Toll-booth tender as yet unmanned

A tender for the construction of toll booths on the A4 highway in southern Poland, worth some EUR 35 (zł.135.5) million, was due to be announcd in September 2006, but it never happened. The latest announcement from the Ministry of Transport says the tender will be called "soon." The government had earlier decided not to choose a company to manage the highway section between Katowice and Wrocław, but instead to pass the management to the General Director for National Roads and Motorways (GDDKiA).

Once the booths are built, GDDKiA will select a company to collect the tolls. The money will be passed on to the National Road Fund (KFD) and will be spent on the renovation of the existing roads and highways.

When will drivers have to pay for the journey from Katowice to Wrocław? "The final date when [the tolls] will start being collected has not been set yet, but I assume it will not be earlier than the first half of 2009," says Andrzej Maciejewski, GDDKiA's spokesperson.

The price that drivers will have to pay is also unknown. The Ministry has recently increased the maximum toll per kilometer to zł.0.23 (zł.23 per 100 km). At that price, a journey from Katowice to Wrocław would cost zł.40.

Last year, Minister of Transport Jerzy Polaczek promised that drivers would not pay more that zł.10 per 100 km. Maciejewski says that last year's increase occurred due to inflation. "[The maximum] wasn't much lower earlier, and we were still paying less than that per hundred kilometers," adds Maciejewski.