Driving (and Paying) on Toll-Roads
 

We're planning to drive 2 weeks in Germany and France. Trying to avoid toll roads (http://www.viamichelin.com helps tremendously) but sometimes we will use them. What's the best way to do it efficiently? I guess using those electronic devices is not practical for us foreigners, and for such a short trip. So we'll have to wait in line to pay cash..... Or use our (no foreign-transaction-fee) credit card?

Thanks....

Hi Ma.

Whether you wait in line to pay cash or wait in line to use your CC, you will still have to wait in line.

((I))

Yes, I thought so.... Was just checking if there's a better way....

In France, sometimes a US credit card works, and sometimes it won't. If it won't and you have a line of cars behind you all honking their horns - it won't be a good scene. The credit card toll booths that I've seen don't take cash as an alternative. The credit card machine "eats" your ticket - so backing up (if there are not cars behind you) won't work. We had to have an attendant close her toll booth, come over to ours, take our cash, and then we got going. About 1 hour earlier that same day, our credit card did work OK at a toll booth. This "event" was in '06.

In '08, we stayed in a gite that was just off a minor exit from a toll road. There was only 1 booth - and it was not "manned" at night. Upon returning from a fabulous dinner, we tried all 5 of our US credit cards, and none worked. I got out & lifted up the restraining arm as my wife drove under it.

Stu Dudley

Tolls are not levied around a city. Lines are generally a non-issue compared to tolls booths in congested urban areas in the States.

"The credit card machine "eats" your ticket" --- You mean the toll machine might SWALLOW my CC card?! Or is this ticket something else?

BTW, what's a "gite" as oppose to B&B?.....

A gite is a vacation rental cottage, not a B&B, and the toll machine may eat your toll ticket, not the credit card. Not quite so bad, but not good either.

The machine may swallow your CC - but it will spit it out again, just like an ATM would.

As far as I know there are no toll roads in Germany.

French motorway credit card machines don't ask for a PIN (at least not for the tolls I run up): I don't think they bother checking the chip either, so the chances of foreign cards being rejected aren't that high. I've once or twice had a problem with a British card - but always solved by one of us pushing in another British card

The point about motorways round big cities almost all being toll-free is that commuters rarely have to pay: generally, only longer distance drivers need to fork out. So even during a weekend at the height of the July mass flight from Paris, at the Lyons-bound toll (probably the busiest few hours at any road paypoint in Europe, except for the Dartford Crossing, which is one of Europe's very, very few tolls for commuters), I've never waited longer than 7 mins. Anywhere else: never more than 2. Coming onto the Triboro Bridge after 6pm flights from London, toll queues always seem longer than my worst-ever experiences in France, Italy or the Thames.

You'll hit lots of heavy traffic, especially in Germany. Toll plazas rarely loom large in drivers' experience of traffic delays, though.

Still not sure what's this ticket.... I insert my CC and pay for toll. What the ticket for?

The ticket you take when you ENTER the toll road at the beginning.

The ticket indicates where you started and where you ended, so the toll can be calculated.

"What the ticket for?"

I've never encountered this in North America.

In France and Italy (and I think Spain) you get a ticket when you enter the motorway. Since services, like petrol stations and restaurants, are within the tolled area, it can be hundreds of miles - and possibly several different operators -before you hit a toll plaza where you have to present the ticket and are required to pay. Some London-Rome routes might require you to fork out only three or four times, even though practically the whole route from Folkestone is liable to tolls.

<i>I've never encountered this in North America.</i>

New Jersey Turnpike and Pennsylvania-Ohio-Indiana Turnpikes, unless the system has been changed. Also the New York Thruway, if memory serves me right.

They have petrol stations and restaurants inside the tolled area on the New York Thruway?

I don't recall.

Tolls are certaily levied on the autoroute before it debouches into Nice. The toll is for continuing on to Nice, as there was no toll station at the Grasse intersection.

Don't let your ticket blow out the window..You will be charged from the farthest point...It cost a small fortune when this happened in Ohio.From Toledo to the Michigan exit cost us as if we had come from the Penn. state line!!! Not funny!!! It pays to have lots of coins and then there is no problem. In France, on the Pliage(sp??) sometimes the cc worked and sometimes not!!!

OK, we'll be armed with several different CC, Visa, MS, AMEX, and from more than one bank, just in case.... And that ticket will be securely stored deep in my bra.

Thanks for the info.

If you have US "swipe" CCs, it doesn't matter how many different cards you have if the toll booth only takes "chip" cards.

Stu Dudley