Do rental cars in France have a device to pay the tolls and then we pay at the end of our trip? When traveling in Portugal they worked that way. If not do you pay the tolls in cash? Someone mentioned a green lane. Is that how they are marked? I can't quite picture how their tolls work. I guess I am too used to EZ pass.

You have to pay when leaving a toll road. Some stations have operators, but many do not, depending on where you will be driving. You should find a (blue) kiosk before you reach an unattended station, where you can pay the toll using a debit card, or card with a chip.

At least that's what they do in Normandy. In the southwest we usually avoid the toll roads when every possible. All of the stations there have someone working.

If you're from the US, most of our credit cards do NOT have the kind of chip and pin required for those toll booths although I have been told that there exist a (very) few that will work (sorry, I don't know the names of them). Unless you're sure you have the right kind of card, plan to carry plenty of coins. We got stuck at an unmanned toll booth once somewhere in the south of France with not enough coins and no working credit card. You don't want that to happen.

Have cash unless you happen to have a chip and pin credit card. You get a ticket when entering the péage roads, then pay upon exiting and submitting your card.

We have a true chip and pin and found that a few toll booths would not accept it, while others did [on route from Gordes area to Marseille]! So be careful!

Our US credit cards did not work on toll highways in France.

Rental cars wont have a telepeage.
If no attendant in toll both, remember you can also pay with bank notes. So I wouldnt worry too much.

Yes, you have to subscribe to télépéage yourself so it does not apply to rental cars.

There are three types of payment lanes on the main autoroute -- the télépéage lanes, the card lanes and the cash lanes. However, small exits often only have one payment booth and <b>very</b> small exits only have an automatic booth, so you would be in trouble with a non-working card or no spare change to pay. (These tiny exits are located only in places where the toll to pay is quite small, so you don't have to worry about finding 28€ in coins to pay!)

The card machines on the autoroute do not at all use the chip & pin system but only the magnetic strip. Whether the card works or not depends on your own bank's acceptance or not of small debits with no signature. Apparently there is a double security system, because even though your card may not work in the automatic card lane, just about every card works if you hand it to an attendant who swipes it in a booth.

The only addition/clarification I'd make to the sound advice so far is that all the automatic booths I encountered across southern France took bills as well as coins -- and gave change in coins. So, a 10E bill for a 2.40 toll would be okay. I didn't and wouldn't try using a 50E bill for a small toll. So have coins and smallish bills and make sure you stay in the line with a green light. And take a deep breath and don't rush. It takes a few seconds to find the toll on the screen; find the bill slot and the coin slot and the change bin.

Before they invented automatic tolls and telepeage I used to enjoy watching locals tossing their change into the baskets as they sped through the toll-booths barely taking their foot off the gas.

Don't try this at home!

I think there are still some coin baskets on the A4 between Paris and Reims. ;-)

Thanks for all your replies. I will make sure to have change and bills. Some of the B&B's we are staying in only take cash so I guess we will get good at using the ATM machines. I hope they are available in many locations.

There are many, many ATMs in Europe. And they -- at least the bank ones -- don't charge you a fee for withdrawing cash. If you are American and going to be using ATMs frequently, it's worth checking into what your bank will charge for foreign withdrawals. A transaction fee? What conversion rate? Most credit unions charge no fee and a conversion rate of only 1% over the interbank rate.

In preparing for our upcoming car-travel in France, I read with interest the above, as some of our routes will be via toll roads. I wondered how much approximately Iwe would need to carry with us, choosing to not chance using cards. I found this website to be helpful

http://www.autoroutes.fr/en/routes.htm

and the viamichelin website does the same

Recently in France, we noticed that toll booths were springing up everywhere. In fact France seemed to have embarked upon massive road and rail building schemes so automatic non manned tolls seemed to be almost everywhere. They seemed to work well , but our journey south was quite expensive. Of course avoiding toll roads is a great idea but we found the toll motorways to he really quiet and the non toll roads going through towns and villages were clogged up with toll avoiding lorries and cars.

Oh and don't forget to carry your 2x alcohol breath test kits too.

That law has been suspended, Mucky.

Actually, there are a number of free motorways going south, but you have to see which ones on a map.

http://routes.wikia.com/wiki/Liste_d...ises_gratuites

You may also want to take a look at "French Highways - Speed cameras in France"

http://english.controleradar.org/france-highways.php

That law has been suspended, Mucky.>>

why was that, kerouac?

It was a stupid law but I hadn't realised it was suspended !