The issue of tolls in Spain remains unresolved. Six months ago, the Government of Pedro Sánchez sealed an agreement with Brussels to maintain free highways and roads of the General State Network in exchange for improving and encouraging public and rail transport. Another thing is the issue of highways. In this sense, the principle of ‘he who pollutes the most, pays the most’ will end up being imposed.
The general director of Road and Rail Transport, Roser Obrer, met this Tuesday with representatives of the transport associations. During the meeting, she reiterated that drivers will not have to pay to travel on the State Highway Network, as the Executive agreed with the European Commission last October. On the other hand, she assured that the Government is going to establish a toll system based on emissions, although only on the rescued highways.
Obrer explained to the transporters that the guarantee offered by the Government that drivers will not have to pay to travel on the highways will be ensured in the Royal Decree of the directive popularly known as the Eurovignette. This directive is responsible for regulating tolls for trucks and unifies a road charging system at European level in which a series of criteria related to use, emissions or noise are taken into account. Part of the amount raised is used to finance community road infrastructure.
The Ministry of Transport will soon begin the procedures for the preparation of a Royal Decree that will expressly establish the non-application of tolls for circulation on highways and other roads owned by the State. In this way, the Government remains firm in its commitment to not make people pay for using state-owned roads, despite the fact that at first Pedro Sánchez’s cabinet considered the opposite.
The document will establish the criteria that private highway concessionaires must respect when setting the maximum amount of the toll. For the calculation, they must take into account vehicle emissions as a novelty. This criterion will only apply to highways that are owned by the State, through the State Transport Infrastructure Company, that is, highways rescued as a result of the bankruptcy of the operating companies.
In this way, the measure will only affect the R2, R3, R4 and R5 radials of Madrid, as well as the M12 (Madrid), AP-41 (Madrid-Toledo) and AP-36 (Ocaña-La Roda or Ocaña) highways. Madrid-Levante). As regards the AP-7, the criterion of setting the toll based on emissions will only be established in the sections where payment is not liberalized, that is, in the Alicante Ring Road and on the Cartagena-Vera route. .
In a pilot test to measure vehicle emissions on the AP-8 highway carried out by the company Opus RSE, it was detected that between 1 and 3% of vehicles emit polluting gases up to 20 times above the average and are the responsible for 40% of total emissions.
In exchange for excluding tolls from the commitments agreed with Brussels, Spain agreed to adopt other solutions to reduce CO2 emissions. Among these measures, the promotion of different train corridors stands out to try to channel the transport of goods.
