The Clean Air Action Group has launched a petition for the Mayor’s Office to start the preparation of the introduction of the urban toll in Budapest, including the transparent and sensible use of toll revenues.

What do we expect from urban tolls?

1. A reduction in vehicle traffic

With well-designed tolls, the number of vehicles using the roads can be set at a level that matches the capacity of the Budapest road network. There are no jams, traffic is steady.

2. Reduction of air pollution

A significant proportion of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, in particular nitrogen oxides, soot and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, are emitted by motor vehicles. Poor air quality in Budapest causes around 2,500 premature deaths and 200,000 cases of illness every year. Polluted air can cause cardiovascular diseases, asthma, cancer and can impede foetal development. It has been estimated that the total environmental and health damage caused by motor vehicles exceeds 1000 billion forints per year.

If tolls reduce traffic, air pollution will also be reduced. Fewer vehicles driving in a continuous, non-dragging pattern will cause much less air pollution than many vehicles stopping and restarting, blocking each other.

3. Money for the maintenance of transport infrastructure, the development of public transport and support for the needy

A road network wears out and breaks down with use. Minor road defects have to be repaired regularly, and roads that are completely destroyed have to be reconstructed, which costs money. Budapest has less money to maintain the road network than it needs to keep it up to standard, so the pavement of roads and streets is constantly deteriorating. The toll revenue can be used to replace the resources, even stop the deterioration.

And those in need should be helped not by not charging tolls, but by targeted social support.

A step forward in the implementation of “the user pays” and “the polluter pays” principles, as exemplified by the toll already applied to lorries (distance- and pollution-based tolls for lorries of 3.5 tonnes or more on the approximately 7100 km network of motorway and trunk road sections), which should be extended first to lorries using Budapest roads and then to passenger cars. The charge would depend on the following five factors, according to the Clean Air Action Group:

• the length of the journey,

• the environmental classification of the vehicle,

• the vehicle’s axle load,

• the route (e.g., higher in the city centre than in the suburbs),

• time of day (higher during peak than off-peak hours).

Please sign the petition on the introduction of urban tolls.

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