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Tolls, stickers or free? Spain mulls future of its motorways

Who's going to pay for Spain's motorways? Debate is raging over the funding of its 12,000 kilometres of motorways after the government made some roads toll-free after the concessions expired.

Tolls, stickers or free? Spain mulls future of its motorways
Motorway maintenance is very expensive in Spain, costing around €80,000 per kilometre every year. Photo: César/Flickr

“Don’t stop!” Since September 1st, that has been the message plastered across many toll booths in the northeastern Catalonia region, largely along a section of the AP-7 motorway between the French border and Barcelona that is very popular with European tourists.

With the ending of concessions held by subsidiaries of Spanish toll road operator Abertis, control over nearly 500 kilometres of motorways has reverted back to the state and the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Halting the tolls there will hand road users “an annual savings of more than €750 million”, said Transport Minister Raquel Sanchez.

READ MORE: The Spanish motorway routes that become toll-free in September 2021

In a country where almost 85 percent of motorways are toll-free, payments on three stretches ended in 2018 and another two in 2020, meaning that in just three years, 1,029 kilometres of highway have passed from private to public hands – saving drivers €1.4 billion in tolls.

Not renewing the toll road concessions when they came to an end was a pledge made by Pedro Sánchez when he became premier in 2018, with the aim of overhauling Spain’s motorway management model, which varies hugely across the country and is a major source of frustration for drivers.

A sensitive issue

But the areas where tolls have been lifted won’t stay like that for long.

“We’re looking to set up a tariff system according to usage,” the transport minister said, pledging to bring in a new model that would be “publicly run, fair and homogenous throughout Spain”.

Over the years, Spain has tried a range of different approaches with some roads under public ownership, others privately-held, some run by the state and others by the region, explained Maria Angeles Baez, an expert in the Spanish road system from Granada University.

“Faced with the need to improve the road network and the scarcity of financial resources, the state opted for the concession system, which was rolled out in two periods: from 1967-1975 and 1996-2006,” she told AFP.

Although the toll-based motorway system “encouraged economic growth” in certain areas it was not well received by the public, she said.

And government plans to set up a new system of charges are creating fresh tensions.

Motorway maintenance is very expensive, costing around €80,000 per kilometre every year, a sum which places a huge burden on a country like heavily-indebted Spain.

In its economic plan sent to the European Commission to unlock its share of the EU’s multi-billion-euro Covid recovery funds, Madrid pledged to review its motorways funding model and set up a payment system that would guarantee “the necessary income” to preserve the state’s road network.

“It doesn’t make much sense for this maintenance to be footed largely out of the state budget which is ultimately paid for by the public, including those who don’t use the motorways,” the transport minister said.

Consultation process

So how will the funding work? Many options are on the table, including the idea of an annual motorway charge sticker, along the lines of the Swiss system, which lets drivers onto all motorways in exchange for a fixed fee.

Another possibility is payment per kilometre via a system of portals that recognise the passing vehicle and automatically charge the driver’s bank account.

The Spanish press has been talking about a relatively modest charge of 0.01 to 0.015 cents per kilometre for cars and 0.05 cents for lorries.

Whatever model wins out, the solution is likely to mean a charge will be imposed on many roads that until now have been free – and the prospect is angering motorists.

Faced with such opposition, the government has committed to a consultation process that should last several months.

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‘Città 30’: Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna has faced heavy criticism - including from the Italian government - after introducing a speed limit of 30km/h, but it's not the only city to approve these rules.

'Città 30': Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna on January 17th became Italy’s first major city to introduce a speed limit of 30km/h on 70 percent of roads in the city centre under its ‘Città 30’ plan, first announced in 2022, and initially set to come into force by June 2023.

The move made Bologna one of a growing number of European cities, including Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Bilbao, to bring in a 30km/h limit aimed at improving air quality and road safety.

But the change was met last week with a go-slow protest by Bologna’s taxi drivers and, perhaps more surprisingly, criticism from the Italian transport ministry, which financed the measure.

Matteo Salvini, who is currently serving as Italy’s transport minister, this week pledged to bring in new nationwide rules dictating speed limits in cities that would reverse Bologna’s new rule.

Salvini’s League party has long criticised Bologna’s ‘Città 30’ plan, claiming it would make life harder for residents as well as people working in the city and would create “more traffic and fines”.

OPINION: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

Bologna’s speed limit has sparked a heated debate across Italy, despite the increasingly widespread adoption of such measures in many other cities in Europe and worldwide in recent years.

While Bologna is the biggest Italian city to bring in the measure, it’s not the first – and many more local authorities, including in Rome, are now looking to follow their example in the next few years.

Some 60 smaller cities and towns in Italy have adopted the measure so far, according to Sky TG24, though there is no complete list.

This compares to around 200 French towns and cities to adopt the rule, while in Spain the same limit has applied to 70 percent of all the country’s roads since since May 2021 under nationwide rules, reports LA7.

The first Italian town to experiment with a 30 km/h speed limit was Cesena, south of Bologna, which introduced it in 1998. Since then, the local authority has found that serious accidents have halved, while the number of non-serious ones has remained unchanged.

Olbia, in Sardinia, also famously introduced the speed limit in 2021.

The city of Parma is planning to bring in the same rules from 2024, while the Tuscan capital of Florence approved five 30km/h zones in the city centre earlier this month.

Turin is set to bring in its first 30km/h limits this year as part of its broader plan to improve transport infrastructure, aimed at reducing smog and increasing livability.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has promised to introduce the limit on 70 percent of the capital’s roads by the end of his mandate, which expires in 2026.

In Milan, while the city council has voted in favour of lower speed limits and other traffic limitations on central roads, it’s not clear when these could come into force.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala this week said a 30 km/h limit would be “impossible” to implement in the Lombardy capital.

And it’s notable that almost all of the cities looking at slowing down traffic are in the north or centre-north of Italy.

There has been little interest reported in the measures further south, where statistics have shown there are a higher number of serious road accidents – though the total number of accidents is in fact higher in the north.

According to the World Health Organisation the risk of death to a pedestrian hit by a car driven at 50 km/h is 80 percent. The risk drops to 10 percent at 30 km/h.

The speed limit on roads in Italian towns and cities is generally 50, and on the autostrade (motorways) it’s up to 130.

Many Italian residents are heavily dependent on cars as their primary mode of transport: Italy has the second-highest rate of car ownership in Europe, with 670 vehicles per 1,000 residents, second only to Luxembourg with 682, according to statistics agency Eurostat.

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