The Ministry of Transport transfers powers to subjects to collect fines for travel on toll highways

The State Duma plans to adopt in the first reading a bill transferring the authority to regional authorities to determine the amount of a fine for driving on local toll roads. The sanction is 1.5 thousand rubles. today it is used on all routes without exception, where you have to pay for travel, including federal and regional highways. The amendments introduce a separate type of fines for users of the Moscow High-Speed ​​Diameter, the Khabarovsk Bypass, the Mytishchinskaya Chord and the Yuzhno-Lytkarinsky Highway in the Moscow Region under construction. Whether it will be higher than the existing fine is still unknown, and experts’ forecasts on this matter differed.

The bill, supported yesterday by the Duma Committee on State Construction, was submitted by the government to the State Duma in March. Now, we recall that all “payers” (including regional and federal) apply a single sanction for violators, recorded in Art. 12.21.4 of the Code of Administrative Offenses – 1.5 thousand rubles. for passenger cars and 5 thousand rubles. for trucks and buses. Resolutions are issued by Rostransnadzor, fees from fines go to the budget of the Russian Federation. From March 1, 2024, it is proposed to apply sanctions for non-payment of travel on roads of regional significance, which will be written down in regional laws, while fees from fines will go to the subject budgets. The law is necessary to “settle the issue” of the distribution of the collected amounts, the explanatory note to the amendments says.

Due to the fact that the fines go to the federal budget, the regions cannot “fully ensure the activities and activities aimed at the construction of new toll roads,” Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the state construction committee, wrote in his opinion on the bill. The establishment of fines at the regional level will allow the subjects to independently administer violations, including with the help of cameras, the document says. The Committee recommended that the document be adopted on first reading on June 1, subject to future improvements. Mr. Krasheninnikov believes that the rule (written in amendments) that applies to federal roads should be extended to regional roads: if the driver extinguishes the debt for payment within 20 days, the fine issued is canceled.

Regional toll roads, we recall, are in the Pskov region (four toll sections), in Khabarovsk (toll bypass of the city), in the capital (Moscow High-Speed ​​Diameter; MSD), in St. Petersburg (Western High-Speed ​​Diameter; WHSD). On all these routes, the fines provided for by the Code of Administrative Offenses of Russia are applied. In Moscow, a paid understudy of Kutuzovsky Prospekt is being built (to be opened in 2023), in the Moscow region – the Mytishchi chord (2024) and the Yuzhno-Lytkarinsky highway (2025).

The Ministry of Transport near Moscow told Kommersant that amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses are being adopted at the initiative of the regional government: changes are needed to launch the “free flow” system (a barrier-free payment system) on regional roads under construction. The size of the fine “is subject to clarification” after the approval of the bills, the department added. The bill was also supported in the metropolitan deptrans, recalling that more than 300,000 motorists use MSD daily (traffic is expected to increase to 400,000 by the end of the year), of which the vast majority are Muscovites.

Andrey Mukhortikov, a member of the public council at the regional Ministry of Transport, considers the idea proposed by the Ministry of Transport to be “sensible and logical”: “At the regional level, unlike the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, it is reasonable to provide for a penalty fork, the size of which can be logically correlated with the fare in such a way that it would be more profitable to pay for the fare and not a fine. Alexey Tsivilev, head of the Transport Commission of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, answering a question from Kommersant about the possible amount of a future fine in St. Petersburg for traveling without payment on the WHSD, said that first it would be necessary to listen to the positions of the concessionaire (operates a toll road) and motorists. “We will discuss all issues of such a plan only publicly,” he assured Kommersant. “But the problem of free travel to the WHSD is not acute now, now they rarely ride a “train” under barriers.” Sergei Radko, a lawyer for the Freedom of Choice movement, believes that the regions are likely to set fines higher than the federal level.

The VIS group of companies (which built a toll bypass of Khabarovsk and is building the Mytishchi chord) supported the amendments. “The bill is timely, the number of regional toll roads is growing every year,” the company’s press service says. It is impossible to predict the possible amount of fines, the company says: “Each region has its own specifics, including a number of components, including the level of income of the population.”

Ivan Buranov