e-flow where does the money go?

Ohm13

Where does all the money go? Who owns it? They must make hundreds of millions a year with the amount of traffic using the toll.

Atlantic Dawn

The money goes to sustain the country and its corrupt and backward practices.

halpin17

1.23 if you don't use any tolls in a month then it's just a discounted rate off the actual price for any other time you use it

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

No offence intended but are you genuinely asking what a toll road is and what the charge is for? Have you never encountered a toll before? M50, M1, East link, M6 etc?
It's a charge for using a stretch of road (often involving a bridge) to cover the construction costs that were met by PPP in most cases.
It's a pain, it's expensive but unfortunately it is a fact of motoring life around the world.

Are you a student new to driving? If so, you'll soon learn motoring is an expensive business and tolls are only a small part if it.

zbluebirdz

If you don't pass through the toll-gates on a regular basis, you can get one of those pay-as-you-go devices (pre-paid) and some of them don't have monthly fees.

See moneyguideireland.com for details on various options:
http://www.moneyguideireland.com/m50-toll-comparison-of-prices-and-options.html

dudara

As the OP has changed their question, I've moved this post to the Commuting &Transport forum

dudara

markpb

eFlow is owned by Sanef, a multi-national tolling company. They operate the M50 toll under contract from the National Roads Authority, part of the government. The revenue from the toll goes to the government after the operating costs of collecting the toll have been deducted. Those costs include the €30m to demolish the old toll booths, erect the gantries and fit the cameras (which aint cheap). Their ongoing costs include paying the costs of each transaction (cash fees, credit card fees, bank fees, etc) and paying the legal fees for suing people who don't pay.

A big chunk of the money (€50m per year) goes from the government to the previous owners, National Toll Roads which is the private company who originally built the toll. The reason they're still getting paid is because the government signed a contract with them which gave them tolling rights till 2020 in return for building and paying for the bridge. The contract allowed the government to break the contract early but to do so, they have to pay a percentage of the predicted revenue that NTR would have earned. This will be paid each and every year until 2020 (and will total €1.15bn by then).

And if there's anything left after that, it goes to M50CL the (private) company which was given the job of upgrading the M50 recently (which cost €1bn in total) and maintaining it day to day. That includes paying for the lights (€750,000 per year), the free breakdown-recovery service, salting and gritting during winter and maintaining the road surface (see here)


Edit: According to the NRA, an average of 111,957 vehicles passed over the toll each day last year. Of that, 8.1% were HGVs which are charged approximately three times as much. That gives an annual income of about 115m per year.

L1011

Ohm13 wrote: »

Where does all the money go? Who owns it? They must make hundreds of millions a year with the amount of traffic using the toll.

Mostly the NRA. The NRA. Probably doesn't take 100M let alone multiple hundreds.

The actual tolling is operated on a contract by Sanef ITS who seem to be paid about 40M a year for it - this covers all the staff costs, payment processing, and the capital costs of the tolling system. The remaining cash is then passed on to the NRA who use it, amongst other things, to pay M50 Concession Ltd who maintain the entire M50 on a contract basis - they also built part of the widening/junction upgrades.

Anything left goes in to the general NRA budget along with any profits from the Port Tunnel (it was breaking even, I don't know if its now profitable), any franchise fees from the profitable private toll roads (the publicly known contracts have a sliding scale where the NRA gets more and more of each toll as the traffic increases) and their exchequer funding. This then pays for everything the NRA does.

markpb

MYOB wrote: »

along with any profits from the Port Tunnel.

Isn't DPT partly owned by DCC and the NRA? Presumably any profits would be shared between them too?

L1011

markpb wrote: »

Isn't DPT partly owned by DCC and the NRA? Presumably any profits would be shared between them too?

I have no idea, if so I'd imagine so - though it'd be entirely down to whatever contract they have.