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NEWS
Germany to head down the toll road?
Is the world's most famous high-speed heaven about to charge for its autobahns?There will soon be no free rides on the world's fastest highways.
The German government last week introduced a toll on its autobahns that could cost foreign drivers up to €130 a year by 2016.
The controversial toll, which was introduced after Chancellor Angela Merkel bowed to a sustained right-wing media campaign, might be short lived, however. It faces legal challenges in the European Commission over giving German nationals competitive advantages over foreigners.
Its critics have touted it as a clear limitation on free trade within the EU bloc, forcing up costs for foreign companies while effectively cutting them for domestic drivers.
The German government pitched the plan as necessary to pay for the maintenance of its autobahn network, though it ditched its original proposal to charge foreigners for driving on all its roads.
While German drivers will technically be charged the same autobahn toll, they will be able to offset it against their annual car tax. German motorists, though, have seen it as the harbinger of high-speed doom, with the technology needed to track driver speed averages being deployed under the guise of tolling infrastructure.
Almost all of Germany's near neighbours, including France, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Slovenia, charge German (and all other) drivers to travel on their freeways, and right-wing German parties have spent the past year stirring up debate on eastern European drivers effectively using their roads for free on their way across Europe.
The driver behind the tolls is the ruling coalitions Transport Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, from Bavaria's Christian Social Union, who denied the tolls discriminated in favour of German drivers.
"The infrastructure fee is sensible, fair and just," the minister said.
Foreign drivers will have to register their license plates over the internet, though they can also pay the toll at petrol stations all over Germany. The complex fee structure will account for everything from the car's engine capacity and cylinder count to its CO2 emissions, rising from a €10 fee for 10 days to €22 for two months or a maximum of €130 a year.
Dobrindt stated he expected €3.7 billion of revenues from the toll, however all but €700 million of that is expected to come from German drivers, who the Government will pay back via a tax credit.
With Dobrindt's estimate of €200 million in start-up costs, that would leave Germany with only €500 million in income from foreign drivers.
Dobrindt's CSU party made the toll a condition of joining Chancellor Merkel's coalition after the 2013 elections, but Merkel's party and its (other) coalition partner, the Social Democrats, demanded that it not add to costs for German drivers.
Germany already has a satellite- and gantry-based tolling system for heavy transport on its autobahns, forcing transport companies to pay on the number of kilometres driven on any given trip.
Picture courtesy of Dirk Vorderstraße/Wikimedia Commons
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Written byMichael Taylor
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