With the arrival of summer, the roads are busier than ever. From short domestic trips to tourists who believe us without stopping. The inevitable result is lost hours spent stuck in traffic on the country's main roads. Given this situation, the debate has reopened: who pays for the roads?
Construction companies have just proposed a 3 cent per kilometer charge for motorways and (pay attention!) for dual carriageways. For reference, traveling from Barcelona to Girona would cost approximately 3 euros each way. This is the opinion of those who advocate pay-as-you-go: whoever uses the road, pays. The measure envisages public savings of 5.7 billion euros annually. Aside from revenue, providing for an additional charge should reduce demand on the road and allow for more fluid traffic.
On the other hand, the majority of road users have a very different opinion. Do you think that, given that motorways and highways are free and all the taxes you already pay for your vehicle (circulation, registration, fuel taxes, etc.), why should you pay an additional cost to use the road network?
In other European countries, there's an intermediate solution: you pay a flat rate to use the road network. Typically, residents receive an affordable annual fee (around €80-100 per year), while occasional travelers bear the brunt of the cost (around €20 for a week). This allows for externalizing part of the revenue collection and preventing it from falling exclusively on local residents, who already pay their regular taxes.
It seems the debate hasn't moved forward and has been ongoing for years. What's clear is that we, the users, suffer the consequences: deteriorating roads and hours wasted in traffic jams. Either we allocate public resources to improving infrastructure or we implement a payment system to finance it.
