ARCHIVED - Cartagena-Vera ghost motorway escapes national toll charge increases

Tolls on the AP-7 were cut by up to 40 per cent in January of this year

The same motorway becomes toll-free north of Alicante on 1^st January

It has been announced that the charges payable on Spain’s toll motorways will increase on 1^st January 2020 by 0.84 per cent, but as efforts continue to make the stretch of the AP-7 between Cartagena and Vera viable this is one of the 9 roads which are excluded from the rise.

At the same time, two more stretches of motorway will finally be made toll-free due to the management concessions on them expiring on 31^st December: these are the AP-7 between Tarragona and Alicante, passing Valencia, and the AP-4 between Sevilla and Cádiz, where the barriers will be dismantled as they were at the end of last year on the AP-1 between Burgos and Armiñón.

The motorways on which tariffs will be revised at the end of the year cover a total of 1,270 kilometres, although the increase is less than in the previous two years when charges were raised by 1.67 per cent and 1.91 per cent. Curiously, in 2016 and 2017 the formula established for toll reviews resulted in the cost of using these roads falling slightly.

At the same time, official statistics show that the number of motorways using toll motorways in this country had increased by the end of September this year by 4.8 per cent, resulting in a further increase in revenue.

The reason for the Cartagena-Vera road being exempt from increases in the tolls payable is that along with the other roads where the charges will not alter the AP-7 was “rescued” by the government due to it proving to be a significant loss-maker for the management company. The others falling into the same category are the four “radial” motorways around Madrid, the M-12 leading to Madrid-Barajas airport, the AP-41 between Madrid and Toledo, the AP-36 between Ocaña and La Roda and the Alicante bypass.

It appears that the takeover by the State of the bankrupt motorways has been a success, at least initially, and the Cartagena-Vera road is reported to have made a profit of 8 million euros during 2018, the first year after it reverted to State ownership. Between them, the eight roads which were built in the early years of the millennium, before Spain entered a long economic crisis, generated a net profit of 36.78 million euros, according to the company formed by the Ministry of Development in order to run them, Seittsa, with the Alicante ring road or bypass contributing another 5 million. The profits are to be reinvested in maintenance and improvement, making good some of the deficiencies which the company says emerged due to the lack of such investment by the previous concessionary companies.

Such was the lack of traffic on the Cartagena-Vera road during the first years after it opened that many dubbed it the “ghost motorway”, but gradually the number of users is rising and the 2018 results relate to the year before new reduced tariffs were introduced in January 2019, making it between 30 and 40 per cent cheaper to use the road.

Follow Murcia Today on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest news, events and information in the Region of Murcia and the rest of Spain: https://www.facebook.com/MurciaToday/