Toll booths will soon appear for the first time in Reykjavík, on three major roadways leading to and from the capital.
Three roads – Suðurlandsvegur, Vesturlandsvegur and Reykjanesbraut – are slated to be widened to accomodate a greater traffic flow. One way to pay for this would be to set up toll booths on all three roads, and this is in fact the proposal in a bill submitted recently by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
The IMF, as per its agreement with Iceland, has forbidden our country from taking out a loan for road improvement. As such, the money has to come from somewhere. Rather than take the 30 billion ISK required for the road project from elsewhere in the budget, toll booths have been proposed.
At the moment, there is only one toll booth in the entire country, at the mouth of the Hvalafjörður tunnel. While the bill does not state what the proposed toll amount would be, the tunnel toll is 900 ISK. This can be paid in cash or, for more frequent travellers, with a pre-paid electronic device that sits on the dashboard of your vehicle and is instantly scanned as you drive past.