Yes, exactly, last time driving from Reims to Paris and then to Belgium started to really think about that when driving in toll after another, week after that started to work on this.
I mean that is often times true. But efficiency in this context - particularly with infrastructure - usually means extracting most profit while providing the bare minimum of service.
The expectation that the service gets either better for the same amount, or cheaper for the same service, is usually naive
It was initially a fixed term contract to build and exploit the roads, where government had 50% stake in the company. When the contract reached its term, instead of keeping operating the roads, government sold its stake. That started a massive hike in prices, firing of thousands employees.
On the other hand, were the previous prices covering the actual costs or was it partially supported by money coming from taxes? Whereas now the toll has to cover the maintenance and gives money back to the state through taxation of private companies.
Same question for the countries where it is state-owned and cheaper.
That's a very strange statement to me. In my experience, France has extremely high motorway quality, one of the absolute best in Europe. Comparing with autobahn, there's no competition. And this is without even including supporting infrastructure like aires.
That's nothing compared to the daytime robbery on the Indian roads (aka tolls). Someone builds a small bridge, hardly a few meters long, and gets license to collect tolls.
A 100 km drive would easily cost 2000 Rs (20 eur) on new highways.
The whole travelling seems to get more expensive with gas prices effecting everything else also, its not just "everything goes" in a holiday, better to plan a bit.
The lesson here is that in situations where you have a clear public good that (almost) everyone needs and consumes, like roads and infrastructure, it's better for (almost) everyone if the government simply pays for it out of the general fund and doesn't try to nickle-and-dime the populace to tax "usage".
Sadly if you flip that around and talk about other public goods like "health care," (almost) everyone walks across the aisle of the same principles and starts arguing in the opposite direction.
> The lesson here is that in situations where you have a clear public good that (almost) everyone needs and consumes, like roads and infrastructure, it's better for (almost) everyone if the government simply pays for it out of the general fund and doesn't try to nickle-and-dime the populace to tax "usage".
I don't know how you took that from the article, especially the impression that almost everyone uses any particular piece of infrastructure. Most infrastructure will be used by a minority of the populace. Use fees are a fair way to fund infrastructure needed by its users.
Fair use ends when private for profit enters the discussion, then the only goal is maximizing private income from necessary infrastructure meant to serve whole population.
France has most expensive highway travel in whole Europe only due to incompetent bureaucrats. Nothing fair there, other countries (apart from half-defunct Italy) have figured out things better with better resulting quality too.
> The lesson here is that in situations where you have a clear public good that (almost) everyone needs and consumes, like roads and infrastructure, it's better for (almost) everyone if the government simply pays for it out of the general fund and doesn't try to nickle-and-dime the populace to tax "usage".
Why is that the lesson? That's not obvious to me at all.
Taxing roads can still have a worthwhile steering effect, can be used to even cost as local tax payers are not necessarily the main beneficiaries of the roads, or can make large infrastructure projects like tunnels or giant bridges worthwhile.
Obviously, there's also arguments for free access.
I'd say the opposite. Roads have competition in trains, and subsidizing them at the expense of trains seems like a bad idea if trains are actually more efficient. Let them both compete on their merits un-subsidized.
For health care, your only competition is disease and death.
Glad I got a toll badge covering Italy, Spain and Portugal so the amount gets auto deducted every month, instead having to pay each individual toll segment.
Anyway, the A25 heading from Salamanca Spain into Portugal is now toll free, same as some of the roads around Barcelona/Catalonia. So it's not all bad.
It’s a ticket for use of the interstate, basically. Used to be a bit of paper you’d stick in your windscreen, now it’s electronic in a lot of places. Rather than a toll, which may be additionally applicable, it’s a standing fee valid for a set period.
They’re usually inexpensive. Most countries have clear and repeated signs telling you you need one, etc.
Slovenia - last I was there - don’t have a single sign on the way into the country. They don’t tell you at the toll post on the border.
What they do have is cops with binoculars sitting in the median flagging down every foreign plated car, and then issuing a fixed €200 fine (they’re ready with a card machine), and telling you you have to buy a vignette at the next gas station, which is where they’re sold.
