Dear Editor,
Tolls on the A22 (and other motorways in Portugal) will have to be accepted as part of the austerity measures. These will need to be part of the increased cost of motoring in general, and in Portugal in particular.
Efforts should be relentless to get the idiotic methods of collection altered so as to make the tax as painless as possible. Many column inches have been written in the Algarve Resident on why the current system is so bad, so I won’t waste time in agreeing with all the comments.
Now is the time to bombard the officious and mentally ill-equipped civil servants who devised the scheme, to at once offer us money-spending tourists a simpler method of immediate payment.
Do these idiots really think we want to spend our precious leisure time in Post Office queues or airport lines, trying to impart a few euros to pay tolls? We would be better off spending the time enjoying the lovely facilities and countryside for which we come to the Algarve. We can then return home and tell potential visitors what a pleasure it is to relax in the Algarve.
I have been a regular visitor to the Algarve for over 25 years, and will not cease visiting just on account of the tolls. But I will cease if officialdom doesn’t wake up to public pressure on methods of collection.
Do bear in mind, by the way, that it is in fact a pleasure to drive on the A22, even before the tolls. UK roads are very third world by comparison, with poor surfaces full of potholes and densely congested.
John S.F. Grindlay
Vilamoura
