Autoroute 20 Toll

[Elgin Carmona]

Onsome autoroutes, you take a ticket when you enter the highway, and pay the toll when you exit. On others, you may encounter a single tool booth during your drive, and pay a set price for the toll.

If your credit/debit card or smartphone is RFID/NFC-enabled, you need only touch your card or your smartphone to the contactless-payment symbol on the toll machine to pay the toll. This is the easiest and safest way to pay, but not all toll booths yet have this feature. You may have to insert your card instead. Look for this symbol:

Tolls are charged by distance, so a longer drive will require more and larger coins and notes/bills. You can calculate the anticipated toll amount for any autoroute trip on the ASFA website (see below).

Some toll gates are marked by stylized credit card logos meaning you may pay only by credit card at that gate. Cash is not accepted at toll gates marked by the credit card symbol.

Some toll machines are now equipped to interact with "touchless" RFID/NFC credit/debit cards (with the little 4-waves symbol). If your card bears the RFID/NFC symbol, you can try using it.

You might not want to insert your only credit or debit card into a highway toll machine as there's a chance the machine may not return it. If you are carrying other cards with which you can continue to pay your travel expenses, you may decide to try it.

Several times each year, French highways are jammed with traffic. These times can often be predicted. Real-time traffic reports are available for all of France on Bison-Fut, a French government website for...predicting traffic jams. More...

Below is a map of the main toll roads in France. Ahead of your next car journey to France, check to see if any of these are on your route. If you are unsure on how to get to your next destination, visit RAC Route Planner.

Don't forget the RAC provides European breakdown cover while you're driving in Europe. And also, temporary car insurance if you're borrowing a car for the drive. If you're hiring a car, we've got you covered with our car hire excess insurance.

You should also look at our European Driving kit to make sure that you have everything you need to comply with the different driving requirements. It also includes items that can ensure your safety in case of an emergency so that you have peace of mind.

Although there are many toll roads across France (and continental Europe), avoiding them would mean taking a lot longer going around them on smaller roads. This would mean that you would be spending more time and money to get to your destination.

Are you preparing for your trip and the question of the cost of the toll arises? You have come to the right place, thanks to our toll price calculation tool, you can estimate the cost of your entire journey on our motorways. It takes into account the different rates applied according to the tolls you take, but also the class of your vehicle, its engine and the current price of petrol at service stations.

As concessionaire of our motorways, we have the responsibility to take care of the maintenance, but also of the extension of these in exchange for which we set a price for our various tolls. If the motorway prices are reviewed by our group every year, they do not exceed a certain limit set by our contract with the State. Also, if there is a price increase, it must be lower than inflation in France by 70%!

To calculate the price of your journey on our motorways, we therefore apply our rate according to the motorway you take and the entry and exit toll station for your trip. The price of your toll therefore largely depends on the mileage you have traveled on our various motorways!

Namely, the price of a toll is not the same depending on the class to which your vehicle belongs. Each time your vehicle passes through the toll station, it is identified by our system according to its class. There are 5 different classes of vehicle on the motorway, depending on height, weight and number of axles. The motorway price will therefore be different for a class 5 motorcycle than for a class 3 or 4 truck!

Toll roads have existed in some form since antiquity, with tolls levied on passing travelers on foot, wagon, or horseback; a practice that continued with the automobile, and many modern tollways charge fees for motor vehicles exclusively. The amount of the toll usually varies by vehicle type, weight, or number of axles, with freight trucks often charged higher rates than cars.

Tolls are often collected at toll plazas, toll booths, toll houses, toll stations, toll bars, toll barriers, or toll gates. Some toll collection points are automatic, and the user deposits money in a machine which opens the gate once the correct toll has been paid. To cut costs and minimise time delay, many tolls are collected with electronic toll collection equipment which automatically communicates with a toll payer's transponder or uses automatic number-plate recognition to charge drivers by debiting their accounts.

