Toll Roads in Ukraine Are Inevitable

(Based on an article by S. Matusiak, Editor-in-Chief of the Ukrainian multimedia project Auto24)

On June 10, 2026, the ElectroPerspective 2026 exhibition was held at Kyiv’s innovation park UNIT.City. The event focused on electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and regulation of the electric transport market.

During a panel discussion, Serhii Derkach, Deputy Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, noted that Ukraine still lacks a separate law on tolling, i.e., charging for road use. However, such a system will eventually be introduced, as it forms part of European regulatory requirements.

When people in Ukraine talk about toll roads, many imagine a separate highway with toll booths, as seen in some European countries. However, tolling is a broader concept. It may involve a vignette system for all vehicles, a separate charge for commercial transport, or a system where the fee depends on the vehicle category. If a vehicle uses the road, it contributes to financing its maintenance.

In other countries, the primary focus is on commercial transport, particularly trucks and buses, since they place greater stress on road infrastructure and use roads more intensively for commercial purposes.

A separate issue is whether electric vehicles should pay higher road charges because, unlike vehicles with internal combustion engines, they do not contribute through fuel excise taxes. According to Mr. Derkach, there is no reason to place electric vehicles at a disadvantage.

The rules should be the same for all vehicles within the same category. A passenger car has one level of impact on the road, while a truck or bus has a completely different one. In other words, an electric vehicle should not automatically pay more simply because it is electric. At the same time, excluding it entirely from infrastructure financing would also be illogical.

Mr. Derkach also addressed a common misconception that roads are mainly damaged by large volumes of traffic or by fuel tankers. According to him, the principal cause of road deterioration is overloading.

Every road has a permissible weight limit. For a first-category road, this may be around 40 tonnes, while for local roads it may be 20 tonnes or even less. If trucks carrying 50–60 tonnes regularly travel on such roads, the pavement deteriorates much faster than envisaged in the design specifications.

For this reason, the Deputy Minister stressed that fuel tankers should not be confused with overloaded vehicles. It is difficult to exceed a fuel tanker’s legal load because its capacity is limited by the design of the tank itself. Overloading is more common in other sectors, such as grain transportation, metal products, quarry materials, stone, and other heavy cargoes.

Commercial transport follows a different logic of road use. It travels more frequently, carries heavier loads, generates revenue from transportation services, and creates greater risks for infrastructure. Therefore, in European practice, trucks and buses are often the first candidates for separate road-use charges.

This is not a punishment for businesses but an attempt to distribute costs more fairly. If a truck causes more damage to a road than a passenger car, it should contribute more to financing the road’s repair and maintenance.

This issue is particularly important for Ukraine because overloaded trucks remain one of the main causes of premature road deterioration. Without effective weight control, any tolling system would be incomplete.

Another important factor is traffic intensity. For a private investor to enter a concession project, invest in a road, and later recover those investments through toll revenues, there must be stable and sufficiently high traffic volumes.

According to the Deputy Minister, calculations made before 2022 showed that traffic volumes on Ukrainian roads were often insufficient to make a traditional concession model economically attractive. The challenge was not only legislation or investor interest but also the economics of the projects themselves.

As a result, Ukraine’s future tolling system is unlikely to be a direct copy of the toll motorway models used in Italy or France. It will need to be adapted to Ukrainian traffic patterns, freight transport structures, and the condition of the road network.

Mr. Derkach’s main message was that road charging must be introduced systematically. It is not enough to simply assign one fee for passenger cars, another for trucks, and a third for electric vehicles without explaining how those figures were determined.

A proper rationale is required: how much different users drive, what types of roads they use, what loads they impose, and whether the trip is private or commercial. Without such logic, any road charge will be perceived as just another tax rather than a contribution to better roads.

Association’s Comment

Before tolls can be collected on a road, that road must first be built. Discussions about toll roads in Ukraine have continued for more than a decade. The construction of toll roads is one of the requirements of European integration, which is why debate on the issue intensified after the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union in 2014.

Toll roads are commercial projects that must be economically viable. For investments to pay off, traffic volumes on these highways must be sufficiently high.

Ukraine plans to build toll roads under concession agreements, meaning that investors will finance the projects with their own funds. The roads will then be transferred to them for temporary operation, and they will receive the revenues paid by drivers for using the highways.

However, there is one major obstacle: the ongoing war. A war whose end is still nowhere clearly in sight.

Photo source: freepik.com