A revised French road tolling scheme covering parts of the currently free-to-use trunk road network is to be introduced early next year – targeting international hauliers transiting the country.
The original Ecotaxe was intended to cover 15,000km of non-motorway national roads, which are heavily used by freight traffic that is priced off the toll motorway network (peage) by the high costs.
According to AS24, the fuel card company that is also one of six companies planning to supply the GPS tags trucks will have to fit to pay the Ecotaxe, the tolls would have raised €1bn to help plug the French public deficit.
But protests by French hauliers led to the scheme being postponed and scaled down to cover key trunk routes around major French ports.
Cedric Vigneau, MD of AS24 in the UK, said the revised scheme would cover 4,000km of roads around ports including Calais, Rouen and Caen used by foreign trucks.
The AS24 tag will also enable international operators to pay road tolls in Spain, Portugal and Belgium with a single device.
