La Línea expects to make €30 million a year from toll; booth site chosen

Far from giving up on the idea of a toll for visitors to La Línea, Mayor Alejandro Sánchez met with his team on the Council yesterday, which came out with a figure for revenue of approximately €30 million per year as the result of the toll. According to a press release, the meeting defined how the toll - significantly called a 'decongestion tax' - would be applied to the millions of vehicles that come through the town on their way to Gibraltar. The team points out that there is an applicable legal framework for such a tax (which various bodies, including the Government of Gibraltar, have said would be illegal) and gives London and Riga (Latvia) as examples. The Council pointed out, too, that>
the toll would "revitalize the town, and relaunch it financially, given a lack of resources from the central government that would guarantee a future for La Línea."

The press release made no mention of the price of the toll but a local newspaper says that on asking the Mayor about it, the issue was avoided. The reason was that technical details, including the price, would be given at a press conference called for Monday.

With a little calculation based on previous La Línea utterances, some ten million cars supposedly come through the town on their way to the Rock. If today's estimate of €30 million is right, this would place the toll at €3.

Regarding the location of a toll booth, it will supposedly be set up some 75 m from the Gibraltar vehicle exit towards the sports centre. Traffic would be diverted toward the right as they exit the Rock and must inevitably pass by the booth for payment. There are apparently doubts about whether such a diversion would in fact make traffic more congested for heavy vehicles, their entry and exit area being neaqrby. However, no firm decision has been made.

Although the IU and PSOE partties oppose the measure, Sánchez (PP) is firm in his decision, alleging that he wants to apply it because "vehicles collapse the entrance to La Línea, and we have lost four kilonmeters of bech so that Gibraltar could have and access road." This because of neglect by the central government.

In an article by Brian Reyes, The Gibraltar Chronicle headlines that the UK expresses its concern to Spain and a spokesman for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office confirmed that the matter had been discussed at least twice over the past fortnight. (See the entire article here.)