What driving across Europe costs in tolls, vignettes, bridges and fuel

heikkikalliokos

Hello! I'm Heikki. I've been collecting Europe's published toll, vignette and ferry tariffs so road-trip costs can be checked rather than guessed. The page lists every source and the date we read it, and the full table is downloadable as CSV. Corrections are welcome, especially for the Great Belt motorhome bands and the countries we don't price yet.

bowsamic

It is shocking to me how expensive the roads are in France, and you don’t get any quality for it either

zkmon

That's nothing compared to the daytime robbery on the Indian roads (aka tolls). Someone builds a small bridge, hardly a few meters long, and gets license to collect tolls. A 100 km drive would easily cost 2000 Rs (20 eur) on new highways.

ajross

The lesson here is that in situations where you have a clear public good that (almost) everyone needs and consumes, like roads and infrastructure, it's better for (almost) everyone if the government simply pays for it out of the general fund and doesn't try to nickle-and-dime the populace to tax "usage". Sadly if you flip that around and talk about other public goods like "health care," (almost) everyone walks across the aisle of the same principles and starts arguing in the opposite direction.

arend321

Glad I got a toll badge covering Italy, Spain and Portugal so the amount gets auto deducted every month, instead having to pay each individual toll segment. Anyway, the A25 heading from Salamanca Spain into Portugal is now toll free, same as some of the roads around Barcelona/Catalonia. So it's not all bad.

drfuchs

Us Americans (pun intended) have no idea what “vignette” means in this context. And our dictionaries don’t, either.

kuerbel

I think 40 Swiss Francs per year is a really fair price, if you live there and use the Autobahn regularly it's very cheap per km and if you happen to drive through you also have to pay, which is only fair to residents. but 40 francs flatrate even if you only pass through is still better than whatever is going on in france!

danelski

I take issue with the toll methodology. It counts tolled roads, but that doesn't give you any idea how much your trip would cost. In Poland, only slightly over 20% of A highways are tolled, with over 90% of highways being free if you count in S express motorways, which are usually highway-grade if built in recent years. This map basically approximates what it would cost to drive only those scattered licensed stretches. In practice, you may tour the country for free, with exceptions like Berlin–Warsaw, where it only makes sense to pay. Then you have Austria, where, apart from the vignette, you also have extra-paid mountain passes, but that is not shown on the map.

Svip

I recognise the site is about driving costs, ignoring what a car costs to own; but depending on what plates stick to that car, it can make a significant difference. Denmark already tops the list in petrol prices, but unmentioned (largely because it's irrelevant) is that cars have a 150% registration fee attached to them, before the annual ownership fees. I have a 1998 Citroën Xantia Activa V6, it costs ~1450 EUR a year to keep it on plates. Yes, its due to its fuel economy, but since I only drive it occasionally, it's hardly doing damage to the environment. I also have a 2011 Citroën C1, which only costs ~95 EUR a year. Of course, I was truly unhappy about these costs, I would take the Xantia off plates; however, it's more an observation: due to the high fees for merely owning a vehicle, a lot of car owners are encouraged to drive. And that's just the annual fees, buying a new car is such an investment, that it would feel a mistake to not drive it (I assume, I have never bought a new car). I'm speculating of course, but it seems to me that these fees on car ownership encourages more driving. I'd love to have data from countries with lower (or no) fees, and how much people are driving per car. There is a reason Danish politicians about talking about replacing it with road pricing, or at least a mix.

comrade1234

Funny thing (sort of) about Switzerland (not included in this)... it costs 40chf (about $50) per year to use the highways and some tunnels. Even if you're just passing through you have to pay it to drive on the highways. The joke is that everyone in Europe just pays the fee except for the Dutch, which is why you see so many yellow license plates trying to drive on rural roads, through mountain passes... They tried to change the system maybe ten years ago. They needed funds to build a tunnel under lake Geneva. So they wanted to raise the fee to 100chf but have a much cheaper option (I can't remember how much) for people just passing through. But the referendum didn't pass so we're still at 40chf and I assume the tunnel won't be built.

shellfishgene

The Denmark to Sweden bridges are less expensive if you pay a yearly fee, it's usually worth it even if you only cross two times. However it's not straight forward to figure out the optimal way to get from say Hamburg to Gothenburg. You can take the short ferry from Fehmarn to Rodby, and then take the bridges. Or you can drive all the way via Odense and the bridges. Or you can drive to northern Denmark and take the ferry from Fredrickshavn over. Or you can go to Kiel and take the overnight ferry straight to Gothenburg, which is expensive but you can sleep all the way. Then there is the Travemünde-Trelleborg ferry which could also be an option...

mitul_45

The whole system with vignettes is really confusing. This summer, we were travelling to Bavaria from the Netherlands and didn't plan to visit Austria at all. But due to road construction work in Germany, we ended up driving on Austrian roads for a few kilometres. Two months later, we got a fine for driving in Austria without a vignette, and now we have to pay €200 for a sticker that costs €13 for 10 days! Worst part? The original fine letter never got delivered, so now our case is being passed on to the Austrian authorities. Based on what I've read online, people have had to pay anywhere between €300 and €3,000 for this :/

nonamesleft

To me having tolls on roads or bridges sounds completely insane (we don't have them here, other than one ferry during summer), taxes are already supposed to pay for those (and if they started doing that here, you can be 100% certain that no tax would be lowered in compensation).