Germany: New Toll System

C

CD82

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2007
Messages
1,524
Location
German in Switzerland
Car(s)
Audi A3 2.0 TDI
The German Federal Ministry of Transport wants to introduce a new toll system. Unlike the one that's already in place and only affects vehicles heavier than 7.5 tons, the new system will include any and all vehicles.

The idea - I guess - is to finance the Autobahn (and the general road infrastructure) by making everybody that uses it pay for it.

So far information on the new system is a bit sketchy, especially for people with cars that are not registered in Germany. Now you might be wondering: "why is that?". If we take a look at other countries with toll roads, for instance Austria or Switzerland, you buy a little sticker for a fixed amount of money and put it on your windscreen. The stickers are available at petrol stations and customs (for instance when you drive into Basel using the Autobahn, you can buy that sticker right at customs, and for the standard price). Now you're good to go. In the case of Switzerland, you simply pay 40 CHF/Euro for one year. Everybody does it, including the Swiss. No exceptions. And Austria is a similar story, although you can buy cheaper vignettes for shorter durations.

Coming back to the proposed German system. Wikipedia does not really have to say much about it, except that it should have started in 2016, and it didn't. Reminds me of that Berlin airport, but that's another story. This time I'm actually glad that something is running late.

Anyway, the proposed toll system is a little more complicated, at least it seems that way right now. You do not pay a fixed amount. Instead, the price you have to pay depends on the car you drive, or specifically how nice it is to the environment (not sure if dirty cars put more wear on a road, but I digress). So this complicates thing a little bit, because you can't just buy a simple vignette and slab it on your car, because your car is going to need a sort of personalized vignette, probably with its registration number written on it. I'm only guessing here, but that probably means you have to apply for the vignette somewhere online and proof that the car you're trying to register is actually the car you own.

And that's not the end of it. If your car is registered in Germany, you can then deduct this "Autobahn price" from your annual car tax. This was arranged so that nobody has to pay any more money than they were used to. But of course it has to be complicated by the fact that you initially still pay all the annual car tax and then you get some of that money back if you can prove that you bought a vignette that year. And of course this only works for cars which are registered in Germany.

So for everybody with a foreign license plate, there will be short duration vignettes available. Initially there was talk about stuff like 1-day, 3-day, 1-week, 10-days and so... probably also linked to the sort of car you drive (amount of horsepower and emissions). And now comes the best part: Even the Federal Ministry of Transport admits that it probably won't make any money from these short-term vignettes due to administrative cost. Because the system sounds ridiculously complicated for everybody involved.

But then what's the fucking point? So apparently the Germans are getting their money back because they can deduct it from their annual car tax. Meaning no net income for the government there. And all the foreigners have to pay, which would mean some income is being generated, but then even the people that thought this whole mess up, admit that they'll be losing money on all the short term vignettes for foreigners, because of administrative cost. It'll cost them more to manage all those different vignettes for all those different types of car than it will make them money. Job fucking well done.
 
Also, Sch?uble, who is in charge of all the money is like "GTFO, this is only costing us money".

And nevermind the hush-hush deal behind closed doors that must have happened between Germany and the EU. Because initially the EU was strongly against this system, but suddenly and without any changes made to the proposed system, the EU is now totally fine with it.
 
Not sure if these numbers are going to be final: https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/pkw-maut/
In short, it's way too many options based on too complicated things.


Since it was Ice and MWF asking, assuming the IceAudi is EU4 then it'd be 14? for a 10-day sticker and 20? for the MX-5 and 4? for the Ibiza, assuming it's a recent petrol.
 
Last edited:
The Ibiza is AFAIK essentially the same engine and gearbox as the Saudi - 1.9 TDi in stock 130 bhp tune.
 
MWF said:
The Ibiza is AFAIK essentially the same engine and gearbox as the Saudi - 1.9 TDi in stock 130 bhp tune.
Click to expand...

Couldn't find a PYC thread :dunno: so it's a Mk3 diesel FR? 14? if EU4, 20? if EU3 or worse.


Two-month stickers are roughly two times the price of a ten-day sticker, an annual sticker is roughly three times the price of a two-month sticker.
 
Last edited:
Bikes seem to be free, as well as Adrians... and Ringmeet 2017 should still be free as well.
 
narf said:
Not sure if these numbers are going to be final: https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/pkw-maut/
In short, it's way too many options based on too complicated things.
Click to expand...

So can I just claim my car is a 0.5 liter since the true displacement is not written on the outside of the car?

On a more serious note: While I think the whole thing is a silly idea, I also think it's silly that other countries - that already have a toll system in place - are against the idea of Germany generally having a similar system.
 
Last edited:
CD82 said:
So can I just claim my car is a 0.5 liter since the true displacement is not written on the outside of the car?
Click to expand...

