The M50 motorway have seen a 13% increase in toll revenue last year as traffic volumes returned to pre-pandemic levels.
But the €140 million in toll revenue on Ireland’s busiest motorway, which also includes €7.5 million in fines, is less than the €160 million pre-pandemic revenue in 2019.
The number of trips taken on the toll road was 45.1 million in 2021, up 13% from the 39.9 million in 2020, according to Transport Infrastructure Ireland’s (TII) annual report.
Due to network capacity constraints and rising levels of congestion on the Dublin orbital route, TII expects that the rate of growth of traffic volumes on the M50 would slow down over the short to medium term.
The report shows that toll income on the Dublin Tunnel also recovered from €12.09 million to €13.73 million – though well short of pre-pandemic income of €22.9 million.
According to the TII annual report, Lua’s patronage in 2021 remained severely low at 40% of pre-Covid levels. Compared to 48.4 million passengers in 2019, but somewhat higher than 2020, there were 19.5 million total Luas passenger rides in 2021.