Receipts at the Easytoll booths at the start of the Via do Infante in the Algarve, grew by 24% this summer with over 68,000 drivers of foreign registered vehicle paying for the privilege of using the region’s one motorway.
The total revenue from drivers of foreign registered cars was €4.1 million during June, July and August, according to a cheery press release from Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP), which noted the rise in its income of 20% over summer 2014.
Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho is on record as promising a reduction in Via do Infante tolls fees, currently the most expensive in the country, if he is re-elected but nobody really believes him.
In August this year, Loulé mayor Vítor Aleixo broke ranks and said the solution for the government to "honour the commitment to the Algarve," is to end the tolls on the Via do Infante.
Aleixo was commenting on the government pledge to spend €250 million to upgrade the EN125 across the Algarve region in return for the mayors’ silence over the imposition of tolls in 2012.
The road upgrade programme was cancelled by the government 'on cost grounds' leaving the region with silent mayors, expensive tolls and an ‘alternative’ EN125 road which was not fit for purpose.
Infraestruturas de Portugal’s cheery press releases on how much they had squeezed out of valued visitors to the Algarve region are not greeted with universal approval yet the Algarve's mayors have remained silent or pro-toll, with few exceptions.
