Lorries from 51 countries drove on Czech roads in August

Prague, 22 September 2022 – The export orientation of the Czech economy and its location in the centre of Europe contribute to the fact that the Czech Republic is a part of important transport routes in Europe. In August, in addition to vehicles from the Czech Republic, vehicles from another fifty countries of the world passed through our roads: most often registered in Poland and Slovakia, but exceptionally also from the US, Turkmenistan, Cyprus or Mongolia.

The share of toll payers from abroad of the total toll collection in the Czech Republic is one of the highest in Europe. In August, it approached the level of fifty percent – carriers with vehicles registered abroad paid over 608 million Czech crowns, exactly 49.4%. This ratio has been stable for a long time.

It is clear from the detailed statistics that most of these foreign carriers use motorways within the Czech Republic, i.e. the roads designated for this type of traffic. In case of 1^st category roads, the share of payments that came from abroad was significantly lower than in the total amount and did not even reach 30%. Therefore, the share of payments from abroad was significantly higher on motorways.

This shows that the Czech Republic is able to use the electronic toll system to charge and efficiently direct long-distance road freight transport, which is mainly affected on our territory by the structure of the national economy and the position of the Czech Republic, which is in the centre of the EU. From this perspective, the distance-based charging of motorways and 1^st category roads is fairer than the road tax paid by Czech carriers. This was also one of the reasons why the amendment to the legislation abolished the road tax for vehicles weighing under 12 tons and reduced the tax rate for heavier vehicles.

In the long run, most foreign vehicles come from Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

In line with expectations, the number of toll transactions recorded by the CzechToll satellite system increased in the summer months. The year-on-year increase of 11% in August (from 85 million in August 2021 to 96 million) is mainly due to an expansion of the toll road network by 373 kilometres as of 1 July 2022.

“The financial benefit of expanding the network of 1^st category roads will only be evaluated in the long run; traffic in the summer months is affected by the summer break and July holidays. For example, on the I/20 road between Písek and Plzeň, however, we did not notice an increase in the intensity of lorry traffic in the summer, which would indicate that carriers used to bypass this toll section on the I/22 road, ” said Petr Chvátal, CzechToll COO. It is that I/22 road between Písek and Plzeň that has been recently included in July as one of the roads where vehicles weighing over 3.5 tonnes are required to pay tolls.

In August, carriers paid a total of 1.232 billion Czech crowns. This represents a year-on-year increase of 10.3%. At the end of August, almost 712,000 vehicles weighing over 3.5 tons were registered in the electronic toll system, of which over 539,000 vehicles had foreign license plate numbers.

The number of on-board units issued to carriers exceeded 574 thousand.