Toll roads in Europe

Specialised system provisions

Vignette

Austria (for vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Hungary have toll motorways (some motorways, though, are toll-free). Payment in those countries is done in the form of "vignettes", or stickers being affixed to the car's front window, which are valid for a certain amount of time. The time is always one calendar year in Switzerland; in Austria and Hungary cheaper vignettes with shorter validity are also available. Slovenia introduced vignettes on July 1, 2008. Due to the fact that the vignette with the shortest time-frame available is valid for 6 months and costs € 35, vignettes have been met with fierce opposition.

Toll collection for trucks

* Switzerland introduced a toll-system for trucks over 3.5 tonnes in January 2001, and
* Austria introduced an electronic toll collection system for trucks over 3.5 tonnes in January 2004, based on DSRC micro wave technology.
* Germany followed suit with some delay through technical problems on January 1, 2005. The German Toll Collect system is based on a technology using satellites; truck operators may choose to either install on-board units for automated tracking of movements, or to book their route in advance using the internet or computerized booking terminals. The toll is valid for trucks over 12 tonnes.

Particular countries

Croatia

Most Croatian highways are toll roads and most of these use networked closed toll collection system, meaning the driver receives a ticket upon entering the network and pays the toll upon exiting. Toll is paid in proportion to the length of the used section (with the exception of A2 and according to the corresponding vehicle group. The first highway (A1, section between Zagreb (Western Rotary, Jadranska Avenue) and Karlovac) was opened 1972. As of March 2008 there are convert|1163|km|abbr=on of tolled highways in Croatia.cite journal
url = http://www.huka.hr/publikacije/bilten_13_hr.pdf
year = 2008
month = March
title = HUKA Bilten
journal = HUKA Bilten
issue = № 13
accessdate = 2008-07-12
format=PDF] Most toll highways are operated by Croatian highway authorities [http://www.hac.hr HAC] . As a cash and credit card alternative, all highway concession companies offer paying the toll via ENC (electronic toll collection) or SMART card (prepaid toll card).

Croatia also has a considerable network of expressways, but due to their lack of toll and a strong toll lobby in the country, their omissions from maps are common.

Finland

In Finland there are no toll roads nor toll bridges.

France

In Europe, the most substantial use of toll roads is in France, where most of the autoroutes carry quite heavy tolls: at least some traffic seems to be displaced onto local roads as a result.Fact|date=February 2007

Hungary

In Hungary every motorway ( M1, M3, M5, M6, M7, M30, M35, M70) is a toll road, administered by the National Highway Authority (Á.A.K. Zrt.). The roads M0 (that forms a half ring around the city of Budapest), M2 and M15 although are divided multilane roads, they are not considered as motorways, and can be used free of charge. Since the beginning of 2008, the purchase of a motorway sticker is handled electronically (so-called "e-sticker" or "e-vignette") [http://www.motorway.hu/Engine.aspx] , thus cannot be put physically on the windshield anymore, it is only registered in a computer system with its validity period. The highway cameras are checking the registered plate number and not the sticker itself. The 4 days, 10 days, monthly and yearly stickers can be used for unlimited trips on every highway, within its validity period.
The highway stickers can be purchased/registered at petrol stations (gas stations) all around the country. The purchase receipts should be kept for at least half a year after the trip.

Italy

In Italy most "autostrade" (the Italian for motorways, or highways) are toll roads. Major exceptions are the beltways around larger cities ("tangenziali") which are not part of a thoroughfare motorway, and the section of the A3 motorway between Salerno and Reggio di Calabria which is operated by the governmend-owned A.N.A.S. S.p.A.. Both are toll free.

Toll roads form one network: If you enter in Naples and exit in Venice you will pay only at the exit, even though you will have changed road. Tolls can be paid in cash, by credit card, by pre-paid card, or by Telepass, a system comparable to E-ZPass.

Motorways are named AXX, where XX is a number. Numbers from 1 to 33 generally designate autostrade which are not beltways but may be parts of them (for example, one section of the A4 which is a part of the Milan beltway), while numbers from 50 to 91 designate beltways around larger cities. The A1, for example, connects Milan to Naples, the A50, A51, and A52 are part of the Milan beltway. Many motorways have nicknames ("Autostrada del Sole" meaning "Sun Highway" for the A1). The numbers have not been allocated methodically.

61% of the Autostrade are handled by the "Autostrade per l'Italia S.p.A." company, and its subsidiaries. All of these carriers are now privately owned and supervised by ANAS. The network of highways covers most of Italy: northern and central Italy are well covered, the south and Sicily are scarcely covered, Sardinia is not covered at all.

The motorway operators are required to build, operate and maintain their networks at cost and to cover their expenses from the toll they collect. The tolls vary according to the building and maintenance costs of the motorway and the type of vehicle. Consequently, tolls can be expensive. For example the typical Milan-Naples route of around 700 km costs approximately €40. There are additional toll roads in Italy in the urban areas of Venice and Florence where tourist buses must pay a fee to enter the city.

