Toll Roads in Portugal
 

We are heading to Portugal next week and will have a rental car for 10 days of the trip. We rented from EuropCar. I am planning our routes and on the maps I am generating many of the routes we will take have tolls. Will the rental car have a transponder? Or is that something we ask for? Some of the articles I've read are suggesting it is difficult to pay as you go and not recommended? What have people's experiences been?

A quick additional question. We typically rely on our iPhones to use as our GPS. Will that be possible or should we bring a GPS or rent one? We are driving around Porto and the Douro and then down to Evora and then around Lisbon.

We will be there pretty much the same time and also renting through Europcar. My understanding is you rent the transponder for the tolls on a per day rate ( our voucher quoted the rate but I don’t have it handy) then an additional amount is put on your CC card for the actual tolls and it is settled when you return the car. I got a lot of info on this on Trip advisor. Looking forward to Portugal and hope you have a great trip too.
PS not sure about the phone vs gps question. Our gps has Portugal maps and we will bring it with us along with a good old fashioned paper map for route plotting.

We opted against renting a car in Portugal but heard from locals who drove us that the tolls are appreciable and that they try to avoid tolled roads whenever possible. You may want to set your GPS to avoid tolled roads where possible.

Questions about the transponder should be address to the company with whom you have a contract with.
A transponder you pay for at the end of your trip. The pay as you go is for tolls with manned booths. I cannot think how either is very difficult.
Use viamicheln to plan routes at home to avoid tolls. You can then see what is the route which you prefer. Avoiding tolls can be quite tiresome. Tolls are not so expensive per km.

Just received a ticket in the mail today from our trip to Portugal three years ago! It was for two dollars...as in $2. It had penalties added which brought the total to $8. This is the first notice I ever received. Letter states we used a toll road in Batalha. That was the day we were burglarized but still not even aware that we were on a toll road...so beware!!

We paid more as we had not reserved it before landing. Upon taking the car, the guy said 'do you want to have the transponder' and we paid about the price as if we had bought one... but it was indeed handy.
Just ask it beforehand. Then yes, you peay per use.

Just got back from Portugal on Saturday. We rented from Avis and requested a transponder. The cars are equipped with them but we had to request that it be turned on. The transponder charge was 2 euros per day. We used lots of toll roads as they don't seem to be expensive compared to the ones we use in the Toronto, Canada area. We will receive our final bill for the tolls in 2-3 weeks.

We used the car's gps and our own (Google maps). When we drove from Porto to our hotel in the Douro, we entered the gps coordinates - it was a disaster. We ended up on super narrow roads with 200 ft drops on one side. I would advise that you not use CM roads in the Douro - they are hair raising! Highways are A and smaller roads are N. When we arrived at the hotel, I told the woman checking us in that our drive had been terrifying. She said "oh you used the gps. It always takes people the wrong way". Needless to say, we took an N road when we headed back.

Hope this helps and have a wonderful trip.

Goes to the Douro and complains about the steepness of the terrain.;) Nothing about the wonderful scenery or great wines?
The N road is just the same, https://www.dangerousroads.org/europ...ional-222.html
We get that in this zones too.
https://www.dangerousroads.org/europ...nyon-road.html
Why go?

Just answering the question actually....

Hi Jackie44. Thanks for this information. We will stay on the A and N roads in Douro and avoid the CM ones. I was not sure from your reply what you would recommend we should use for this region? GPS? Google maps on our phones? or paper map (if they are still available lol)? Did you have any trouble with cell connection in this area? We leave tomorrow and are really looking forward to it. BTW we are from Toronto as well!

Hi CanadianJane,
We ended up on the CM roads using Google maps. What we should have done is used the car gps and deselected unnamed/unpaved roads. We stayed at Casa do Visconde de Chanceleiros which is near Pinhao. We should have planned our route to Pinhao as the Casa is a very easy and quick drive from there. We had no trouble with cell connection at all.

The Douro is lovely and very restful. I see you are going to be in Porto also. Porto is very busy and hectic but well worth the visit. Lots of great restaurants. Have a wonderful trip and I hope your weather is as amazing as ours was (and much better than we are getting at home now).