highway tolls

No need to have coins, machines accept banknotes and even give change.

Just swipe a credit card. It's fast and simple. Using cash greatly slows down your trip and probably limits you to the lanes where you can Q up to pay cash. I like to keep things simple when driving in Europe. Fumbling with all those coins seems like a safety matter as well. Enjoy Provence.

Just swipe a credit card. It's fast and simple. Using cash greatly slows down your trip and probably limits you to the lanes where you can Q up to pay cash. I like to keep things simple when driving in Europe. Fumbling with all those coins seems like a safety matter as well. Enjoy Provence.

Thanks, everyone, for your help! The viamichelin website is a new one for me, and it looks as if it will be very valuable as we travel. Knowing we can use bills or a credit card takes all the "first-day" pressure off.

Tolls can be estimated at viamichelin. Definitely have the coins ready. We went through all sorts of toll plazas over the past several days. Not all accepted bank notes. Swiping a credit card isn't possible, but inserting your chip & pin card is. You may have your credit card accepted. You may find a manned booth to go through. But then again you might not, and the coins will be your insurance that you can get through.

One comment about credit cards. I have an Andrews card, one of the few true chip and PIN cards available in America, and it still didn't work at any of the French toll booths that I tried it in on my recent trip. I probably tried 4 or 5 times. The tolls were generally too high for me to have enough coins to pay them, so I usually wound up using bills. It worked fine, but I had to keep a good grip on the bills when it was windy, and then make sure to reach all the way down in the change slot and get all the coins that were spit out. It was rare that there were any manned booths.

Ok, got it - be ready for anything. Always good advice. One follow-up question: Do you pay your toll all at once as you exit the highway (like the Pennsylvania turnpike)based on how far you've driven on the road, or are there tollbooths at intervals as you travel down the road (like the Garden State Parkway in NJ)? Thanks again, everyone who's helping us!

Both. And don't count on any kind of credit card. I've got both and it's a crapshoot. A swiper worked once - - about twenty years ago. There's almost always a manned booth on the far right side - - the icon's a dude with his paw stuck out.

There are fewer and fewer manned booths (and they aren't always to the right - I've found the t lines for pass holders are usually to the far right). What some places have is one person who sits in a booth on the side of the toll plaza. If you have problems, there's a button you can push (might be on the pasenger side, out of sight) to call this person. Get off on a smaller exit and you'll have one non-automated toll booth. And like Ed said, you'll find you pay by distance and by just flat fee. And if you were to drive round-trip, you aren't guaranteed to have the same toll in both directions. Crapshoot is a good way to describe tolls and toll plazas in France.

Nothing worse than hitting an unmanned toll area and finding out your credit card isn't accepted as a line of traffic begins to build up behind you. The only card that worked for us was Visa (and sometimes it didn't) and our chip and pin Travelex card didn't work at all. I called and was told that card acceptance was based on the relationship the American issuer had with French banks. The toll roads are government-operated and I guess they try to support French banks with this little wrinkle. Bottom line: take a bag of Euro coins with you (forget paper Euros) of mixed valuation. Oh, you should also be aware that out in the countryside there are gas stations that are unattended and which will not work without chip and pin cards. There is a company that operates a lot of these, some of which share space with stores. The store has no control over the pumps and cannot accept cash. So, until Travelex comes out with its new card this autumn, or unless you have one of the rare American-issued chip and pin cards, you could find yourself spending an unscheduled night out in the boonies.

Actually the toll roads are government-owned and corporately-operated as concessions.

Great questiom. I will be renting a car in France and hadn't thought about how to handle the tolls. forgive me for piggy backing on your questiom, but wondering if the toll roads use an express pass service, like EZPass in the Northeast and if so, can the pass be obtained when you rent the car?

Yes, there is a pass system good on all French autoroutes, called Liberte. Go into the first office you find to the side of the first toll plaza to get one. It will work linked with American Express but not Visa.

And you might even be able to get Liberte in advance at home. I checked out their web site, and it looks like you can do it, but I haven't pursued it yet so I'm not positive.