GregY2

We are currently in Italy and paying tolls on the autostradas using cash, as we do when driving in France - queuing at the booths, digging out change etc.
Does anyone know whether the French Télépéage, Italian Telepass, etc transponders work in other countries? I would have thought that there would be exchange charging arrangements between the various national providers within Europe but the websites that I have briefly looked at don't seem to cover this. If there were no significant registration &.or holding costs and it could be worthwhile to sign up and just cash up the account for each trip. Can anyone help?

kerouac

No, I'm pretty sure that each country has a separate system at the moment.

Alec

Yes, and as a tourist without residence in one of the countries, you are unable to get hold of any of the electronic gizmos.

hetismij

British people seem to get the telepeage one. Linked to a credit card. No idea how. They are only worth while if you use tolls regularly tough - there is a charge on the device and you need to use it often enough to negate that.
They don't work in Italy though - a different company operates there so you would have to be registered in both for the same device to work. The device would have to know this too, to generate the correct signal.

Of course if you had a credit card with a chip in it life would be much easier.

hetismij

Just found this;

http://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog/2010/09/telepeage.html

GregY2

Thanks for this information, looks as though it doesn't work for us. Interesting though when you see the volumes of commercial traffic crossing national borders. Maybe I'll try with the credit card - which does have a chip - just need to conquer my fear of it not working and having 30 cars banked up behind me.

Paul1950

For a chip card, it has to be the right kind of chip. Even among European countries, some chips work in other countries, and some don't.

GregY2

I've since found out the that European Community agreed standards for cross border charging in October 2009. The system is expected to be in place for heavy vehicles within 2012 and for cars within a further 2 years. Not sure why it should take that long but that was the estimate.

kerouac

You don't need a chip card to use the automatic toll booths in France because they do not use a PIN code. I have used all of the American cards of visiting family members and their Visa and Master Cards have worked without exception.

Alec

Trouble with harmonisation of toll collection across Europe (or just EU) is that countries use different ways of charging drivers - some by sections travelled (set differently for each route), some have a yearly vignette (Switzerland), others have weekly, monthly or yearly stickers (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary etc). And categories of vehicles which are charged different rates aren't harmonised either. So it will be very difficult to put into practice.