Free of charge will be another 111 kilometers of highways, selected ring roads around cities and cro

Since 2017, the Ministry of Transport will remove from charging additional 11 highway stretches that consist of city bypasses and places where a highway meets I. class roads. These include, for example, entrances to Prague and part of the Prague ring road, a highway around Pilsen, Usti nad Labem, Olomouc, Prostejov or Beroun. By this step, the Ministry of Transport builds on its decision from 2016 when charges were excluded from 45 km stretches where a highway meets I. class road

"We want to accommodate all local drivers to make them not avoid a highway due to a charge and unnecessarily not drive through a town on lower classes roads. With removing other 11 stretches, we build on our last year’s steps that have proven successful. The cities are clearly relieved and mayors of those, where led a diversion for all without highway vignettes, evaluate our actions positively. At the same time, it confirmed our assessment that there would be no economic loss. The sales of highway vignettes, on the contrary, are growing this year," said Transport Minister Dan Tok.
Since the next year, the Ministry of Transport will remove the obligation to have a highway vignette on additional 11 stretches of Czech highways with a total length of 111 kilometers. Specifically, they include (see attached map) entrance to Prague from the highway D7 down the street K Barrandovu (where motorists can pass through a street circuit then) and entrances to Prague for residents of neighboring villages, i.e. stretches of highways D6, D7, D10, and D11. Among the newly uncharged city bypasses also belong Beroun and Kralův Dvůr at D5 which is 7 kilometers around the city. Free of charge will also be a 22 km long stretch of the D5 highway around Pilsen and 20 km long stretch in Usti nad Labem on the D8 highway which is accompanied by the road I/13. The same exceptions are going to be on the stretches of Olomouc on the D35 highway where won’t be charged a section up to the road I/55, a five-kilometer stretch on the D46 around Prostejov.
These changes should have almost no impact on the return of money from highway vignettes that has grown steadily and made 4.3 billion crowns by the end of August 2016 which is already comparable with the almost full year 2015. "Highways are constructions paid from the money of taxpayers, therefore, they should serve people as much as possible. This step that will allow using a highway without a charge wherever highway creates a bypass of the city, is a proactive step towards drivers. Today, they have to suffer for that we are finally beginning to build and also repair rundown roads after previous governments. This year we give 12 billion into repairs of highways and I. class roads and for the second year already, we have helped the regions to fix their twos and threes. Last year we gave the regions 4.5 billion for repairs, this year 3 billion,” said Finance Minister Andrej Babis.
The Ministry of Transport has already prepared an amendment to a decree on time charging for 2017 that will newly provide a list of stretches to be exempted from tolls for vehicles up to 3.5 tons. Until the end of September, a draft amendment to the decree will go into an inter-departmental consultation process. "It may not be the final number. We are yet going to analyze other parts of the highway network where exempting some stretches might help citizens,“ said Minister Tok.