Part Time Posted October 28, 2012 Share Posted October 28, 2012 In January i shall be travelling into Portugal fo the first time in 20 years. It is my intention to travel along the A22 from Ayamonte to Lagos. As i understand this is now a toll road. I have trawled the internet as well as this forum and am totally confused as to the method of payment required by a visiting foreign vehicle. Does anyone have recent (last three months) first hand knowledge of how the system is operated. Like most of us I wish to remain within the law and avoid "bonus payments" to the local coffers. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crbtaylor Posted October 28, 2012 Share Posted October 28, 2012 Also been trying to find out. At the NEc show I was told it was still a grey area but they thought tolls could be paid at supermarkets, Still waiting for a more definite answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matrix Meanderer Posted October 28, 2012 Share Posted October 28, 2012 We are also planning to go to Portugal in January. The C&C Club carries this information on their website: http://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/travelabroad/travel-planning-abroad/portugal-electronic-tolls/ ALSO - Read the update drop down box at the bottom of the item. The advice is pretty clear - buy a pass from the places described. Also follow through to the FCO website and scroll down to the "Safety and Security - Local Travel - Road Travel" section. The CTT "Tolls" link (under financial services) does give further advice here: http://portagens.ctt.pt/fectt/wcmservlet/ctt/particulares/servicos_financeiros/en/tolls/index/noticias.html Click through the section on the left of the page for further info. Look at the "Your Solutions" section. You can prepay online or they give a list of locations to buy the toll pass. Just found another website "Visit Portugal" which seems to have a clearer set of information: http://www.visitportugal.com/NR/exeres/D1F46576-727B-42CA-BA69-C33AFBA3D81C,frameless.htm This one is even better: http://www.portugaltolls.pt/en/web/portal-de-portagens/home Think I'll go and lie down in a darkened room now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnerontheroad Posted October 29, 2012 Share Posted October 29, 2012 So as clear as mud then, think we will give it a miss were going to go in January but not now looks like Spain and may be Morocco. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Part Time Posted October 29, 2012 Author Share Posted October 29, 2012 My thanks for links. A number of them are ones I have followed before and the attempts at actually using them has failed but the list of Motorway service station providers should do the trick. It does seem though that despite the volume of people who use this site "First hand" experience is in very short supply. Should be an interesting experience if nothing else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pelmetman Posted October 29, 2012 Share Posted October 29, 2012 With a bit of luck they'll end up like the one's in Spain >:-)......... At the Leganes toll booth outside Madrid, the workers scan the horizon for cars. In Spain's recession, the stream of paying drivers has slowed to a trickle and the toll road is all but bankrupt. Like the housing bubble, pumped up until it burst in 2008, and its speculation-funded phantom airports, the folly of Spain's road-building boom too is now being laid bare in vast stretches of tarmac. "Right now we can't meet our debt repayments. We are in the hands of the judge," said Jose Antonio Lopez Casas, director of Accesos de Madrid, the company that manages two major highways around the capital. The two highways, Radial 3 and Radial 5, opened in 2004 at the height of Spain's construction boom. Now the company owes 660 million euros ($850 million) to the bank, 340 million to the builders and 400 million to residents evicted to build it. Since the Madrid-Toledo highway entered bankruptcy proceedings in May, the trend has spread, with five other major routes following. "It's no surprise," says Paco Segura, a transport specialist at the environmental campaign group Ecologists in Action. "In Spain, just as there was a real estate bubble, there was also a bubble in infrastructure, and one of the areas that got most developed was the motorways," he added. "We built thousands and thousands of kilometres of motorways on routes that did not have the traffic concentration to justify it." The craze drove Spain to break records: it became the country in Europe (Chicago Options: ^REURUSD - news) with the most kilometres of motorways and the most commercial international airports, and was second only to China in the world for the length of its high-speed train lines. But while the state was approving all these projects by private companies, it was also developing a network of toll-free highways, naturally preferred by drivers. In the first quarter of this year, with Spain in recession, motorway traffic fell 8.2 percent compared to a year earlier, hitting its lowest level since 1998, the transport ministry said. "Traffic around Madrid has fallen by between 15 and 20 percent in the past five years," Lopez said. "In our case it has fallen by much more," he said of his toll roads. "The economic situation makes the cost of a toll road much more of a factor in deciding whether to take a route or not, when there is a free alternative of sufficient quality," said Jacobo Diaz, director of the Spanish Road Association. "The demand has clearly been overestimated. The actual volume of traffic is about a quarter of what was forecast." Ecologists in Action estimates the motorway between Madrid and the city of Toledo receives 11 percent of the traffic its developers