On the absolute contrary - it was *your* claim that the Swiss system is a system of "tolls". You even claimed that because a foreign (non-English-speaking) government (as it happens, erroneously, in terms of English usage) chooses to term their toll-free road network "toll roads", that this was good enough reason for you to call them "toll roads" too.
I can forgive a person who mistranslates what the Swiss government meant to say when rendering it in English. It's not quite so easy to understand why someone who claims to know what a toll actually is (see below) nevertheless insists that completely-untolled roads are "tolled".
Fuel Tax 1175JNugent Where did I claim that the Swiss charge a per-kilometre fee for driving on private land? Rubbish - you can drive your foreign-registered vehicle from one end...
Fuel Tax 1177Not so, I'm afraid. The Federal Republic has operated a continuous improvement programme for many decades. Not many stretches of the autobahn system are still as they...
They charge you an annual road-use fee (certainly not "one-off" - you have to pay it every year if you wish to drive on their roads every year) to bring a foreign-registered vehicle into the country. For the fee, you get a windscreen "vignette" (we would call it a road tax disc, except that it is square). The charge is a flat annual charge. You pay exactly the same amount if you drive only 1 km into the nearest village and out again, or if you drive right through Switzerland on their toll-free roads through the St Bernard or St Gotthard Tunnels (both of which are equally toll-free) a hundred times during the year. Are you starting to get the picture? The vignette is a form of road tax or licence, and nothing else. It bears no resemblance whatever to a toll.
Perhaps from driving extensively in Switzerland over the last few years (and paying my Swiss Road Tax annually) - the last time being a few weeks ago. My vehicle is still taxed for Switzerland (the licence runs out on 31st January - as they all do).
It is not clear that you do, since you insist that a road tax licence is a "toll".
The payment method is immaterial.
The nature of how the charge is applied is what defines a toll. You can pay Italian autostrada tolls (now they really *are* tolls) by cash, credit card or tag card. It is still a toll and it is a particular single journey over a stretch of toll road that causes it to be so (just like the Dartford, Tyne or Mersey Tunnels, or the Severn, Humber, Tay, Forth, Kincardine, Tamar Bridges, or John Prescott's BNRR).
Road tax is not a toll.
And what you call the Swiss "toll" roads do not carry tolls, as you now at last seem to accept.
