From Tarragona to Alicante and Seville to Cadiz. A total of 468 km of toll motorways AP-7 (374 kilometers) and AP-4 (94 kilometers) will be released from the next 1 January. Drivers of cars will pay 45,90 euros (62,80 for trucks) to perform the journey by the mediterranean coast and 7,45 euros (12,89 for trucks) by the axis of the Guadalquivir river.
The entry into force of the measure thus fulfils a historic demand of both the politicians and the citizens of the communities valencian, Catalan and andalusian. After several extensions of the grant to Motorways of the Mediterranean (Aumar) and Motorways of the South, then integrated in Abertis, the Ministry of Development has now decided to lift the barriers of some key infrastructures that have been a focus of controversy due to the cost of their tolls, and by the comparative injury with respect to other Spanish territories, united by highways public and free of charge.
Travel by road, without stepping on the N-340 (now converted into dual carriageway at several sections), the distance of approximately 350 kilometres long and links two of the most important cities of the State, Barcelona and Valencia, has always been so heavy for the driver as lucrative for the dealer. From 2021, when is planned the release of the rest of the AP-7 —to the border of Tarragona to La Jonquera passing by Barcelona— all the journey, will be borne by the State budget.
toll roads with maturity
Highways
toll roads
Stretches of toll released
Stretches of toll with maturity next
Sections liberalize the 31-12-2019
Tarragona
Castellón
Valencia
Alicante
Seville
Cádiz
100 km
AP-4
Sevilla-Cádiz
31-12-2019
AP-7
Alicante-Tarragona
31-12-2019
Source: own elaboration and companies.
THE COUNTRY
toll roads with maturity
Highways
toll roads
Stretches of toll released
Stretches of toll with maturity next
Sections liberalize the 31-12-2019
Girona
Barcelona
Zaragoza
Lleida
Tarragona
Castellón
Valencia
Alicante
Seville
Cádiz
100 km
AP-4
Sevilla-Cádiz
31-12-2019
AP-7
Alicante-Tarragona
31-12-2019
Source: own elaboration and companies.
THE COUNTRY
Stretches of toll roads with maturity
Name, path, date and awarded company
Stretches of toll released
Highways
Stretches of toll with maturity next
toll roads
Sections liberalize the 31-12-2019
AP-7
Zaragoza-
Mediterranean
31-8-2021
Acesa (Abertis)
AP-2
Tarragona
La Jonquera
31-8-2021
Acesa (Abertis)
Vitoria
Logroño
Burgos
Girona
Lleida
Barcelona
Zaragoza
Tarragona
Castellón
Valencia
AP-7
Montmeló-
El Papiol
31-8-2021
Acesa (Abertis)
Alicante
Seville
Cádiz
AP-4
Sevilla-Cádiz
31-12-2019
Aumar (Abertis)
AP-7
Alicante-Tarragona
31-12-2019
Aumar (Abertis)
100 km
Source: own elaboration and companies.
THE COUNTRY
Drivers like Oliver Aguilera show your satisfaction by the measure. Open the calculator of your mobile phone and multiply the 260 days of this 2019. “I’ll spare you the 600 euros a year. Gain time and money” sums up this sevillian while hurries up your coffee at a bar in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz). At the dawn of the 24 of December, the ambulance driver has just finished a guard more and more, and still dressed in his orange uniform and blue, start the engine of the Volkswagen Golf that will take you to your house in Dos Hermanas (Seville). You have to take the National road IV to avoid the payment of Cádiz to Seville.
the opening of The AP-7, with an average density of daily traffic of about 23.500 vehicles, it will generate a savings to the users 230 million annual in the Community of Valencia and 70 million in Catalonia. The minister of Promotion, José Luis Abalos, has explained that these figures “are the equivalent of if rebajáramos 5.3% the VAT is levied in the Valencian Community”. The president of valencia, Ximo Puig, also a socialist, held the “big news, especially for the central region (where they are located in tourist resorts such as Dénia, Xàbia, Altea and Benidorm). Different platforms of users, valencian and Catalan, have achieved their goal of gratuity after being reclamándola over the years with multiple measures of pressure, such as road cuts or payments in chump change.
