"Gare de péage" at 2000 meters - anyone who knows French motorways knows what that means.

First you go down to 30 km/h, then you have to queue, sometimes half an hour during the holiday season.

Once you have reached one of the toll booths, you have to pay the fee for using the motorway and wait for a barrier to open.

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

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In the future, this time-consuming and nerve-wracking procedure on the privatized French motorways should be a thing of the past.

An end to the user fee, which is lavish by European standards, is not planned, but the dismantling of the toll booths on the asphalt runways, which are mostly wide, is planned.

Instead, cameras installed in gantries over the lanes will scan the license plate number and size of passing vehicles, and the fee will be collected electronically.

The barrier-free payment system of the future is now being put into operation for the first time on a 30-kilometer section of the A 79 in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

Completed as a new line at the end of June, the client and concessionaire APRR brought the Viennese company Kapsch on board and commissioned it with the construction, delivery and operation of the cameras.

The Austrians are considered market leaders in the field and have already installed similar systems in more than 50 countries.

On the exclusive track with a reader

Accordingly, APRR is confident that it will pass the practical test.

"The technology is mature," says project participant Pierre Méau.

He estimates the investment costs to be in the tens of millions, while the construction of the new motorway itself will cost around 600 million euros, including the commissioning of a further 58 km section planned for October.

Payment can be made in cash or by card at on-site payment stations or online.

Customers have up to 72 hours after their journey to do this.

Those who frequently travel the route can subscribe to APRR or pay with the “télépéage” electronic reader, which is becoming increasingly popular in France: available from motorway operators, you can stick the reader to the windscreen and use it use exclusive lanes at many toll booths and roll through after a short beep;

the invoice is sent to you online.

Whether nationals or foreigners makes no difference, says APRR representative Méau.

Every license plate is scanned immediately and everyone can take out a subscription or pay with "télépéage".

You will be informed comprehensively on display boards, he promises.

CO2 should also be saved

All in all, the operator of the new motorway only expects advantages from the new system: the flow of traffic will be improved, less space will be needed for the extensive toll stations and, on top of that, CO2 will be saved because there will be no need to brake and then accelerate.

The French government is of the same opinion.

In 2019, she introduced a law that provides for the installation of electronic toll systems for all new motorways and for existing motorways to negotiate with the concessionaires about a conversion.

In concrete terms, this means that the state and operators will successively bend over the existing long-term contracts in the coming years.

The toll stations on numerous motorways could then be dismantled and replaced by a system like the one on the new A 79.

"There is no impact on the toll price"

However, the responsible ministry leaves open when the time will come.

Even the pioneers of APRR do not expect that excavators will come tomorrow and tear down all the toll booths between Lyon, Bordeaux and Paris.

However, according to the APRR man's forecast, there will be electronic systems on several existing routes in the next 10 to 15 years.

The decisive factor may be how great the state's interest is in contributing to the costs of the conversion.

On the one hand, the responsible ministry says: "The concession company bears all costs, including the renaturation of the areas." This is the subject of a comprehensive agreement between the operator and the state.

On the other hand, the ministry promises: "There will be no impact on the toll price." In other words:

The question of data protection remains.

"The General Data Protection Regulation is strictly observed at every stage of the process of detecting the vehicle and subsequent payment," the ministry said.

The operator of the A 79 adds that the data collected about license plates and vehicle size are used solely for toll billing, are stored in French data centers and are deleted immediately after the bill has been paid.

"We don't use the cameras to check the speed," promises APRR representative Méau.