New Games

Around 100 honking truckers lining a key street snarled up the Slovak capital Bratislava on Thursday in protest at a new toll system which they say is flawed and expensive, police said.

Traffic in Bratislava was frozen from 7:00 am (0600 GMT), when the truck drivers blocked both lanes of a key road connecting a motorway and the city centre, said police spokesman Frantisek Peczar.

"Several buses and trolley-buses got trapped in the traffic jam. The passengers had to get off and continue by foot," added Bratislava's transport authority spokesman Peter Kavecky.

The electronic road toll system launched on January 1 has already caused traffic jams at Slovak borders with foreign truckers facing delays for hours as they try to use the new system.

Vehicles over 3.5 tons now have to pay an average 15 euro cents (22 US cents) per kilometre on more than 2,000 kilometres of Slovak motorways and main roads.

"The system has been launched and is working very well," Transport Minister Lubomir Vazny told reporters on Thursday.

"There have been small operational problems, therefore I won't call it excellent," he added.

But drivers blocking the Bratislava street insisted the system was expensive, sometimes faulty and difficult to understand.

"The new tolling system is pure chaos," trucker Pavol Timko told AFP.

"Either we succeed or I quit my job, I can't afford to go on under the new conditions," added Jaroslav Uhrina, a driver from central Slovakia.

Under the new system, bus and truck drivers had to install a special metres in their cabs attached to a GPS system to count kilometers on the toll roads.

But Luboslav Kristel, a bus driver whose company only two vehicles and expects to pay about 4,000 euros a month in toll, said he was never sure when the on-board unit started counting kilometres.

"Many truckers have also noticed that the system starts counting even if they don't use a paid road but a parallel road that is supposed to be free of charge," he said.

On Thursday afternoon, the street was still half-blocked and police were busy stopping further trucks from driving into the city.

"We are getting ready for a long night," said police spokesman Peczar.

"We can stay here until the end of the week. We have patience and full tanks," said truck driver Stanislav Misak.

Source AFP