A frequent observation on the subject of motorways is that, compared to the rest of Europe, Italy is afflicted by a gap infrastructure due to insufficient investment. A look at the rest of Europe suggests that the topic of investment in reality it's not just about us. As an example, a 2015 UK Treasury report estimated that it would take thirteen years to close the road maintenance backlog, while in Germany an estimated €2013 billion maintenance gap was estimated in 6,5.
A comparison of investment expenditure on motorways, although not very reliable due to heterogeneous international classifications, indicates an expenditure equal to 0,10% of the Gross Domestic Product, much higher than in France (0,06%), although lower than the United Kingdom (0,14%) (Oxera elaborations on OECD and MIT data, 2015). The overall figure for all national roads shows an ordinary maintenance expense of 0,55%, a figure higher than France (0,12%) and the United Kingdom (0,24%). The Italian "infrastructural gap". appears limited to investment in new infrastructures, on which only 0,31% of GDP is spent (0,46% for France, 0,38% for Germany, 0,35% for the United Kingdom) (OECD data , 2015).
The issue of investment expenditure and its adequacy refers to the question of how this expenditure should be financed. In this regard, it should be remembered that any system has repercussions in terms of budgetary policies and distributional effects. A public company that does not charge a toll would still have to cover its costs with state funds. This model is partly followed in the UK and Germany but it has some drawbacks: recourse to the public budget eliminates any link between taxes paid by citizens and the use of the service. Another method that makes use of public funds is represented by the "purpose" tax, such as a fuel tax. In addition to the lack of a tenuous link with the use of the infrastructure, a purpose tax would require an increase in the tax burden. Similarly, the payment of an annual fee (eg the so-called "vignette") would not allow a differentiation of the cost on the basis of the frequency of use and the distance travelled.
In other words, although general taxation is still used in some countries, the tendency is to promote the principle that those who use the infrastructure – and usury – pay. Principle also recently supported by the European Commission. The myth of free access ignores that motorways are not a "free lunch": any financing system, from recourse to general taxation to tolls, ultimately falls on citizens but with much worse redistributive effects in the first case.
Once it is clear that the toll system is preferable, the question arises of how these are to be determined. And in the recent debate there have been occasions in which it has been stated that the Italian motorways are among the most expensive in Europe. A statement that has no basis in the data. In fact, according to a study by the European Commission published in 2017 (the data, shown in the table, are in euro cents/km, refer to 2016 and take into account the different purchasing power) among European countries with tolls paid at "tollgate", Italy is the country with the lowest cent/km ratio for light vehicles, equal to 6,78 cents/km. If we focus instead on heavy vehicles, only Germany and Belgium (where light vehicles are not required to pay the toll) have a cent/km ratio lower than our country (13,80 and 11,46 respectively, against 13,92 of Italy), while all the other European countries are at a much higher level. By way of comparison, the European Commission also reports in its document an estimate of the cost per kilometer of those countries that adopt the "vignette" system, but these data are not easily comparable.
The Italian motorway network also has some peculiarities (many sections built in the mountains, intense traffic of heavy vehicles that wear out the surface) which make it particularly expensive compared to many other European countries. This is why an international comparison that fully takes these factors into account would be even more favorable to our country than a simple comparison of the cost per kilometre.
Furthermore, again with reference to the level of motorway tolls, it often emerges in the public debate that they have increased significantly more than inflation. This is certainly confirmed by ISTAT data (+3,15% average annual increase in the period 2003-2017 for tolls against 1,65% of the consumer price index for the entire community), which however also show how increases in motorway tolls are in line with (if not lower than) those of the prices in the aviation sector (+4,03%), in the railway sector (+3,33%) and in the water sector (5,87%, probably also due to the growth in investments to partially cover the significant infrastructural gap).