Anyway. Wildly irregular across Europe. Useful site!
If I remember from my time in Europe the key difference between the vignette and something like an EZ-Tag is the vignette isn't necessarily tied to the registration of your vehicle like the ones in the States are. You can usually walk into the gas stations in europe and just buy them for periods of time like you say.
And yeah, they don't tell you. If you're driving europe cross country, best get your armchair lawyer book out and plan on strategically buying them as soon as you enter the country.
I'd guess in 2026 all vignettes can be bought online, for several different periods from one day to whole year, so you can and should buy them once your itinerary is set.
I think 40 Swiss Francs per year is a really fair price, if you live there and use the Autobahn regularly it's very cheap per km and if you happen to drive through you also have to pay, which is only fair to residents. but 40 francs flatrate even if you only pass through is still better than whatever is going on in france!
Because its not a major source of revenue and not primary income for road maintenance (swiss have stellar overall road quality compared to neighbours), and mostly intended for foreigners to not overuse swiss highways in summer & winter tourist seasons.
This can happen easily due to location of Switzerland. Its true that inflation is basically non-existent here, something about fiscal discipline and overall highly moral population not afraid of work (unlike france or italy for example), and thus also government. Overall country is low to medium tax place so vignette price is in line with that.
Follow a bit their politics a bit and their domestic affairs and you will quickly note how unusual that population and this country is. Best place overall for me to live and raise my kids, thats for sure.
Inflation in Switzerland is weird. It's not in groceries, but it's in coffee and restaurants, it's not in electronics, but it's in health insurance and rent. And there, it's very high - health insurance (mandatory) grows +5% per year, rent is complicated, but could be 10-20% per year or 0, depends on your luck.
The price increase (to 100chf) was voted down. I understand the vote too - it wasn't so much as people saying they don't want to pay more as it was people saying we shouldn't be putting more money into auto transport. If they let only car owners vote I bet it would have passed.
That said if we're counting bridge/ferry in other countries why not also count it in Switzerland? (Ferry: Horgen and Beckenried, for trains: Lotschberg, Furka, Simplon, Vereina)
-a design choice: the fee also pays for rest areas every 15-20 km, for both cars and trucks
-an unchosen situation: France is right in the middle of Europe and sees half* the of the population of Northern European countries driving through it to go on vacation in the Southern ones every Easter, Summer and Autumn vacations (and to the alpine ski stations in Winter).
I take issue with the toll methodology. It counts tolled roads, but that doesn't give you any idea how much your trip would cost. In Poland, only slightly over 20% of A highways are tolled, with over 90% of highways being free if you count in S express motorways, which are usually highway-grade if built in recent years. This map basically approximates what it would cost to drive only those scattered licensed stretches. In practice, you may tour the country for free, with exceptions like Berlin–Warsaw, where it only makes sense to pay.
Then you have Austria, where, apart from the vignette, you also have extra-paid mountain passes, but that is not shown on the map.
I recognise the site is about driving costs, ignoring what a car costs to own; but depending on what plates stick to that car, it can make a significant difference. Denmark already tops the list in petrol prices, but unmentioned (largely because it's irrelevant) is that cars have a 150% registration fee attached to them, before the annual ownership fees.
I have a 1998 Citroën Xantia Activa V6, it costs ~1450 EUR a year to keep it on plates. Yes, its due to its fuel economy, but since I only drive it occasionally, it's hardly doing damage to the environment. I also have a 2011 Citroën C1, which only costs ~95 EUR a year. Of course, I was truly unhappy about these costs, I would take the Xantia off plates; however, it's more an observation: due to the high fees for merely owning a vehicle, a lot of car owners are encouraged to drive. And that's just the annual fees, buying a new car is such an investment, that it would feel a mistake to not drive it (I assume, I have never bought a new car).
I'm speculating of course, but it seems to me that these fees on car ownership encourages more driving. I'd love to have data from countries with lower (or no) fees, and how much people are driving per car. There is a reason Danish politicians about talking about replacing it with road pricing, or at least a mix.
I'll preface this by saying that I am not debating whenever this is good or bad.
