A shadow toll is a contractual payment made by a government per driver using a road to a private company that operates a road built or maintained using private private finance initiative funding. Payments are based, at least in part, on the number of vehicles using a section of road, often over a 20-30 year period. The shadow tolls or per vehicle fees are paid directly to the company without intervention or direct payment from the users.
On more recent UK schemes shadow toll payments reduce as the number of vehicles increase to encourage availability of the road rather than the number of vehicles carried.
Famous quotes containing the words shadow and/or toll:
“At middle night great cats with silver claws,
Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,
Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds
With long white bodies came out of the air
Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)