expected. Around Madrid, meanwhile, "nearly all the motorways which are going bust are not getting 40 percent of the traffic they planned for when they were built," said Segura . On the Accesos de Madrid roads, "where there were supposed to be 35,000 vehicles a day, there are 10,000," said Lopez, who holds out little hope of state aid amid the wave of public spending cuts in the recession. "Too much infrastructure was built, no doubt about it. Much of it turned out to be no use," he said. "It has happened with the motorways, it has happened with the airports," said Lopez. "Sooner or later we will found it is happening with the high-speed trains." I've idea!............ lets build some private toll roads in Britain :D :D :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Part Time Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 This is a belated reply but having read Pelmetmans response i am intrigued . A I have seen this on other websites. B What the heck has it got to do with the question I asked? Is it any wonder people see this site as a bit of a waste of time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BGD Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Part Time - 2012-11-06 11:33 PM This is a belated reply but having read Pelmetmans response i am intrigued . A I have seen this on other websites. B What the heck has it got to do with the question I asked? Is it any wonder people see this site as a bit of a waste of time? The subject of tolls in Portugal has been discussed several times before here. Might I suggest that it's often useful, before staring another thread on the same subject to use the "search" facility to bring up previous threads containing the key words for a subject you want to know about. I'll repeat my previous advice on the subject. If you are referring to the newer "automatic" electronic toll sections of the Motorway along the Algarve coast ( rather than the manned toll-booth sections of other motorways along the West coast of the country), then the practical advice from most motorhome forums here in Spain is: continue, as previously, to simply ignore the overhead gantries and use the motorway as a non-toll one. Reason is that the road is privately owned, the company running the system is virtually bust as their assessment of future revenues when they borrowed the money to build the system was massively over-optimistic, there's no enforcement system: the number plate recognition system can't identify non-Portuguese number plate owners anyway; and the system doesn't have the authority or resources to try to chase up non-payments by drivers of "foreign" registered vehicles. We go over to Portugal at least a couple of times a year, and we use the Algarve electronic automatic toll gantry sections of the motorway as/when we fancy a change from the coast road, hopping on and off at lost of different junctions, either in our motorhome or on our 125cc scooter (both Spanish registered) without getting a smart-box and paying; and I have never had a problem. So do all the other Spanish motorhomers/others that I know (and none of them has ever reported any problem at all); and as I understand it, an increasing number of the Portuguese now as well....now they've realised that the system/management is basically a complete white-elephant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pelmetman Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 BGD - 2012-11-07 8:45 AM Part Time - 2012-11-06 11:33 PM This is a belated reply but having read Pelmetmans response i am intrigued . A I have seen this on other websites. B What the heck has it got to do with the question I asked? Is it any wonder people see this site as a bit of a waste of time? The subject of tolls in Portugal has been discussed several times before here. Might I suggest that it's often useful, before staring another thread on the same subject to use the "search" facility to bring up previous threads containing the key words for a subject you want to know about. I'll repeat my previous advice on the subject. If you are referring to the newer "automatic" electronic toll sections of the Motorway along the Algarve coast ( rather than the manned toll-booth sections of other motorways along the West coast of the country), then the practical advice from most motorhome forums here in Spain is: continue, as previously, to simply ignore the overhead gantries and use the motorway as a non-toll one. Reason is that the road is privately owned, the company running the system is virtually bust as their assessment of future revenues when they borrowed the money to build the system was massively over-optimistic, there's no enforcement system: the number plate recognition system can't identify non-Portuguese number plate owners anyway; and the system doesn't have the authority or resources to try to chase up non-payments by drivers of "foreign" registered vehicles. We go over to Portugal at least a couple of times a year, and we use the Algarve electronic automatic toll gantry sections of the motorway as/when we fancy a change from the coast road, hopping on and off at lost of different junctions, either in our motorhome or on our 125cc scooter (both Spanish registered) without getting a smart-box and paying; and I have never had a problem. So do all the other Spanish motorhomers/others that I know (and none of them has ever reported any problem at all); and as I understand it, an increasing number of the Portuguese now as well....now they've realised that the system/management is basically a complete white-elephant. