I don't think that there is much of a difference. Apart from the stations when entering the toll road, you'll face interruptions or open systems (and thus toll booths on either end) around a few bigger cities only. On the mainline routes to the South, the cities with toll booths on either end are Paris, Tours, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Reims, Lyon, Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence and Nice. That seems a fairly even spread between west and east. The queues might create a different perception. En route from Calais to the South East, you're unlikely to hit any delay caused by a toll station until Lyon. En route from Calais to the South West, the stations at Paris and Tours could create delays much earlier in your route.timbucks wrote:4) There seem to be less toll-booths on the mainlines in the east of the country (it might just be the fact that for the last 4 holidays in France we've headed west and south-west and the queues make them stand out)
Surely there are compensation mechanisms in place between the motorways owners. They hold the data of someone's entry point and exit point and will calculate on the basis of the most direct route.5) We picked a ticket up from a machine at Villefranche-sur-Saone from an APRR toll booth and didn't hand it in to another booth until we reached Reims-Taissy - a distance of around 450km I think - who gets the revenue as we gave the money to SANEF but drove at least half of it on APRR - I was thinking can you drive much further on péages in France without encountering a toll-booth (and on looking at a map you can go Villefranche-sur-Saone -> A6 -> A31 -> A5 -> A26 -> A4 -> almost Paris but that's a contrived journey with a better alternative)
