There is a scene in one of the Harry Potter films where the young wizard zooms through the Dartford Tunnel while riding in a sidecar attached to his oversized mate Hagrid’s motorbike.

It is significant as it is perhaps the fastest anyone has ever travelled through one of Kent’s most important routes. Mind you, they do traverse some of it on the tunnel’s ceiling.

The rest of us, of course, have to budget an extra 20 minutes, if we’re lucky, due to the sheer weight of traffic. And stick to the tarmac.

I’m almost certain Hagrid didn’t pay either. Perhaps he only had galleons and sickles.

It was 10 years ago that the toll booths were removed from the crossing. We were told it would create ‘free-flow’ traffic.

A misnomer if ever there was one.

I am fortunate in not having to use it daily, but on regular trips beyond the county’s borders, I would describe both the tunnels and QEII Bridge as being closer to ‘slow-moving’ or ‘life-force-zappingly sluggish’. ‘Free-flow’ it is not.

And as more and more cars flood our roads, one can only assume the situation is going to get worse.

All of this and we’ve not touched upon that long-ago promise to scrap the toll when it had paid for itself.

For the many who are probably now too young to remember, the government had vowed, once the toll had paid for the construction of the QEII Bridge – opened in 1991 – then the cost to use the crossing would be scrapped.

It had achieved that by 2003. But still we keep paying. They probably simply hoped we’d all forgotten.

By 2019, it was officially confirmed that, surprise, surprise, the toll was going to stay. How we all laughed. We chortled again when the booths were removed and they stuck the price up (from £2 to £2.50 each way, the price it remains today).

Mind you, if you fume at having to pay the Dart Charge then allow me to introduce you to the M6 toll.

For anyone who makes a regular pilgrimage north of Watford, the M6 toll allows you to skip the regularly super-congested stretch of the M6 which passes through Birmingham.

Yes, you miss going over Spaghetti Junction and spotting Villa Park on your travels, but you do also travel faster than the average snail.

But the cost for using the 27-mile stretch of road is an eye-watering £9.70 each way. Which may well explain why it’s so infrequently snarled up with traffic.

So what is the solution to prevent us all getting stuck in the Dartford Crossing’s inevitable queues should we dare to use it during daylight hours?

Build the Lower Thames Crossing? A reasonable answer but not one that’s going to happen anytime soon. Assuming, of course, it ever gets the green light.

Ramp the toll prices up akin to the M6 to deter users? Politically, a dreadful idea plus we’d all get pushed into the Ulez zone and have to use the God-awful Blackwall Tunnel instead - or the new Silvertown Tunnel which is currently being built. Both of which, coincidentally, will have toll charges levied.

Perhaps Harry and Hagrid knew the answer - you can only avoid the queues if you know how to perform magic.