In a price hike designed to make the Algarve’s motorway drivers see red, the Via do Infante is to have the highest toll increase in the country.
With the current government, as the last, unprepared to listen to the sound economic arguments against having tolls at all on the region’s artery, the January 1st increases are 15 cents for Class 1 vehicles, and 20 cents for others.
Motorways in other of Portugal’s regions will have rises of between 5 and 10 cents. The increase is worked out each year using the cost of living index, meaning those areas with high toll prices anyway will face real increases higher than low-tolled roads.
This year’s index was just 0.84% but ‘rounding up’ means the Via do Infante tolls are going up 15 and 20 cents at a time when a long-awaited decrease is still on the cards, as is the scrapping of the toll scheme.
The current prime minister, António Costa, agreed before he got the job, that tolls on the Via do Infante should be scrapped, but as soon as he took office and saw the appallingly one-sided concession deal, has reneged on the promise as to buy out the concession holder would cost hundreds of millions of euros.
The summertime toll price drop of just 15% for those using the Via do Infante was slammed by anti-toll protestors who pointed out that the Algarve’s primary transport route already was 30% more expensive than other formerly free SCUT roads where tolls had been slapped on drivers.
The summer price drop, put in place in a vain attempt to keep tourist traffic from using the EN125 ‘alternative’ road, helped in part to increase the overall revenue to the concession, money that ends up with a parent company in Spain.
The Ministry for Planning and Infrastructure stated today that 78% of toll roads “will have no increase at all,” making the Algarve’s increase all the harder to swallow.
From January 1st, 2017, traveling the entire length of the A22 will cost €8.70 for Class 1 vehicles (15 cents more than before), and €15.25 for Class 2 vehicles, €19.65 for Class 3 and €21.90 euros for Class 4, an increase of 20 cents for Class 2,3 and 4.
With an ever-deepening sense of irony, the Algarve’s Social Democrat MPs are to demand in parliament that the government shelves the increase which they reckon “penalises the region.” This is from the party that introduced the tolls when in coalition government under Pedro Passos Coelho.
According to a revised PSD policy, the Algarve toll price hike "conflicts head-on with the commitments to the Algarve” as the socialist party had promised "an immediate reduction of 50%" and the Left Bloc and Communists had wanted abolition. This was before the left wing supported the socialists to gain power and these rash undertakings were dropped.
The regional PSD now is run by David Santos who, when he ws head of the Algarve's regional development body, the CCDR, did nothing to protest about the dire effects that the imposition of tolls was having on the region's development.
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