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Date Published: 21/07/2023

Spain scrambles to find alternatives to toll roads

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Brussels insists that Spain must generate an income to cover maintenance of motorways and dual carriageways

Spain scrambles to find alternatives to toll roads

Road tolls have become an unexpected hot topic of debate in the final stretch of the general election campaign, with the current government insisting that it has no intention of charging for the use of motorways and dual carriageways.

However, the European Commission (EC) has reiterated that Spain must impose some kind of payment system sooner or later, as was agreed in the recovery plan.

The cost of maintaining the roads has grown exponentially in recent years and the budget for 2023 is 30% higher than it was in 2016. Far from currently being free to use, each Spanish taxpayer is actually contributing around 27 euros per year towards the upkeep of the country’s roads.

What are the alternatives to tolls?

One of the alternatives to traditional tolls being studied is that only those who use the roads be charged. To cover the expenditure on road maintenance that is currently paid with taxes, it would be necessary for each driver to pay just 1 cent per kilometre on high-capacity roads. But while this would certainly be in line with the EC’s principle of ‘who pollutes, pays’, it wouldn’t be so easy to implement.

In order for charging per kilometre to be viable, thousands of check-points and cameras would have to be installed to control traffic, something that would take a significant period of adaptation, explained Pablo Sáez, president of the employers’ association of infrastructure conservation and exploitation companies (ACEX).

A more straight-forward option, he believes, would be to implement a vignette system similar to several other European countries, whereby all drivers pay an annual flat fee that would allow them to circulate on all roads without limits.

According to Sáez, an annual rate of 30 euros would be enough to pay for the maintenance of the State road network and 85 euros would cover the entire national network.

Finally, a third proposal supports applying a surcharge of one cent to petrol and diesel and allocating the revenue exclusively to maintenance.

Whichever solution is adopted, Sáez insists it needs to apply to the entire road network and not just the motorways and dual carriageways.

“The real maintenance problems are in the regional network, where the majority of conventional roads are concentrated. They have a very limited budget and have little margin left to spend on maintaining their roads,” he pointed out.

On the other side of the fence stands Associated European Motorists (AEA), whose members believe that, although not everyone drives, everyone certainly benefits from the country’s infrastructure and therefore, all taxpayers should have to cough up.

“A good network of infrastructures acts as an engine for the economy and creates a system of solidarity with depressed areas,” said the president of AEA, Mario Arnaldo.

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