International toll concessions are too numerous to list but a few highlights include:
• 407 ETR (Express Toll Route) in Toronto was Canada's first toll road in a large metropolitan area, opening in the spring of 1997. It has been a huge success with 300,000 trips per day. The central section was built by a provincial authority but, shortly after opening, was concessioned for 99 years. Investors are doubling its capacity with extensions, widening and new interchanges.
• England's first major new motorway in more than a decade, M6 Toll in the Birmingham area, was built under a long-term toll concession. Twenty-seven miles long and six lanes wide, it is located on the eastern and northern fringes of Britain's second largest metropolitan area, providing through traffic an alternate route to the older, free M6 motorway located closer through to the center of Birmingham.
• Ireland's prosperity has spawned a rapidly growing fleet of cars and other motor vehicles. It is making extensive use of concessions to build a motorway network.
• France developed a motorway system of 6,700 miles of which about 5,000 miles are based on toll concessions. Initially these concessions were granted to corporations whose stock was majority owned and, in some cases, fully owned by state agencies and state pension funds. However, stock in these corporations has recently been sold to the general public and by bid to investor-owned toll companies. The largest toll companies are now publicly traded companies.
• Italy has 3,520 miles of toll road, the bulk of which are held by investor-owned concessionaires, including the world's single largest privately held network, Autostrade SpA.
• Spain (1,730 miles) (Portugal 813 miles) and Greece (570 miles) are other major concession-based systems.
• Germany and Holland, which traditionally had no tolls, have begun using toll concessions to build major highway tunnels under estuaries near ports.
• Toll concessions are planned for megacrossings including the world's longest suspension bridge in the Strait of Messina to provide a fixed crossing from Sicily to Italy and a 12-mile Fehmarnbelt bridge across the Baltic Sea from Denmark to Germany.
• Norway's rugged topography of fjords and steep mountains has made highway construction expensive. Over 100 bridges and tunnels and some 500 miles of road are toll financed with 39 major toll concessionaires.
• Israel's longest expressway, the 54-mile Trans Israel Highway or H6, was built under a toll concession with investors.
• East European countries are following suit including Croatia 577 miles operating, Hungary (357 miles), Serbia (375 miles) as well as Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
• Australia has used investor toll concessions for about ten urban expressways in the two principal cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Most of these involve difficult construction, including six tunnels of over one mile length, which have been used because of the unacceptability of acquiring and demolishing homes.
• South Africa has approximately 12 toll concessions.
• China has the world's largest expressway construction program under way with about 18,000 miles in use, 10,000 miles under construction and another 25,000 miles projected for 2020 for a network of 53,000 miles, comparable to the U.S. Interstate system. The Chinese network is over 90% toll financed, the great majority being concession companies, many of which have a major provincial government share.
• India has the world's second largest highway program after China. 9,000 miles of divided highway, some full expressway standard, others with some at-grade intersections, have been built in the past seven years. 20 toll concessions have been used so far, and another 48 concessions are in process of being let for $12.5 billion of new construction covering 6,000 miles of expressway and divided highway.
• Korea, like Taiwan and Japan, initially followed the U.S. public toll authority model but lately has been inviting investor toll concessions, including major bridges, urban toll roads and intraurban links.
• Malaysia has about ten concession toll roads in operation. The Philippines,Indonesia, Thailand and Pakistan also have many toll roads.
• The Russian government has foreshadowed a toll concession to raise half of the capital needed to build a high-quality expressway covering the 405 miles between Moscow and St. Petersburg on the Baltic, a $5.3 billion project.
• Mexico, Brazil, Panama, Argentina and Chile have many concessions operating, and in planning. Santiago Chile has one of the world's most advanced open road tolling systems on three new toll roads built by separate concessionaires but designed for single transponder use. There is no cash toll collection and the concessionaires are required, under the terms of their concessions, to supply transponders free of charge.