Thousands of people every hour have signed up for a pre-pay account to claim a third off every crossing when the barriers are removed at Dartford next week.

Since the website went live on November 3, more than 100,000 vehicles have registered for an account.

On November 30 drivers will no longer stop at a barrier at the Dartford Crossing.

Instead, they will have to pay the Dart Charge online, by phone or post or at certain stores in the area.

Fleet operators and haulage firms have been among the first to sign up.

How to pay for the Dartford Crossing Dart Charge

More than 1,100 business fleets have already been migrated to Dart Charge, and the Dart Charge team are working with the 100 largest fleet operators - between them covering more than 20,000 vehicles - to help them prepare for the changes.

Foreign drivers have been setting up accounts too, with 3% of overall accounts - around the same proportion of foreign vehicles that use the crossing each day.

All existing DART-Tag customers should now have been contacted with details of how to migrate their account.

Work to remove the payment booths and introduce a new road layout will begin next Friday, and will be completed in spring next year, when drivers will feel the full benefits of the improvements.

Dart Charge in numbers

• £2.50 is the new cost for a car to use the Dartford Crossing from November 30 – reduced to £1.67 if paid using a prepay Dart Charge account
• More than 77,000 accounts set up so far – covering over 100,000 vehicles
• 53% of people a day are registering for auto top-up so they don’t have to remember to pay
• It takes less than 7 minutes on average to set up an account
• 12% accounts set up on a mobile device
• 18% of accounts set up on a tablet
• 52 - number of countries where users have registered for account, including Germany, France, Netherlands Belgium, Spain, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Belgium, Spain plus one from … New Zealand