Skip to main content

Switzerland increases fuel tax to create road maintenance fund

The Swiss government has created a fund for street and urban transport works to help ease what it says will be a deficit of around €1.26 billion each year up to by 2030. The fund will be created from a rise in road fuel tax from €0.27 to €0.33. Added money will come from a tax on electric vehicles due to start in 2020 and which will raise around €84 million a year, rising to around €275 million. The road maintenance fund also will receive around €366 million from taxes on imported cars and €320 mil
September 21, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
The Swiss government has created a fund for street and urban transport works to help ease what it says will be a deficit of around €1.26 billion each year up to by 2030.

The fund will be created from a rise in road fuel tax from €0.27 to €0.33.

Added money will come from a tax on electric vehicles due to start in 2020 and which will raise around €84 million a year, rising to around €275 million.

The road maintenance fund also will receive around €366 million from taxes on imported cars and €320 million from highway tolls.

Transport Minister Doris Leuthard set the stage for a tax hike when she announced the plans in February last year. She said at the time that traffic on Swiss roads has doubled since 1990 meaning Switzerland’s roads were wearing out that much faster.

At the time, the two transport associations TCS and ACS as well as the Swiss Road Transport Federation (ASTAG) welcomed Leuthard’s creation of the road fund but rejected the tax hike, according to a report by the Swiss English language newspaper The Local.

In a referendum in November 2013 the Swiss rejected government plans to increase the cost of a motorway tax disc to 100 francs from the current 40 as part of plans to pay for more road works.

Related Content

  • France earmarks €5bn for road works up to 2022
    September 28, 2018
    France will invest €5.1 billion in maintenance and construction of highways up to 2022 as part of a major transportation strategy. The money for highways is within €13.4 billion that the government pledged to invest in the general transportation sector. More than half of the money will be for railways. In September, the French government outlined its infrastructure spending priorities for the decade to 2028. The government is to prioritise investment at key rail hubs outside Paris. Half the total €13.4
  • New Polish government of Jaroslaw Kaczynski rethinks road spend
    December 7, 2015
    Poland might double road spend after the new government criticised spending calculations up to 2025 put together by the previous administration. The Vice-Minister of Infrastructure said expenditure would need to nearly double to around €47 billion for the planned new dual carriageways and motorways. A report by daily economic and political newspaper Rzeczpospolita said the government is calling the estimate of €3.7 million to build a 1km of road “unrealistic”. The rethink comes after Poland's euros
  • Tolling model for funding road development
    April 4, 2017
    Road tolling is being used worldwide as a way to develop highway infrastructure, with road users paying for access. Tolled roads are not a new concept and date back centuries, but in recent times, as governments have struggled to fund highway development programmes directly, tolling has increased in popularity worldwide. In Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, tolled highways are now extremely well established. The specifics of the business models vary but state-owned toll-road firms ty
  • Tolling model for funding road development
    April 4, 2017
    Road tolling is being used worldwide as a way to develop highway infrastructure, with road users paying for access. Tolled roads are not a new concept and date back centuries, but in recent times, as governments have struggled to fund highway development programmes directly, tolling has increased in popularity worldwide. In Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, tolled highways are now extremely well established. The specifics of the business models vary but state-owned toll-road firms ty