History of the Mersey Tunnels: Queensway to Kingsway

Liverpool and Wirral have been connected under the River Mersey for 140 years, and the first crossing was not built for cars at all.

There are three tunnels, not two. A Victorian railway tunnel from 1886, the Queensway road tunnel of 1934, and Kingsway, which opened in 1971 and was not finished until 1974. This is how each one was built, what it cost in lives, and what is still there to see above ground.

Facts and current prices below were checked against the Institution of Civil Engineers, Merseytravel and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority on 26 August 2026.

The short version

• 1886: the Mersey Railway tunnel opens between Liverpool and Birkenhead. It still carries trains.
• 1934: Queensway opens after nine years' digging. Just over 2 miles, and the longest road tunnel in the world at the time.
• 1,700 people worked on Queensway. Seventeen died. They are named on Workers Memorial Day each year.
• When the two pilot tunnels met under the river in 1928 they were less than an inch out of line.
• 1971: the Queen opens the first Kingsway tube to Wallasey. The second follows in 1974. Eight workers died building it.
• The spoil from Queensway became Otterspool Promenade.
• Tolls run until at least 2048, because the borrowing is not repaid.

The first tunnel was a railway, not a road

Most people assume Queensway came first. It did not. Half a century earlier, the Mersey Railway had already gone under the river.

Before it, crossing between Liverpool and Birkenhead meant a boat or a long way round. Building underneath meant cutting through porous red sandstone while holding back the water that came with it, which is why a separate drainage tunnel was dug below the railway itself and pumping machinery ran continuously.

The railway was formally opened by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, on 20 January 1886, with public services starting on 1 February. The first trains ran from James Street in Liverpool to Green Lane in Birkenhead, calling at Hamilton Square and Birkenhead Central.

If you take the Wirral Line from James Street today, you are using that 1886 crossing. It is the oldest of the three, and the one most people use without ever thinking of it as a tunnel.

Steam underground was a bad idea

The line opened with steam locomotives, which in a deep underground railway meant smoke with nowhere to go. Stations and tunnels filled with it, and passengers went back to the ferries.

The answer was electrification in 1903, which turned an impressive piece of Victorian engineering into something people would commute on.

Queensway: nine years, 66 tonnes of gelignite

By the 1920s the problem had changed. Cars, buses and lorries were piling up at the ferry terminals, and a railway tunnel was no use to any of them.

Digging started on 16 December 1925. Shafts went down on both sides, then pilot tunnels were driven towards each other under the river.

They met on 3 April 1928, less than an inch out of line. No satellites, no computers, no laser guidance. Just surveying.

The Institution of Civil Engineers records what it took:

• 66 tonnes of gelignite, plus pneumatic hammers
• 274,300 tonnes of concrete and 83,300 tonnes of cast iron
• 939km of electrical cable
• 1.2 million tonnes of rock and gravel dug out

That spoil had to go somewhere. Much of it became Otterspool Promenade, so the riverside walk in south Liverpool is largely the inside of the tunnel, turned out.

Seventeen men did not come home

The workforce was 1,700. Seventeen were killed during construction, and Merseytravel says they are still honoured each year on Workers Memorial Day.

It is worth pausing on that before the engineering statistics take over. This was hand-dug work under a tidal river, in compressed air, with explosives.

The opening, and the human bouquet

King George V opened Queensway on 18 July 1934. Merseytravel's account of the day is worth quoting for scale: a million people came into the city centre, and 1,000 school children lined the streets dressed as flowers to form a human bouquet.

At just over 2 miles, or 3.24km, it was the longest road tunnel in the world. A crossing that had meant a ferry queue now took minutes.

Around 35,000 vehicles still use it every day.

The buildings above it are part of the design

A road tunnel full of petrol engines needs enormous quantities of air moved in and bad air moved out. Six ventilation shafts were built across both sides of the river, and rather than hide them, the architect Herbert James Rowse turned them into civic buildings.

Rowse also designed India Buildings and the Philharmonic Hall, and his tunnel work is covered in our guide to Liverpool architecture.

The George's Dock Building beside the Pier Head is the obvious one. People walk past assuming it is offices. It is a ventilation station with machinery inside, and it is where the tunnel tours start.

