Today’s the first of a couple of blog posts about things that I’ve done to make our holidays a little easier. This blog post is about Emovis Tag, who sell a small electronic tag to pay for motorway toll plazas in France, Spain and Portugal.
Normally, we go to France on our summer holiday, and take our car with us. Unlike British motorways (with one exception), French motorways are usually privately owned and financed, and so most charge a toll for use. Since 2018, we’ve used a tag from Emovis Tag, which lets you drive through motorway toll plazas without having to stop and pay. Instead, your motorway toll charges are accumulated, and then taken from your UK bank account by direct debit each month.
For France, you get a standard ‘Liber-T’ tag, and there’s a separate tag that works for motorways in Spain and Portugal. That means that if you’re driving through France and either Spain, Portugal or both, you’ll need two tags. Emovis Tag will send you your tag(s) by post, and you fit them to the dotted area of your windscreen.
Then, once you’re in France, and come across a motorway toll plaza, you ensure that you’re in a lane with the ‘Liber-T’ icon (a lower-case ‘t’) and drive through at a walking pace. The tag should beep loudly at you, and the barrier in front should open to let you through. There’s usually no need to come to a complete stop.
Some motorway toll plazas have longer lanes where you can approach at 30 km/h (about 20mph) and so you don’t have to slow down as much.
Advantages
The key advantage of having one of these tags is that you don’t need to come to a complete stop, either to collect a ticket or pay a motorway toll charge. Whilst this may only save a few seconds, it adds up if you have a long journey.
It also overcomes an issue with British right-hand drive cars; most machines and booths at the motorway toll plazas are designed for left-hand drive vehicles. If you don’t have a front-seat passenger in the car, or they’re like my wife and have a tendency to sleep in cars, then you don’t need to reach over to pay. There’s also no risk of losing the paper ticket given to you when you join the motorway, so you won’t be overcharged if you do lose it. And you don’t have to worry about not having the correct change or having a foreign currency card declined.
Disadvantages
However, a key point to note is that this isn’t in any way cheaper. You have to pay for the tag, and there are annual and monthly account fees to pay (although the monthly fees are capped). There is a deposit for the tag which you can get back if you return it, which is worth considering if you don’t go abroad at least once a year. We’re staying in Britain for our holiday this year, and probably next year too, so I’m debating whether it’s worth returning the tag.
Therefore, you are paying more for an easier experience whilst on holiday. I think it’s worth it, but it’s up to you.
Something else to bear in mind is that, whilst the majority of French motorways have tolls, not all of them do. If you’re visiting Brittany and Normandy, then the main A84 autoroute is free throughout. On our 2022 France holiday, we didn’t encounter any toll-charging roads.
If you do decide to go ahead, you can sign up using this link to get a €5 credit on your account.
@neilturner one other issue that can happen: tags don’t always work if you have a heated windscreen. The Humber tag system says to put it in the upper middle where there is a gap in the heating elements, except that is where my sensor pack is for the headlights/wipers/etc…