Govt fine-tunes road toll system

Budapest, January 22 (MTI) – The government on Thursday announced a number of changes to the new motorway toll system.

State secretary Janos Fonagy said county e-stickers, introduced at the start of this year, will be valid until the first exit in the neighbouring county, saving drivers from having to pay the toll for both counties.

Some stretches of motorway, such as the bridges spanning the Danube and a section that runs to Liszt Ferenc International Airport from central Budapest, may be used free of charge.

Families with four or more children, as well as the physically disabled, will be eligible for compensation for purchasing the e-stickers.

The government also decided to grant motorists a two-month grace period for an administrative fee motorists must pay for motorway use before purchasing a county e-sticker during.

The changes were decided after consultations with interest groups, Fonagy said. All of the parties involved agreed that introducing the county toll system had been an appropriate measure, he added.

The radical nationalist Jobbik party said that levying a toll on bypasses had been “totally ill-considered”, and it called for the move to be reversed. Daniel Z Karpat, Jobbik’s deputy group leader, insisted that having to pay for the bypasses would cause congestion along sections which those bypasses had been intended to save from heavy traffic. He also added that revenues from the new tolls were negligible for the central budget. Local organisations of Jobbik will stage demonstrations, he added.

The changes will come into force on February 1.

The county e-sticker, good for a full year, may be purchased for 5,000 forints (EUR 16). The e-sticker valid for the whole country may also still be purchased for periods of 10 days, one month or a year.

The government expects the changes to the toll system to generate about 20 billion forints (EUR 63m) in additional budget revenue.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters