[B] Belgian Motorways • Autoroutes de Belgique • Belgische Autosnelwegen

[ChrisZwolle]

Part II

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[Daviedoff]

R8 Kortrijk, full-HD video:

[Wapper]

@ chriszwolle: I don't think that sign indicates the viaduct, because it's after that. I think it's just to anounce that you are in the Gentbrugge part of Gent.

[Road_UK]

Dutch speeders in Belgium will not receive a ticket at home anymore since the beginning of this year, a newspaper reports today. Belgian police says its too much of a hassle to go through a new European database, and without an address, they can't send the speeding tickets out to owners of speeding vehicles. Prior, the police used to ask the RDW, the Dutch agency that issues license plates, for details, but they have stopped supplying them to the Belgian authorities, stating that the European database is as good as anything else, upsetting the Belgians who are now sulking that the Dutch don't want to cooperate with them anymore. The city of Antwerp take notes of Dutch registration numbers of offending vehicles, in the hope to catch them at a later stage.

[ChrisZwolle]

The Belgian road vignette will be introduced in 2016. Apperently it will be required on all roads, not just motorways.

The weird thing is that the expected revenue from the vignette is just over € 2 billion. This is substantially more than the € 230 million revenue in Switzerland and the € 368 million in Austria, so I'm wondering what kind of ripoff we will be facing in 2016.

[Road_UK]

Traffic volumes are also a lot higher.

[ChrisZwolle]

That doesn't matter. You pay the same for an annual vignette whether you drive 1 or 500 times a year across a road. Some of the difference could be explained by the higher amount of transit traffic, although trucks will supposedly pay via a km-charge. Austria is not that much smaller than Belgium (8.4 vs 11 million inhabitants) and also has substantial through traffic and foreign holiday traffic who purchase vignettes. Austria sold 23.1 million vignettes last year, while Belgium has about 5.4 million registered vehicles.

[Road_UK]

Count the daily Dutch, German, French, Luxembourg and UK traffic and numbers will add up. Don't forget that the E411 functions as a through road for the French avoiding tolls on the French A4 andA26.

[ChrisZwolle]

I made a simplified calculation. The average sold vignette in Austria costs € 15,90. To get to 2 billion revenue, the average vignette in Belgium will have to cost € 67.

[Road_UK]

Based on how much traffic per country annually? Also include holiday and transit traffic, as well as the 1000s of French and Dutch commuter traffic that crosses the border every day to go to work in Belgium.
Edit: and keeping in mind that the Belgian vignette applies on all roads.

[aswnl]

Some thousand commuters will generate only 10-100 thousands of euro's, not billions. Transit traffic isn't that much except from holidays, and I believe a lot of Dutch going tot eastern France and Spain will travel via Germany from the day the vignette will be introduced. So not much income from them - the loss of taxes on fuel will possibly be higher than the income from Dutch from the southwest of NL. Trucks will generate income, but there's also a downside: Belgium by then will no longer gain money from the Euro-vignette for trucks, just like the German LKW-Maut. And even the tolled Liefkenshoektunnel will loose income to the Dutch Westerscheldetunnel...

[Road_UK]

Yes but you forget that the vignette applies on all roads, so all vehicles traveling in Belgium are required to display one. And you will be surprised how many Austrian registered vehicles in Mayrhofen alone do not have a vignette because they never travel on motorways.

[ChrisZwolle]

It's hard to imagine trips to Belgium or people living in Belgium never using the motorway. I doubt if it would make a substantial difference if only motorways or all roads would be tolled.

[italystf]

Imagine the situation in Baarle Hertog/Nassau: "this car is parked half in Belgium but it has no vignette, so we must fine it."

[Meurisse]

Originally Posted by ChrisZwolle

I made a simplified calculation. The average sold vignette in Austria costs € 15,90. To get to 2 billion revenue, the average vignette in Belgium will have to cost € 67.

A first unofficial rumour said the price is set to € 90 (a year) and they'll have to install at least thousand camera's for controling the use of the vignette.

Cars will need to have lager windshields when every country wants to have their vignette on it...

[Godius]

Let's hope that they will make decent roads with the revenue. But I'm afraid that the money is going te be used for a whole bunch of things except for decent road building.

[ChrisZwolle]

Originally Posted by Meurisse

A first unofficial rumour said the price is set to € 90 (a year) and they'll have to install at least thousand camera's for controling the use of the vignette.

The Austrian annual vignette is also almost € 90, so that doesn't explain the huge difference. There are 5.4 million passenger cars in Belgium, so € 90 would raise about € 486 million, provided every single passenger car needs a vignette. The other € 1.5 billion would have to be raised from foreign vehicles, which is a very unlikely amount (if the average short-term vignette costs € 15 you need 100 million foreign passenger cars on the road every year).

Something's not right.

[Road_UK]

Well, obviously they haven't set a price yet, nor is it really clear how they are going to implement it, so nobody can tell the annual revenue until we see a actual price list.

[Penn's Woods]

Originally Posted by Road_UK

Yes but you forget that the vignette applies on all roads, so all vehicles traveling in Belgium are required to display one. And you will be surprised how many Austrian registered vehicles in Mayrhofen alone do not have a vignette because they never travel on motorways.

Does any other country in Europe do that? Is it even legal? Seems to me it amounts to a fee to cross the border (at least by car)....

[Penn's Woods]

Originally Posted by Road_UK

Well, obviously they haven't set a price yet, nor is it really clear how they are going to implement it, so nobody can tell the annual revenue until we see a actual price list.

There were articles on Belgian papers' sites last week about the number of cameras that will go up just to read vignettes and license plates.

EDIT: http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/...re-plaque.html