The point here is to make car ownership inconvenient and unaffordable so any implication that it encourages more driving is false by default as there will be less cars on the road to begin with.
I think both you and parent can easily be correct simultaneously. It is possible for both of these things to be true: there being less cars on the road and people who are in the remainder of cars on the road driving more than they would normally had the taxes been lower.
Whether the latter offsets the former to a significant margin appears to be the matter of debate implied here.
Yes very interesting point: we only count the cost of the trip itself, not owning the car.
Registration and annual fees are a whole other layer, and Denmark might extreme case, tough Netherlands isnt much better.
I don't have data on driving per car versus ownership fees, but it would be a interesting comparison, and it fits with why road pricing keeps coming up in Denmark.
Funny thing (sort of) about Switzerland (not included in this)... it costs 40chf (about $50) per year to use the highways and some tunnels. Even if you're just passing through you have to pay it to drive on the highways. The joke is that everyone in Europe just pays the fee except for the Dutch, which is why you see so many yellow license plates trying to drive on rural roads, through mountain passes...
They tried to change the system maybe ten years ago. They needed funds to build a tunnel under lake Geneva. So they wanted to raise the fee to 100chf but have a much cheaper option (I can't remember how much) for people just passing through. But the referendum didn't pass so we're still at 40chf and I assume the tunnel won't be built.
Switzerland is there, but the AI coder didn't change the z-index of the country when it's selected, and the border highlighting only works for a tiny part of the border.
The Denmark to Sweden bridges are less expensive if you pay a yearly fee, it's usually worth it even if you only cross two times.
However it's not straight forward to figure out the optimal way to get from say Hamburg to Gothenburg. You can take the short ferry from Fehmarn to Rodby, and then take the bridges. Or you can drive all the way via Odense and the bridges. Or you can drive to northern Denmark and take the ferry from Fredrickshavn over. Or you can go to Kiel and take the overnight ferry straight to Gothenburg, which is expensive but you can sleep all the way. Then there is the Travemünde-Trelleborg ferry which could also be an option...
Yes, when travelling to Finland this has been a headache, should I buy the yearly, then trying to calculate all the different route options to Helsinki, theres lots of ferry possibilities and they have all kind of discounts and such that make the whole calculation even harder. Ferries from Estonia, Germany and Sweden..
The whole system with vignettes is really confusing. This summer, we were travelling to Bavaria from the Netherlands and didn't plan to visit Austria at all.
But due to road construction work in Germany, we ended up driving on Austrian roads for a few kilometres. Two months later, we got a fine for driving in Austria without a vignette, and now we have to pay €200 for a sticker that costs €13 for 10 days!
Worst part? The original fine letter never got delivered, so now our case is being passed on to the Austrian authorities. Based on what I've read online, people have had to pay anywhere between €300 and €3,000 for this :/
Traps for travellers, but to be honest also learned that in Netherlands, better to pay the E-toll atleast when it first comes by mail, coming from Zeeland to Rotterdam, was that a E-toll sign, maybe nothing..
If you never plan on visiting Austria again, is this something you could simply ignore? Is there an appeals process? Very interesting situation! In USA, many tolls are basically commercial debts that can be ignored with moderate success
To me having tolls on roads or bridges sounds completely insane (we don't have them here, other than one ferry during summer), taxes are already supposed to pay for those (and if they started doing that here, you can be 100% certain that no tax would be lowered in compensation).
It is funny that it seems acceptable to you that paying tolls for (some) roads, which means only those who use them pay for them, seems unacceptable, "insane" even, while using taxes from everyone is acceptable.
Especially given 99.99%* of tolled roads are purely convenience ones: highways, large bridges over estuaries or chasms one used to route around...
*putting a 0.01% margin of error there so that I don't say "100%" and some smartass digs out the couple of exceptions in all of Europe
You don't mention your country - what is the situation there wrt. medical expenses?
Medical expenses?
Public healthcare, but there are per-visit costs in the 20€ range, somewhat more for hospital stays, maximum per year 815€, after that they become free.
People often have employer-provided private healthcare on top of that though, including me.
