Party at service station to celebrate toll-free AP-7 motorway; AP-4 also sheds its charges

Campaigns to end the tolls on the AP-7 stretch starting from the Valencia province towns of Silla and finishing at the pictured exit in San Juan (Alicante province) have been ongoing for nearly 20 years, and the start of 2020 will see it become free of charge for the first time since the 1970s.

Tolls along this 157-kilometre section of the coastal highway from the French border to the Costa del Sol amount to about 150% of fuel costs for the same trek – and even when they were cheaper, they still added extra expense for long-distance drivers, especially commercial haulage firms.

To this end, the vast majority use the N-332 inter-provincial highway instead, which is free of charge.

But the N-332 runs straight through the town centres of Favara, Bellreguard, L'Alqueria de la Comtessa, Palmera, and Oliva (Valencia province), and Gata de Gorgos, Benissa, Altea, Albir and l'Alfàs del Pi (Alicante province), where they are single-carriageway and in the heart of residential and shopping zones.

All these towns have suffered permanent, round-the-clock gridlock, noise levels proven to be up to 50% higher than the World Health Organisation's recommended safe maximum, air pollution, damage to road surfaces and buildings – blackened rendering and worn-out tarmac – hazardous situations for pedestrians, accidents, road rage and very long delays with traffic queues moving so slowly it is actually quicker to walk than to drive.

So it is no wonder they are actively celebrating – or that a huge party will be held tonight at the Sant Antoni service station near the Benissa exit off the AP-7.

The contract with franchise firm AUMAR's holding company Abertis had been due to expire on the last day of 2019, meaning the AP-7 would become toll-free from January 1 – but Abertis announced last week that it did 'not see the point' in its toll-booth employees missing their New Year's Eve celebrations 'for the sake of a few euros' the company would earn in the two hours before the start of 2020, so it has opted to raise the barriers at 22.00 tonight and allow drivers to use the motorway free for the last 120 minutes of 2019.

Farther up the AP-7, the stretch between the Sagunto (Valencia) and Castellón exit and the Tarragona exit will also become toll-free tonight, as will the 121 kilometres of the AP-4 between Sevilla and Cádiz.

The central government's public works ministry, which will now take over ownership and maintenance of these motorways, says the AP-7 from Valencia to Alicante will see an increase in traffic of around 30%, but that the trunk road 'will be able to handle it', especially as it is often nearly empty at present.

Local authorities in towns with a toll-booth exit are paid annual IBI property tax – a form of council tax payable by anyone, individual or commercial entity, who owns land, buildings or both – meaning those in Ondara (Alicante) and Oliva (Valencia), among others, will lose out on tens if not hundreds of euros from 2020 onwards, but these two councils in particular have said it is worth the financial hit if it means having a motorway close by which does not more than double petrol costs to use.

The new 'free-of-charge' status for the AP-7 and AP-4 follow just a year after the tolls were scrapped on the AP-1, which runs from the cathedral city of Burgos in the centre-northern region of Castilla y León to the town of Armiñón in the Basque Country province of Álava, the capital of which is Vitoria.

This was the first toll road franchise in the country not to be renewed or replaced, although it is not clear whether the AP-7 and AP-4 will be the last.

Neither is it thought that the toll-free AP-1 or AP-4 created, or will create, such a furore as that of the AP-7 becoming free to use – in fact, Oliva town council has had a countdown, even including minutes and seconds, to the day the motorway becomes toll-free, for well over a year and a half.

Main motorways in Spain without tolls are purely A-roads – such as the A-7 from Alicante to Málaga – as the 'P' in 'AP' stands for peaje, the Spanish word for toll.

Once you hit a road with a name that starts 'AP' rather than 'A', you should make sure you have your purse to hand.

It is not clear whether the newly-free AP-4 and AP-7 will be renamed as the A-4 and A-7, like the non-toll parts of these same motorways.