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Tolling trucks is a technical solution to implement the “user” and “polluter pays” principles. Toll revenue could help ease budgetary pressures Ukraine faces and optimise EU funds allocation. If Ukraine decides to implement the tolling system, it is crucial to align it with the Directive (EU) 2022/362 for the sake of the EU accession and sustainable development of the country.
Ukraine is losing control over the state of its road infrastructure
Since 2024, the State Road Fund has been used for the military with not much left for road maintenance. Road recovery happens largely through EU and international funding. Three new "mega-projects" for road reconstruction (M-07, M-30, M-15) were announced under the DREAM system in 2025. They total over €12 billion, 15 times the allocation to roads than in 2024. The share of roads in poor condition has increased by 225% from 2011-2016. In 2025, we project 38% of the road kilometers to be in poor condition in a linear optimistic scenario. Bridges are also crumbling. Due to Russian aggression 25,000 km of road and 344 bridges and crossings were damaged. Truck operating costs may rise up to 35% depending on the road surface quality. This leads to an increase in the logistics costs and lack of strategic autonomy of Ukraine to manage its roads.
Older, more polluting and overloaded trucks detrimental to road surface and urban pollution.
We analysed in the Ukrainian Unified State Vehicle Register and found an increased demand for semi-trailers and heavier Western truck brands. The share of new trucks - below 5 years old - remains stable at only 10% of registrations per year. The average truck age is 16.2 years, 2 years older than the EU average of 14.2. The make year of 88% of all trucks registered in 2024 is before 2019. This puts them all in the least energy efficient CO2 class I. Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) systems registered 6,000 overloaded trucks per day in 2021. Older, less energy efficient and heavier trucks on the roads are detrimental for (sub)urban air pollution and road surface condition.
Ukraine could raise more than €1 billion of revenue in tolling.
We model the revenue Ukraine could raise from tolling trucks under different scenarios. At a minimum, tolling trucks over 12t could generate €215 million in annual revenue on three (M-06, M-07, M-05) routes, without external air, noise pollution and CO2 charges. However that would not be in line with the Directive (EU) 2022/362 on road charging. If Ukraine were to adopt the current German Maut, it could generate over €1 billion in annual revenue, 66% of which is from CO2, air and noise pollution surcharges. Tolling also accelerates the cost recovery on road repairs, incentivises less polluting trucks, could contribute to modal shift and avoid deaths from ambient air pollution.
Fear has big eyes: ambitious tolling ≠ big price spikes.
We model the price of the beer bottle transported from Lviv to Kyiv. Under the high-ambition German toll it might cost 0.84 eurocent or 38 kopyikas more, a relative increase of 0.49%. Transporting it over the road with a poor surface quality might also have an equivalent cost increase of 0.84 cents (38 kopyikas) for the same beer bottle. 76% of surveyed Ukrainian businesses support the introduction of tolling provided the improvement in the road surface quality.
Ambitious tolling contributes to Ukraine’s fiscal and climate resilience with minimal impact on consumers.