For prescription medicines there is a 636€ limit per year (after 70€ per year the cost of the medication starts being reimbursable even before that), after that any medication costs 2.5€ per purchase.
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 10 hours ago
I've been collecting Europe's published toll, vignette and ferry tariffs so road-trip costs can be checked rather than guessed.
The page lists every source and the date we read it, and the full table is downloadable as CSV.
Corrections are welcome, especially for the Great Belt motorhome bands and the countries we don't price yet.
ketzu | 9 hours ago
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 8 hours ago
bowsamic | 9 hours ago
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 9 hours ago
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 9 hours ago
The motorways are run by private concession companies, which is why each stretch has its own booth price.
Free alternative are the N and D roads, slower but toll-free, which is often how locals do longer trips on a budget.
amanaplanacanal | 8 hours ago
moooo99 | 8 hours ago
The expectation that the service gets either better for the same amount, or cheaper for the same service, is usually naive
Bayart | 9 hours ago
Glawen | 8 hours ago
Arodex | an hour ago
Same question for the countries where it is state-owned and cheaper.
lancebeet | 8 hours ago
paduc | 8 hours ago
Arodex | 7 hours ago
And that's despite having very heavy traffic including a huge portion of heavy trucks transit across Europe.
Hikikomori | 2 hours ago
zkmon | 9 hours ago
A 100 km drive would easily cost 2000 Rs (20 eur) on new highways.
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 9 hours ago
ajross | 9 hours ago
Sadly if you flip that around and talk about other public goods like "health care," (almost) everyone walks across the aisle of the same principles and starts arguing in the opposite direction.
layer8 | 9 hours ago
loeg | 9 hours ago
I don't know how you took that from the article, especially the impression that almost everyone uses any particular piece of infrastructure. Most infrastructure will be used by a minority of the populace. Use fees are a fair way to fund infrastructure needed by its users.
kakacik | 8 hours ago
France has most expensive highway travel in whole Europe only due to incompetent bureaucrats. Nothing fair there, other countries (apart from half-defunct Italy) have figured out things better with better resulting quality too.
ketzu | 9 hours ago
Why is that the lesson? That's not obvious to me at all.
Taxing roads can still have a worthwhile steering effect, can be used to even cost as local tax payers are not necessarily the main beneficiaries of the roads, or can make large infrastructure projects like tunnels or giant bridges worthwhile.
Obviously, there's also arguments for free access.
adrianN | 9 hours ago
amanaplanacanal | 8 hours ago
For health care, your only competition is disease and death.
arend321 | 9 hours ago
pjmlp | 9 hours ago
drfuchs | 9 hours ago
madaxe_again | 9 hours ago
They’re usually inexpensive. Most countries have clear and repeated signs telling you you need one, etc.
Slovenia - last I was there - don’t have a single sign on the way into the country. They don’t tell you at the toll post on the border.
What they do have is cops with binoculars sitting in the median flagging down every foreign plated car, and then issuing a fixed €200 fine (they’re ready with a card machine), and telling you you have to buy a vignette at the next gas station, which is where they’re sold.
Anyway. Wildly irregular across Europe. Useful site!
SOLAR_FIELDS | 8 hours ago
And yeah, they don't tell you. If you're driving europe cross country, best get your armchair lawyer book out and plan on strategically buying them as soon as you enter the country.
tpm | 2 hours ago
kuerbel | 9 hours ago
cannonpalms | 9 hours ago
kuerbel | 9 hours ago
pjmlp | 9 hours ago
kakacik | 8 hours ago
This can happen easily due to location of Switzerland. Its true that inflation is basically non-existent here, something about fiscal discipline and overall highly moral population not afraid of work (unlike france or italy for example), and thus also government. Overall country is low to medium tax place so vignette price is in line with that.
Follow a bit their politics a bit and their domestic affairs and you will quickly note how unusual that population and this country is. Best place overall for me to live and raise my kids, thats for sure.
muro | 3 hours ago
comrade1234 | 7 hours ago
tonfa | 8 hours ago
Arodex | 7 hours ago
Two things:
-a design choice: the fee also pays for rest areas every 15-20 km, for both cars and trucks
-an unchosen situation: France is right in the middle of Europe and sees half* the of the population of Northern European countries driving through it to go on vacation in the Southern ones every Easter, Summer and Autumn vacations (and to the alpine ski stations in Winter).
