Free-flow tolling: the frictionless shakedown run by France’s motorway operators

Several times a year I drive up from Valence to the Nevers-Magny-Cours racing circuit, which means I regularly pass through those stretches of French motorway now converted to “free flow” tolling. The A79 in the Allier, the Paris-to-Normandy corridors, the Boulay exit in Moselle, and soon the Haute-Savoie and the future A69 between Toulouse and Castres. The pitch is progress: no more queues, less pollution, seamless traffic. What you actually get is a beautifully engineered trap.

The mechanics are simple. Infrared cameras read your license plate. If you don’t have a transponder, you have seventy-two hours to pay. Miss that window and the machine starts turning. A 10 euro penalty if you settle within fifteen days, 90 euros beyond that, 375 euros after two months. A few euros’ worth of driving becomes a serious bill. And nobody sent you so much as a reminder.

Yet motorway operators can pull your mailing address straight from the national vehicle registry, an access the state itself arranged for them. The proof is that they do write to you, just not until the penalty has ripened. They could, like any other service provider on earth, send you a plain invoice within days of your trip. They prefer to wait for the clock to run out and jump straight to the sanction. The result is that the occasional driver, distracted, tired, or simply unfamiliar with the system, becomes a fare dodger without knowing it. A windfall. We have seen this machinery before, with paid parking and its post-parking penalty, another sanction dressed up as a user fee.

The numbers bear it out. On the Paris-Normandy network alone, late-payment penalties brought Sanef 25 million euros in 2025. For the Mont Blanc concession, France’s transport regulator projected 4.8 million euros in tolls from non-transponder vehicles for 2029, against 18.9 million euros in penalties. Four times more. When the system launched, the “evasion” rate among passenger cars without a transponder hit 50 percent. It has since fallen to 16 percent. The lesson was taught one invoice at a time.

We are assured the whole thing is legal, and indeed it is. Article 529-6 of the Code of Criminal Procedure sets up a small marvel, fleshed out by decree no. 2020-1494, which fixes the 10 and 90 euro tiers. The offense is recorded by the operator’s own sworn agents, meaning by employees of the motorway company itself, and it is extinguished by a “settlement” between that company and the offender. The text states in black and white that the flat-rate penalty accrues to the operator. Read that again. A private company holding a concession over public infrastructure records the offense itself, sets the tempo of the punishment, and pockets the proceeds. It is merchant, bailiff, and beneficiary of the fine all at once. No judge, no public official, no adversarial hearing before the bill has already tripled. Legal, yes. Fair, no. In any other sector, turning a missed payment into a tenfold penalty without first attempting to collect the underlying debt would be deemed abusive. Here it is written into law. The Transport Ministry waves the question away: this data, it says, is not meant to be made public. Translation: nobody looks too closely at the take.

The banners strung across overpasses are not enough. At 80 miles an hour, at night, in the rain, you miss them. No text message, no email, no letter arrives to warn you within the three-day window. Only regulars and subscribers come out clean. Everyone else, occasional drivers, tourists, people without smartphones, pays the price. And along the way these gantries further normalize automated plate reading, the creeping surveillance now reaching even our local recycling centers. When lawmakers finally stir, all they propose is extending the deadline to one month. Nothing on any duty to inform clearly, nothing on sending an invoice first, nothing on publishing the revenue.

This is not a modernized public service. It is a business model that monetizes ignorance and forgetfulness, grafted onto concessions that already pay out 33 euros in dividends for every 100 euros of toll. Motorway companies are rolling out barrier-free stretches because the system earns far more than the toll itself. Are they deliberately keeping drivers in the dark? Perhaps not. But they have no earthly incentive to inform them properly, and the economics take care of the rest, exactly as they do every time the state sets a fiscal trap for motorists after luring them into the scheme in the first place.

When parliament returns this fall, its members would do well to look beyond a simple extension of the deadline. Require an invoice to be sent before any surcharge. Cap the penalty at the real cost of processing the file. Publish the amounts collected. Mandate signage a driver can actually read at speed. Above all, rewrite the clause that poisons the whole arrangement: as long as the penalty accrues to the operator, the operator will remain devoted to the penalty. The day that money goes entirely to the public treasury, we will see clear signage and prompt reminder letters bloom as if by miracle. Until then, “free flow” will remain what it already is for far too many drivers: a money trap dressed up as progress.