An abandoned stretch under the city

Not all of it went to plan. Workers on the Liverpool side hit a fault in the rock, and rather than fight it the engineers moved the alignment and dug elsewhere.

The abandoned section is still down there, tool marks and shot holes and all. It is a reminder that the clean curve you drive through was argued out underground, a few yards at a time.

Kingsway, and the machine that got stuck

Queensway worked, and that was the problem. Traffic kept growing, and by the 1960s the tunnel was near its practical limit.

A six-lane bridge was considered. A tunnel won, for two practical reasons: it could be built in phases to spread the cost, and the Wallasey approach could use an old railway cutting to reach Wirral's M53.

Work began in 1966. A pilot tunnel went through the sandstone first, then the Mersey Mole arrived: a laser-guided machine, 35 tonnes and 45 feet long, previously used building the Mangla Dam in Pakistan.

Merseyside was not Pakistan. Water mixed with grit, and the Mole broke down mid-river, unable to go forwards or backwards. Freeing it meant a month-long operation to replace its 10-tonne main bearing, under the Mersey, in the dark.

Eight workers lost their lives building Kingsway.

Queen Elizabeth II opened the first tube on 24 June 1971: 1.5 miles between Liverpool and Wallasey, two lanes, traffic running both ways through a single bore. The second, more northerly tube opened on 13 February 1974, giving the four lanes drivers use now.

Kingsway eventually took over from Queensway as the busier of the two crossings, largely because of that motorway link.

Three tunnels, three different problems

Why you are still paying a toll

Both road tunnels are owned by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and run by Merseytravel. The standard Class 1 toll is £2.40.

Liverpool City Region residents can pay a reduced rate on personal journeys through a pre-paid T-FLOW account. We have not quoted the discounted figure here because Merseytravel does not state it in plain text on its tolls page; check the current rate before you rely on it.

The question locals ask is why there is still a toll ninety years on. Merseytravel's answer is that the borrowing will not be paid off until 2048, and that the debt is not only construction cost. It also covers money borrowed for maintenance and improvements before the Tunnels Act 2004, after which toll income was set to cover upkeep without further borrowing.

Rates and eligibility change, so check Merseytravel's tolls page rather than this one before travelling.

You can go inside

Mersey Tunnel Tours run from the George's Dock Building and take you behind the road tunnel: the original control room, the ventilation plant, and the spaces under the carriageway.

When we checked on 26 August 2026:

• Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 5pm, and Saturday at 10am
• About two hours, and £14 per person
• Over 10s only, with one adult per two children
• Saturday tours were sold out until October 2026
• There are a lot of stairs. One lift covers the first 100 steps but may not be working

James Street is the nearest Merseyrail station, which is a neat detail: it is also where the 1886 tunnel starts. Moorfields is a short walk too. Book through Merseytravel.

The Old Haymarket monument is back

When Queensway opened, matching Rowse monuments stood at the Liverpool and Birkenhead entrances. Liverpool's was removed during road changes in the 1960s.

Merseytravel announced on 5 June 2026 that a reinstated monument and a new public space at Old Haymarket were complete, more than 60 years after the original went. The work also conserved the two Art Deco toll booths, brought back the site's Venetian glass mosaic, and added a bronze tactile map of the tunnel network.

It is the easiest bit of tunnel history to go and look at, and it is free.

What to see next

If you want to make a walk of it, start at the Pier Head for the George's Dock Building, then cut up to Old Haymarket for the monument. The Mersey Ferry gives you the view the tunnel builders were trying to replace, and you can see the Kingsway ventilation shafts from the water.

For more of the same era, our piece on Jesse Hartley and the Albert Dock covers the dock engineering that made the river worth tunnelling under, and the Liverpool Overhead Railway is the transport scheme that did not survive.

Useful links and sources

• Institution of Civil Engineers: Queensway Road Tunnel
• Merseytravel: Queensway Tunnel 90th anniversary
• Liverpool City Region: the building of Kingsway Tunnel in pictures
• Merseytravel: tunnel tolls, fees and charges
• Merseytravel: T-FLOW and why the tolls continue
• Merseytravel: Mersey Tunnel Tours
• Merseytravel: Queensway monument and community space complete