Increase in motorway toll prices: after + 4.75% in 2023 and + 3% in 2024, a new increase already announced for 2025

Toll prices had already seen a very significant increase of 4.75% in 2023, then 3% in 2024. So it will not stop there. According to information from Le Parisien, confirmed by AFP, a new increase is expected on February 1, 2025: it will be + 0.92% on average.

This average increase will, however, be below the rate of inflation, “the fruit of a real battle to defend the purchasing power of the French”, justified the entourage of the Minister of Transport, François Durovray. This average increase is also “lower” than the increase in tolls in 2018 and 2019, “i.e. before the health crisis and before the energy shock linked to the war in Ukraine”, noted this source on condition of anonymity.

“Reinvent the model” of motorway tolls?

The Banque de France currently estimates that price increases will reach 1.5% next year. In addition to inflation, the annual evolution of motorway prices is calculated on the basis of the investment plans of the concession companies.

On November 13, François Durovray said he was determined to “reinvent the model” of motorways at the end of the current concessions, after a meeting with their managers. The ministry then announced that a conference on the future of mobility financing planned for early 2025 would include the issue of “motorway network management”. The end of the main concessions is planned between 2031 and 2036.

On October 23, a report submitted to the Senate recommended maintaining motorway tolls at the end of the current concessions, very profitable for their managers, but to reform their model in depth, by reducing the duration of the contracts and the number of kilometers of each concession to avoid the control of a handful of big players. The price of tolls could remain stable, but part of the sums collected could be devoted to the maintenance of non-concessioned motorways, national roads which are deteriorating, or the railway network, according to this report by the centrist senator of Eure Hervé Maurey .

In 2015, Ségolène Royal, then Minister of Ecology, obtained a price freeze, but it was counterbalanced by increases from 2019 to 2023 as part of an agreement which also provided for an extension of concessions and a plan motorway recovery of 3.2 billion euros.