The Mayor of Ayamonte in Spain’s Huelva district said that since the tolls on Portugal’s A22 ‘Via do Infante’ motorway were reduced on August 1st, the municipality has experienced "very little" increase in the number of Portuguese cars visiting the city.
This, says Alberto Fernández, is mainly as the municipalities of Castro Marim and Vila Real de Santo António are not affected by motorway tolls.
The mayor said that those businesses that have noticed an increase in trade have been on the Portuguese side with an rise in the number of cars travelling from Spain to cities like Tavira and Faro.
Fernandez said the biggest problem for the Spanish "is not the price, but the payment method" which is "very different than ones we are used to in Spain" and that is why so many people decide not to pay when traveling along the Via Do Infante.
The Spanish mayor suggests the Portuguese government looks at the payment systems if it wants the volume of cars from Spain into Portugal approach pre-toll levels.
The implementation of tolls on the A22 produced a 61% drop in traffic between Portugal and Spain producing a "very negative" economic and social impact on the Huelva province.
"The consequences of the tolls have been particularly seen in the slowdown in the upward trend in the volume of imports and exports between Huelva and the Algarve, which has directly affected the economic development of both territories."
As reported in algarvedailynews in December 2014,"The payment systems have been an embarassing disaster and 'improvements' have only added further payment methods to an already over-complicated raft of baffling alternatives." It seems that nothing has changed.