Unlikely, enforcement should be through the TollCollect bridges that are littered all over our Autobahn network - there's no physical sticker, and therefore nobody inspecting the sticker and the car it's attached to physically.
Might be tougher to look up for less connected countries though.

On a more serious note: While I think the whole thing is a silly idea, I also think it's silly that other countries - that already have a toll system in place - are against the idea of Germany generally having a similar system.
Click to expand...

The implementation is silly, especially the multitude of brackets. It's a flawed attempt at "fairness" that ends up making the system needlessly complicated. Limiting the toll to Autobahns for foreigners will lead to clogged traffic at choke points on lower roads in border regions, similar to the movement of heavy trucks to lower roads due to the truck toll... which is countered by further expanding the truck toll to more and more Bundesstra?en.
Even worse, by making EU3 and earlier cars, especially old diesels, ridiculously expensive in tolls you're pushing those off the Autobahns and into towns even more. A modern small petrol won't mind the 2.5? toll for 10 days, and there's no way collection, enforcement, administration, etc. is going to make a profit off those small payments.
The projected net profit is laughable (~500M? annually), and reality might not even bring in that much. By refunding German-paid tolls, any profit is reduced to foreign tolls minus the entire system cost... and when most foreigners are going to contribute just a few Euros you see it's ridiculously low for a whole new revenue stream. One tank filled up in Germany contributes more in taxes, and needs no new revenue stream, no enforcement, etc.

As for other countries, when Austria introduced their tolls there were quarrels with other countries and Brussels as well - it's expected, really. IIRC only those quarrels led to Austria introducing short-term stickers... the Swiss do it right, one sticker for a year and that's it. An extremely low cost for Swiss cars that use the Autobahn all year round, a reasonable cost for foreigners - but at least it's simple, with low overhead.
 
Well, the whole concept of motorway toll is stupid in general, as drivers should be motivated to take the motorway, rather than than driving through towns and villages. And much more money already gets collected in petrol taxes, with lower transactional costs too. But this thing takes the whole thing to a new level, making it extremely complicated on one hand, but also projecting the domestic pseudo eco-BS politics on foreign drivers in an unprecedented way, with diesel cars having to pay 2.5 times more than petrol cars etc. What's next? Having to pay a certain percentage of your car's value when entering Denmark, so that you can feel some of the the pain the locals do?

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk
 
Diesel cars paying more is somewhat logical though, or at least consistent, because you pay less tax on diesel fuel here.
 
@H0nzik: That's an excellent point. By making the Autobahn most expensive for older cars you put exactly these cars on country roads that go through towns.

Anyway, as I stated elsewhere, I don't mind paying for using the infrastructure of another country. What I *do* mind is the needless complexity of the whole damn thing. Yes a sticker might be a bit low-tech for the 21st century, but having a single sticker for a single price for all the cars makes it very easy to manage the whole affair. If the government then wants to go ahead and refund this money to its citizen, yeah whatever, I don't even care.

Since the system in its current form isn't expected to make any meaningful amount of money once you subtract all the administration cost and the money that is piped back to German citizens through lowered annual car taxes, I can only suspect two things:

- Dobrindt (the guy in charge of this whole mess) is a lunatic that has no clue what he's doing and pretty pretty please somebody stop him before it's too late
- He has a long-game in mind, in which the toll is going to be higher than the annual car tax, or somehow they "suddenly and unexpectedly" make it non-deducdible, so that everybody has to pay (without getting their money back) and the system starts making money


@narf: You could also get rid of the subsidisation of diesel fuel. Just treat both types of fuel and engine the same way like other countries do. Makes things less complicated and you don't have to start balancing lower taxes in one place with higher taxes in another place.
 
Last edited:
Regarding Dobrindt, I've come to the conclusion that an unusually high amount of incompetence even for a career politician is a requirement to become minister of transport in Germany. Or it's just that this ministry is traditionally owned by the CSU and therefore used to push through things that only Bavaria wants.
Like, in this instance, getting money from the Austrians without any German (read: Bavarian) paying more.
 
I don't disagree with the principle but the implementation sucks. It is needlessly complicated and won't do anything constructive. The Austrian way of doing things seems far better and more logical to me.
 
Well, the Austrian way of making you buy a vignette, and then still charging you toll at the booths on top of that here and there, is hardly great either. But yeah I guess still better than this. I'd say one of the the best systems is what they've got in Slovakia these days, where you pay online, just entering your number plate and card details, so you can just do it on the go, without even getting out of the car.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk
 
H0nzik said:
Well, the Austrian way of making you buy a vignette, and then still charging you toll at the booths on top of that here and there, is hardly great either. But yeah I guess still better than this. I'd say one of the the best systems is what they've got in Slovakia these days, where you pay online, just entering your number plate and card details, so you can just do it on the go, without even getting out of the car.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Different companies involved in building and maintaining the tunnels and roads.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top