In addition to toll roads, toll bridges and toll tunnels are also used by public authorities to generate funds to repay the cost of building the structures. Some tolls are set aside to pay for future maintenance or enhancement of infrastructure, or are applied as a general fund by local governments, not being earmarked for transport facilities. This is sometimes limited or prohibited by central government legislation. Also, road congestion pricing schemes have been implemented in a limited number of urban areas as a transportation demand management tool to try to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.[1]

Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia. In India, before the fourth century BC, the Arthashastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes.

Most roads were not freely open to travel on in Europe during the Middle Ages,[3] and the toll was one of many feudal fees paid for rights of usage in everyday life. Some major European "highways", such as the Via Regia and Via Imperii, offered protection to travelers in exchange for paying the royal toll.

Many modern European roads were originally constructed as toll roads in order to recoup the costs of construction and maintenance, and to generate revenue from passing travelers. In 14th-century England, some of the most heavily used roads were repaired with money raised from tolls by pavage grants. Widespread toll roads sometimes restricted traffic so much, by their high tolls, that they interfered with trade and cheap transportation needed to alleviate local famines or shortages.[4]

After significant road construction undertaken by the West African kingdom of Dahomey, toll booths were also established with the function of collecting yearly taxes based on the goods carried by the people of Dahomey and their occupation. In some cases, officials imposed fines for public nuisance before allowing people to pass.[5]

Industrialisation in Europe needed major improvements to the transport infrastructure which included many new or substantially improved roads, financed from tolls. The A5 road in Britain was built to provide a robust transport link between Britain and Ireland and had a toll house every few miles.

Italy was the first country in the world to build motorways reserved for fast traffic and for motor vehicles only.[6][7] The Autostrada dei Laghi ("Lakes Motorway"), the first built in the world, connecting Milan to Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, and now parts of the Autostrada A8 and Autostrada A9, was devised by Piero Puricelli and was inaugurated in 1924.[7] Piero Puricelli, a civil engineer and entrepreneur, received the first authorization to build a public-utility fast road in 1921, and completed the construction (one lane in each direction) between 1924 and 1926. Piero Puricelli decided to cover the expenses by introducing a toll.[8]

It was followed by Greece, which made users pay for the network of motorways around and between its cities in 1927. Later in the 1950s and 1960s, France, Spain, and Portugal started to build motorways largely with the aid of concessions, allowing rapid development of this infrastructure without massive state debts. Since then, road tolls have been introduced in the majority of the EU member states.[9]

As the Interstate Highway System approached completion during the 1980s, states began constructing toll roads again to provide new freeways which were not part of the original interstate system funding. Houston's outer beltway of interconnected toll roads began in 1983, and many states followed over the last two decades of the 20th century adding new toll roads, including the tollway system around Orlando, Florida, Colorado's E-470, and Georgia State Route 400.

In the United States, as states looked for ways to construct new freeways without federal funding again, to raise revenue for continued road maintenance, and to control congestion, new toll road construction saw significant increases during the first two decades of the 21st century. Spurred on by two innovations, the electronic toll collection system, and the advent of high-occupancy and express lane tolls, many areas of the U.S. saw large road building projects in major urban areas. Electronic toll collection, first introduced in the 1980s, reduces operating costs by removing toll collectors from roads. Tolled express lanes, by which certain lanes of a freeway are designated "toll only", increases revenue by allowing a free-to-use highway to collect revenue by allowing drivers to bypass traffic jams by paying a toll.

The E-ZPass system, compatible with many state systems, is the largest ETC system in the U.S., and is used for both fully tolled highways and tolled express lanes. Maryland Route 200 and the Triangle Expressway in North Carolina were the first toll roads built without toll booths, with drivers charged via ETC or by optical license plate recognition and are billed by mail. In addition, many older toll roads are also being upgraded to an all-electronic tolling system, abandoning the hybrid systems they adopted during the late 20th century. These include the Massachusetts Turnpike, one of the oldest American toll roads, which went all-electronic in 2016, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, America's oldest toll freeway, which went all-electronic in 2020, along with the Illinois Tollway, which both accelerated their transitions to such due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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