Kilometer fee to replace period passes in road toll

Hungary plans to introduce electronic road toll before phasing out the flat-rate toll in the following years, local daily Népszabadság reported on Monday. The vehicles likely to be hit the hardest will be the biggest trucks.

Hungary’s center-right government has embraced a plan conceived by its predecessor to introduce pay-as-you-go system road toll in the country. The only pending decisions are when the switchover should be made and who will carry out the investment that will absorb HUF tens of billions. Several ministries are lobbying to be the host of the project.

Passenger cars and motorcycles would be charged six forints per kilometers, based on 2009 prices. This, as documents of the Transport Development Co-ordination Center’s data claim would be only slightly more than what drivers pay in the current e-sticker toll system. The new road toll may be introduced in 2013 or 2014. The first to be scrapped would be the four-day pass then, followed by the 10-day pass a year later. Around 2017-18 Hungary would no longer offer the monthly motorway pass, anymore, and the annual pass will be history by 2019, the paper added.

It also noted, however, that the net HUF 6 could easily be HUF 8 or HUF 10 by the time the new system goes live.

The toll burdens of the biggest trucks might reach up to HUF 34 per kilometer when the system is launched. This would mean that for the price of a daily pass currently available, they would be allowed to use 90 kilometres of motorway. And it will get worse.