Polish Infrastructure Ministry pushes for more road tolls to support rail

The Polish Infrastructure Ministry has followed through on a solid domestic rail freight industry request. The public administration body has submitted a draft bill envisioning the expansion of the road network covered by electronic tolls. In this way, it wants to increase road transport costs, create a more level playing field with rail and push shippers to opt for it.

The proposed policy does not aim to increase tolling prices. Instead, it wants to broaden the coverage of electronic tolls within the national motorway network. “Currently, the electronic toll is collected on approximately 3,620 kilometres of national roads,” the ministry underlined, according to Polish media.

“Expanding the road network covered by the electronic toll system is an action levelling out competitiveness. The tolling of newly built sections of high-class roads could reduce the inter-industry imbalance between road and rail transport that we currently face in Poland,” it added.

The infrastructure ministry’s reasoning follows that the road-tolling system is one of the structural imbalance factors between domestic road and rail transport. Consequently, it considers a fair solution to tackle this “market distortion that makes shippers choose road over rail, which is tolled way more heavily”.

For the Polish rail freight industry, this development must sound like music to their ears. Requests for high rail TACs to be subsidised via raised road tolls have been directed towards the government for some time already. With this move, the infrastructure ministry does not fully grant this request by using road toll income to subsidise rail costs. However, it indirectly benefits the rail industry since it creates equal conditions for shippers to choose their mode of preference.

Of course, this bill needs to be officially adopted before any discussion on concrete changes can take place.