The president of Benidorm’s Hotel Association, Toni Mayor, has expressed his satisfaction with the announcement from the Minister of Development, José Luis Ábalos, that he will eliminate the AP7 toll as it enters the holiday town but he has asked that it be moved elsewhere ‘to avoid saturation’.
Hoteliers believe that freeing traffic from the current toll road will fill it with heavy traffic (trucks) and complicate the movement of vehicles, which will cause great discomfort for tourists.
He has said that a “symbolic” toll should be applied in the section Tarragona-Castellón, to avoid the saturation of the road by lorries and trucks. The hoteliers fear that it’s removal will attract far more heavy vehicles to the motorway but if it were moved elsewhere they would still be deterred from it’s use, while tourists traveling from Alicante and Valencia would still pay in order to travel on a decongested highway.
In an interview published by El Pais, the minister announced that the Government will remove the tolls on the motorways whose 50-year concession ends between 2018 and 2021.
His decision directly affects the AP-1 between Burgos and Armiñón (Álava), a stretch of 84 kilometers, whose concession expires on November 30, and the AP-7, between Alicante and Tarragona, and the AP-4, between Seville and Cádiz, where the concessions end on December 31, 2019.
