Truck toll on all major roads in Germany

The truck toll is to be extended to all major roads in Germany. The Committee for Transport and Digital Infrastructure agreed on a law, drafted by the Federal Government, for the amendment of the Federal Highway Toll Act (18/9440), as amended on Wednesday morning. After the opposition parties', Die Linke (The Left) and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Green Party), abstention, the CDU/CSU coalition and the SPD voted in favour of the amendment.

Up to now, the federal government has levied the truck toll on approximately 12,800 kilometers of federal motorways and around 2,300 kilometers of major federal roads. However, most of the approximately 40,000 kilometers of federal roads are not subject to tolls. In order to improve the financing of German motorways and to ensure a modern, secure, high-standard transport infrastructure in Germany, the government wants to make the users consistently pay. Therefore, the truck toll is to be extended to all federal roads. Additionally, the Federal Government plans to examine the extension of tolls to smaller trucks (3.5 to 7.5 metric tonnes of permissible total weight) by the end of 2017, and also to coaches.

In response to the coalition's amendment, the Committee decided to exclude agricultural vehicles with a maximum speed of 40 km/h from the tolls. Additionally, the Committee called on the government to refrain from issuing different tolls for motorways and other major roads. Two suggestions by Die Linke remained unsuccessful, one of them being a call for the toll to also include coaches.

Source: www.bundestag.de