditions during the building of the Queensway Tunnel – the first #Mersey road tunnel – were appalling to say the least
— David Hearn (@daveyph.bsky.social) 2 January 2025 at 23:00
It took nine years for the tunnel to be built, with two pilot tunnels meeting in 1928 but being completed until 1934, at which point it was the longest road tunnel anywhere in the world. It cost a total of £8 million to built it, with King George V opening it open the 18th of July 1934 in front of an audience of around 200,000.
It is 2.13 miles long, containing a single carriageway of four lanes – two in each direction. A lower deck was built and intended for a tramway but is actually used for ventilation.
The Kingsway Tunnel
The Queensway Tunnel opened in order to ease the traffic looking to cross the River Mersey on the Mersey Ferry, but by the latter part of the 1960s it was clear that the Queensway Tunnel alone couldn’t cope with the number of cars looking to pass back and forwards between Liverpool and the Wirral.
As a result, construction on the Kingsway Tunnel began in 1968, with work taking around five years to be completed. The southern tunnel was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on the 24th of June 1971, with the northern tunnel opening in 1974.
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The Kingsway Tunnel operates twin tunnels that each have two 12-foot lanes and carry an average of 45,000 vehicles every day. As with the Queensway Tunnel, there are tollbooths located on the Wirral side of the tunnel that require people to pay a fee to travel back and forth. Unlike the likes of the Mersey Gateway, local residents do not get free passage.
Fees can be reduced by signing up to for a T-FLOW account, which theoretically allows you to pass through in one of the lanes dedicated to those with a pass.