Norway

Norway has a sixty-year experience in road tolling for financing bridges, tunnels and roads. Until the beginning of the 1980s contributions of tolls to the road building budget stagnated at about 5%, since then it has soared to more than 25% in 2000. Those twenty years were marked by the advance of road tolling in urban areas.

Norwegian authorities closely monitored Singapore's use of tolls as a means to discourage urban traffic and Bergen got its first toll zone outside the ring road on 1 February 1986. Any driver wishing to enter central Bergen by car had to pay the fee. In difference to the project in Singapore, the tolls in Norway are by law not meant as a means for regulating traffic but rather only as one for generating income to be invested in infrastructure. The lack of general protest and high income from such toll zones made them very popular initially and today toll rings circumscribe Oslo, Stavanger, Tønsberg, Namsos and Kristiansand. The toll ring in Trondheim was closed December 30 2005 after 14 years in operation. The success is only partial: the toll rings have become unpopular and regarded as an extra arbitrary tax, new infrastructure has not been developed as expected, and confidence in the road authorities has been dented.

There are also several toll roads to finance road infrastructure and highways in other parts of Norway. An example of successful use is the bridge over lake Mjøsa which is now free of charge.

Portugal

In Portugal a certain number of roads are designated Toll-Roads. They charge a fixed value per kilometre distance, with several classes depending on vehicle type and regulated by the government. Several authorised franchises run them, the largest at present being BRISA. For cash-free payments there exists the Via Verde system (Portuguese for Green Way) which is an electronic tag that is fitted to vehicles and automatically debits an associated bank-account with the cost of the journey made.

Well-known roads are the A1, which goes from Lisbon to Porto and the A2, from Almada to the Algarve, or the A6, from the A2 at Marateca to the Spanish border, close to Badajoz.

Russia

A number of toll roads in Barnaul and Pskov Region (Nevil-Velezh (RUR 190 ($8)), Pechori-state border RUR 140), also M4-Don (18 km close to Lipetsk costs RUR20($0,75) for cars and RUR40 ($1,7) for trucks).

Ordinary speed limits apply so far. In 2007 adopted Toll Road Law and Concession Law in 2005 to develop this sector.

Spain

Spanish toll roads (or "autopistas") are signaled AP-XX (where XX is the number of the road) as opposed to State-maintained freeways (or "autovías"), called A-XX. Most of them are networked, so you must get a ticket on entering and pay when leaving the road. Technically, all the roads belong to the Government, although autopistas are built and maintained by private companies under a State concession; when the concession expires, the road is reverted to State ownership, although most of them are renewed.

There are some autovías which are actually built and maintained by private companies, notably the Pamplona-Logroño autovía A-12; the company assumes the building costs and the Autonomous Community where they are located (in the given example, Navarre) pays a yearly per-vehicle fee to the company based upon usage statistics, called "toll in the shadow" (in Spanish, "peaje en la sombra"). The system can be regarded as a way for the Government to finance the build of new roads at the expense of the building company. Also, since the payment starts only after the road is finished, construction delays are usually shorter than those of regular state-owned freeways.

United Kingdom

In the 18th century and 19th century most main roads in Great Britain were managed as toll roads, by turnpike trusts, but these were gradually abolished in the 1860s and 1870s: see History of toll roads in the United Kingdom.

As a result, until recently, the only tolls on roads in the United Kingdom were mainly tolled bridges and tunnels at estuaries (e.g. Dartford Crossing, Severn crossing, Mersey Tunnels and Tyne Tunnel) and some small, privately owned toll roads and bridges (for example, in Dulwich College).

The recently-built and privately financed M6 Toll, opened in 2003 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/3298789.stm] , is potentially the first of a new generation of toll roads.

The peak-time London road-use toll, known as the London congestion charge may be copied in other areas.Fact|date=September 2007

In principle, UK roads today are maintained from general taxation, some of which is raised from motoring taxes including fuel duty and vehicle excise duty.

References

See also

* Toll road
* Electronic toll collection
** TELEPASS (Italy)
* High-occupancy toll
* Freeway
* List of toll roads
* London congestion charge
* Private highway
* Road pricing
* Toll bridge
* Turnpike trusts the first organisations empowered to collect tolls on English roads
* Road Transport
* Vignette (road tax)

External links

* [http://www.notolls.org.uk/index.htm National Alliance Against Tolls] (British anti toll group, but "News" pages includes USA and other countries.)
* [http://www.autoroutes.fr/index.php Autoroutes (France)] French site that will give estimates for tolls payable between different points in Europe
* [http://www.motorway.hu/Engine.aspx Hungarian Highways] English language site of the Hungarian Highway Authority
* [http://www.cestnina.si/doc/ZGIBANKA%20VINJETA-INTERNET.pdf Vignette in Slovenia] Information about Slovenian vignette.