*Kidding, but only slightly
danelski | 9 hours ago
Then you have Austria, where, apart from the vignette, you also have extra-paid mountain passes, but that is not shown on the map.
Svip | 9 hours ago
I have a 1998 Citroën Xantia Activa V6, it costs ~1450 EUR a year to keep it on plates. Yes, its due to its fuel economy, but since I only drive it occasionally, it's hardly doing damage to the environment. I also have a 2011 Citroën C1, which only costs ~95 EUR a year. Of course, I was truly unhappy about these costs, I would take the Xantia off plates; however, it's more an observation: due to the high fees for merely owning a vehicle, a lot of car owners are encouraged to drive. And that's just the annual fees, buying a new car is such an investment, that it would feel a mistake to not drive it (I assume, I have never bought a new car).
I'm speculating of course, but it seems to me that these fees on car ownership encourages more driving. I'd love to have data from countries with lower (or no) fees, and how much people are driving per car. There is a reason Danish politicians about talking about replacing it with road pricing, or at least a mix.
himata4113 | 8 hours ago
The point here is to make car ownership inconvenient and unaffordable so any implication that it encourages more driving is false by default as there will be less cars on the road to begin with.
SOLAR_FIELDS | 8 hours ago
Whether the latter offsets the former to a significant margin appears to be the matter of debate implied here.
Arodex | 8 hours ago
https://youtu.be/lZXaexvA7p0
https://youtu.be/EZ_3HRMy2js
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 8 hours ago
I don't have data on driving per car versus ownership fees, but it would be a interesting comparison, and it fits with why road pricing keeps coming up in Denmark.
comrade1234 | 8 hours ago
They tried to change the system maybe ten years ago. They needed funds to build a tunnel under lake Geneva. So they wanted to raise the fee to 100chf but have a much cheaper option (I can't remember how much) for people just passing through. But the referendum didn't pass so we're still at 40chf and I assume the tunnel won't be built.
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 7 hours ago
netsharc | 5 hours ago
shellfishgene | 8 hours ago
However it's not straight forward to figure out the optimal way to get from say Hamburg to Gothenburg. You can take the short ferry from Fehmarn to Rodby, and then take the bridges. Or you can drive all the way via Odense and the bridges. Or you can drive to northern Denmark and take the ferry from Fredrickshavn over. Or you can go to Kiel and take the overnight ferry straight to Gothenburg, which is expensive but you can sleep all the way. Then there is the Travemünde-Trelleborg ferry which could also be an option...
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 7 hours ago
mitul_45 | 7 hours ago
But due to road construction work in Germany, we ended up driving on Austrian roads for a few kilometres. Two months later, we got a fine for driving in Austria without a vignette, and now we have to pay €200 for a sticker that costs €13 for 10 days!
Worst part? The original fine letter never got delivered, so now our case is being passed on to the Austrian authorities. Based on what I've read online, people have had to pay anywhere between €300 and €3,000 for this :/
[OP] heikkikalliokos | 7 hours ago
theoreticalmal | 6 hours ago
nonamesleft | 7 hours ago
Arodex | 7 hours ago
Especially given 99.99%* of tolled roads are purely convenience ones: highways, large bridges over estuaries or chasms one used to route around...
*putting a 0.01% margin of error there so that I don't say "100%" and some smartass digs out the couple of exceptions in all of Europe
You don't mention your country - what is the situation there wrt. medical expenses?
nonamesleft | 7 hours ago
Medical expenses? Public healthcare, but there are per-visit costs in the 20€ range, somewhat more for hospital stays, maximum per year 815€, after that they become free.
People often have employer-provided private healthcare on top of that though, including me.
For prescription medicines there is a 636€ limit per year (after 70€ per year the cost of the medication starts being reimbursable even before that), after that any medication costs 2.5€ per purchase.
Arodex | 7 hours ago
Yeah, and why is it acceptable and not "insane"? Why not use taxes?
nonamesleft | 7 hours ago