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| Founded | 1991 |
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Area served | Portugal |
Via Verde (literally "Green Lane") is an electronic toll collection system used in Portugal since April 1991. It is available at all toll roads and bridges in the country since 1995. Toll roads and bridges are operated by multiple operators, the main being Brisa - Auto-estradas de Portugal.
Upon passing in a non-stop lane at a toll, a DSRC tag attached to the vehicle's windshield transmits its identifier and the toll amount is debited directly from the client's bank account. If an exception is detected (the tag is invalid (or non-existent) or the vehicle's class (as detected by the lane sensors) does not correspond to the class encoded in the tag, amongst others) the vehicle is photographed and, if there is indication of fraud, a legal procedure is initiated.
This system provides for a good flow of traffic: usually the non-stop lanes on interchanges have a 40 or 60 km/h speed limit, tolls on the highway (as in between different tolling regions) have a 120 km/h speed limit, and the system has been proven to work at speeds above 200 km/h (which are obviously unsafe, especially on narrow non-stop lanes).
The Via Verde system was the first to be universally applied to all the tolls in a country. Via Verde has gained widespread use in Portugal mainly because it can operate with any bank in the country, as there is a fully integrated cross-bank network (the SIBS network, also known as Multibanco).