They were supposed to increase more slowly than inflation. The tolls of the motorway networks will finally increase by around 2% from 1er February, after an increase of 0.44% at the start of 2021, according to a series of decrees of the Ministry of Ecological Transition published in Official newspaper, Sunday, January 30.
For cars (class 1 vehicle), rates increase by 1.89% on the network Cofiroute, 2.19% on ASF, 1.91% on Sanef and SAPN, or 2.05% on APRR ; official increases which confirm the figures from the Ministry of Transport reported in December by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The very strict contracts linking the motorway companies to the State provide for an automatic increase in toll rates every year on the 1er February, depending in particular on inflation and work undertaken on the network.
fear of inflation
“The toll rates at 1er February 2022 will not increase more than inflation”, had insisted in December a source close to the dealers. Inflation in France accelerated to 1.6% over the whole of 2021, as an annual average, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), the highest since 2018, under the effect of a surge in energy prices and a rise in the prices of manufactured goods. In December, consumer prices increased by 2.8% year on year.
At the beginning of 2019, in the midst of a challenge to “yellow vests”, the government had asked motorway companies to take action and obtained a 30% reduction in prices for regular drivers, in the absence of a reduction for all.
The government had ruled out the idea of freezing toll rates, as Ségolène Royal, then Minister of Ecology, had decided in 2015, because it would have had to be caught up later.