The writer Santigo Posteguillo lives in Valencia and teaches at the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón. Choose the AP-7 at times for security reasons when severely congested the highway (CV-10). He is in favour of the liberalization of the toutopian, but above all it is concerned about the deterioration of the train. “I’ve spent my 27 years going to the University of Castellón and now it takes even more than before. It is amazing. So much talk about climate change, we may have to resort to the private car…!”.
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The toll highways of the State rise by a 0,84% in 2020 The traffic on the freeway, bailed out by the State shoots up almost 13% on the lower price
The carrier will be another of the professional groups most benefited by the measure. Your savings will be between 2,000 and 2,500 euros per vehicle and month, and between 4% and 5% of the total costs, according to the secretary general of the Valencian Federation of Transport Entrepreneurs, Carlos Garcia. In this way, the professionals who cover routes in proximity will be able to make use of this pathway, something they avoided up until now to save on toll costs. Also the migrants who travel in the summer from various european countries to Morocco and Algeria, fundamentally, it will save a pinch.
The only connection is payment of a capital of province of andalusia (Cádiz), with its administrative centre (Seville) is used by a few 24.477 daily drivers. Liberalization “means removing a tort historic into a land that has suffered for half a century a significant mortgage for its socio-economic development,” says Irene Garcia, president of the Provincial council of Cadiz. Promotion estimated that the free will “an annual savings of 80 million euros” for the tens of millions of users who travel through the year.
Oliver lives in Seville but it works at Cadiz and travels to the old country to save the AP-4. JUAN CARLOS TORO THE COUNTRY
Oliver Aguilera has been three years since she started working as a technician in health emergencies in the company cadiz Ambulancias Barbate. Combined shifts of eight or 12 hours in The Port, Jerez, Puerto Real and Cadiz to win a € 1,600 monthly, of which “about 240” to you will on diesel. With these accounts, you have no recourse to the national road, a road with only one lane in each direction, and filled with trucks who want to avoid the toll, and where the saturation has led to a multitude of fatal accidents. Promotion estimated that 30% of the traffic of this road will go to the current highway, which “will result in an improvement of road safety in the traffic.”
Layoffs of 140 people
Not all of the opinions, however, are complacent. The main affected are the 140 employees of the tolls made redundant with a redundancy programme in both highways. 140 other maintenance should be subrrogados to the awarded companies. “We are the B-side of the popular free”, says Vicent Gollart, who works in Aumar since they opened to traffic the first sections, in 1974 (the whole is put into service in 1984). He has seen how it has evolved, the Spanish society, the first from his toll booth and then from the remote control centre. “Now almost everyone pays with card. For years now, which is automated throughout the process. Only occasionally, the workers occupied the booths”, explains the representative of UGT in the company. Gollart believes that the loss ratio will increase in the AP-7 toll-free and notes that “free will not be: the pay for all with budgets, use it or not.” It is something, he says, that has already happened in the AP-1 Burgos-Armiñón after its liberalization.
In 1972, they opened the Highway to the South. The company says that they spent eight billion euros per year in maintenance. Promotion estimated that it will cost $ 5.4 million public in this chapter. Aumar, for its part, ensures that the annual maintenance rises up to 31 million in the AP-7. In the days prior to the liberalization there are debates among experts about how to finance motorways and their maintenance. The reduction of the cost of the tolls, payments as the eurovignette (an adhesive that must be purchased and pasted on the windshield of the users and that it works as a sort of flat fee to use all of the highways) or the charges for congestion are some of formulas raised to the future.
Meanwhile, the Development has been commissioned to FCC, Sacyr and API, through the “emergency contracts”, the maintenance of the two sections of the motorway AP-7 and AP-4 Seville-Cadiz from 1 January. The Ministry has resorted to this solution in the appeal filed by Abertis against the contract of November of tender under which it was entrusted to Sacyr for the maintenance of the stretch of the AP-7 between Tarragona and Valencia, and Matinsa, a subsidiary of FCC, the path between Valencia and Alicante. API Mobility shall, for its part, the AP-4. The contracts include the demolition-out of the toll booths and their conservation in both entering into force of the contract used.
