Motorway traffic jams adé: Croatia plans to introduce electronic vignettes on 1 January 2024, we wrote here on 20 February last year. The background to this was a statement by Transport Minister Oleg Butković, in which he announced that Croatia would receive an electronic toll system for its motorways from the beginning of 2024. Sky Toll has now been chosen as the company that will realise the electronic payment system.
The Slovakian company Sky Toll has won the tender for a new toll system on motorways in Croatia, as jutarnji.hr announced with reference to Hrvatske Autoceste. The estimated value of the procurement of the new system put out to tender was 100 million euros.
It has now taken almost exactly one year from the tender on 18 July 2023 (SeaHelp reported) for a decision to be made. As jutarnji.hr further reports, it took so long because all ten bids received for the tender had to be analysed first.
Five bids were rejected because they were financially unacceptable
The decision stated that five of these ten tenders were rejected because they were “unacceptable”. The entire new toll system will be funded by European grants from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and, if the decision is not appealed, the contract could be signed this month.
According to the article, the deadline for carrying out the work is 24 months, meaning that Croatia should receive the new toll system in 2026. This is “practically the penultimate step in the introduction of the new toll system as one of the most important and expensive infrastructure projects of this government”.
It will take eight years from the idea to the introduction of the vignette to the final toll solution
A total of eight years will have passed between the idea or introduction of the vignette and the final solution; the toll will then be collected contactlessly on all Croatian motorways via ENC devices and automatic number plate recognition (ALPR).
Until then, motorists will have to pay the toll in Croatia at toll stations by card – or in cash. With a correspondingly high traffic density, this regularly results in long, nerve-racking traffic jams, which sometimes lead to long waiting times during the holiday season.
According to a report by Hr.n1info.com from July last year, 200 vehicles per hour have been able to pass through the conventional toll booths to date; with the new system, this figure is expected to rise to 3,000 vehicles per hour.
There was not supposed to be a toll increase despite inflation, but now the toll has been increased by ten per cent
Butković had expressed his hope in the article that the new electronic payment system would make Croatian motorways even more attractive. Despite inflation, however, there should be no increase in tolls, the minister responsible was quoted as saying at the time.
However, it seems that the minister’s statement was only valid until the end of June 2024: “Bad news for holidaymakers in Croatia”, was the headline in the Krone on 1 July; the motorway toll had been increased by ten percent as of 1 July; the seasonal toll prices would apply until the end of September; buses and trucks were exempt from the price increase.
According to calculations by the Kronen-Zeitung, this means: “A journey by car on the Zagreb-Rijeka route now costs 10.10 euros instead of the previous 9.20 euros. The toll on the Zagreb-Zadar route will rise from 16 euros to 17.60 euros, while the toll on the Zagreb-Split route will now cost 26.40 euros instead of 24 euros”.