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pelmetman Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Part Time - 2012-11-06 10:33 PM Is it any wonder people see this site as a bit of a waste of time? ?.................Your on here ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Kirby Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Part Time - 2012-11-06 10:33 PM This is a belated reply but having read Pelmetmans response i am intrigued . A I have seen this on other websites. B What the heck has it got to do with the question I asked? Is it any wonder people see this site as a bit of a waste of time? I would suggest it has to do with the question you asked insofar as one has to traverse Spain to get to Portugal, does one not? As you intend using motorway in Portugal, it is reasonable to assume you might use motorway in Spain, is it not? So, a helpfully intended reply is denounced as a waste of time. Makes one wonder whose was the time that was actually wasted, and who caused that. You can come back if you play nicely, though! :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manu Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Hi all...... just a bit of up to date info for you all, came out from Castro Marim last week heading East to Ayamonte for gas, on the opposite side going West just where the border used to be the GNR had coned the lanes down to one and were collecting monies from ALL vehicles ! Traffic queues were long but they dont care....... for anyone who is unaware there are no toll barriers at the first exit into or leaving Castro to the East or West along to the Algarve. I actually went over the bridge (border) on a Sunday afternoon with no problem & no payment.....not yet anyway, & no there is nothing on the mat back in Blighty.....maybe next year ! Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Hi We spent 8 glorious weeks this year in Portugal and didn't use the motorway tolls once! Just asked Tom Tom to avoid all toll roads. The standard of the secondary roads is pretty good - the odd patch needing improvement (we do mean the odd patch). When crossing over the top of the motorways we found it rather amusing, as there was no traffic at all - completely empty, with the exception of the Algarve. Talking to the Portuguese and ex-pats, they all seemed to agree it wasn't worth the hassle - one case quoted by an ex-pat, queuing for 45 minutes at a post office to pay his dues only to find he hadn't been photographed! The system is so complicated, it's virtually unworkable. Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROND Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Manu - 2012-11-07 11:14 AM Hi all...... just a bit of up to date info for you all, came out from Castro Marim last week heading East to Ayamonte for gas, on the opposite side going West just where the border used to be the GNR had coned the lanes down to one and were collecting monies from ALL vehicles ! Traffic queues were long but they dont care....... for anyone who is unaware there are no toll barriers at the first exit into or leaving Castro to the East or West along to the Algarve. I actually went over the bridge (border) on a Sunday afternoon with no problem & no payment.....not yet anyway, & no there is nothing on the mat back in Blighty.....maybe next year ! Phil Are you saying they were charging vehicles to travel over the bridge in Portugalbefore the turn off for Castro Marim ? I thought that section was toll free RD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVAN Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 We were there for most of September and although we didn't intend using the Motorway, we found out while we were there that World Superbikes were racing at the Autodrome outside Portimao. We used the non toll roads but could find no signs in the town to the race circuit. In desperation i hopped onto the Motorway as this is the only place i know it's sign-posted.Once there we travelled back straight down the Motorway and did the trip on a further two occassions with no problems. In total we did 600 miles on it and had no problems. I did try to pay after but unless you own a Portugese registered vehicle it appears to be impossible to do! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Part Time Posted November 7, 2012 Author Share Posted November 7, 2012 My apologies. I stand duly chastised. I will stick to non contentious positive only comments in future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manu Posted November 8, 2012 Share Posted November 8, 2012 I was heading East towards Seville .... must have been at least 6 police vehicles along with hi-vis vested staff from the company & vehicles which runs the road , it looked like chaos. Traffic was single file & the police were directing traffic over to different parts of the old border parking area ! One Hgv driver was actually leaning from his open cab door conversing with the said company person who had a pad in hand whilst several other vehicles were being dealt with at various positions along the tarmac. Yep, i used that stretch going in to Villa Real ,also assuming it was free. Whilst on the subject, for any fellow travellers in that area a new "Aire" is open on the quay at Villa Real... just behind the warehouses by the old railway station. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldi Posted November 8, 2012 Share Posted November 8, 2012 Morning all, By alack of clarity on this matter the portuguese must be losing a for in lost tourist money. norm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rayjsj Posted November 8, 2012 Share Posted November 8, 2012 Why don't they just stick Toll booths on the blooming things, that way they catch everybody, and don't have to bother with all the 'Admin' of the other stuff. Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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