March 2025 Newsletter
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Volume 9, Number 2 March, 2025
Dear Friend,
For thirty years my house was the house two doors to the right (as you face it) of the restaurant GG, or the only house after the viaduct with green shutters, or blue shutters, or the blue door. Now, it’s 7, Rue de GG.
This is how it is in France these days. A law was recently passed saying every house in every village, no matter the village’s size, must have an official address, and it’s up to each village to provide it. I got my notice in the mail telling me I now live at 7, Rue de GG. It’s like for thirty years I was Mark and now I’m John. Nothing has changed except my street name, though I suspect with the name change more changes will come—like solicitations and junk mail, very little of which I got at two houses to the right of the restaurant (as you face it).
The new address is annoying and inconvenient, as I now have to notify everybody of the change, but another recent improvement is worse—especially for non and not yet French people like me, and maybe you….
France is eliminating toll booths on its Autoroutes—not the tolls, just the booths—and introducing speed-reading cameras to identify drivers and determine their tolls. This system is called Flux-Libre, and if I didn’t know better I’d think it was a new drink, like Cuba Libre—Drink it and be free!—or another French protest movement to free someone or something named Flux. Unfortunately, though, thanks to articles I’ve been reading in two English expat newspapers, The Local and Connexion, I do know better, and what I know doesn’t make me happy.
It has taken me many trials and lots of errors to learn which toll booth line I want to join—the one with a green arrow pointing down, or a picture of a credit card or coins or a man with a hat, not the one with a t, which means télépeage, which means if I don’t have a tele-card or transponder (which I don’t) God help me and the 300 drivers behind me. Now, this hard-earned knowledge will be lost.
Yes, I know France is not basing its Autoroute payment policy on what’s best for me and other non-French drivers, but it should—or at least consider us. France, with a population 68 million, is the number one tourist destination in the world. In 2023, the year before the Olympics, 100 million foreigners visited France, which means on any given day there are millions of non-French drivers on the roads. Thanks to Flux-Libre many of those drivers—unbeknownst to them— are going to become delinquents and/or wish they’d gone to Spain where most of the roads are still toll-free….
Flux-Libre, began in 2022 on 88 kilometers of the A79, a road in central France that I never use so I didn’t care. In 2024, though, it opened on 210 kilometers of the A13 and A14 in Normandy, and soon it will open on the A10, one of the roads I drive from Paris to Plobien, and I do care, because the more I read the worse it gets.
What makes it so bad is it doesn’t have to be bad. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live when I’m not in Brittany, there’s FasTrak, an auto payment system that has existed for years and works well…. I open an account with a credit card, register my seven-year-old drive-till-it-dies Subaru’s license plate number, receive a transponder that a camera reads, and a toll is automatically deducted from my account when I drive through the now empty toll booths. The system also refills my account and maintains a minimum balance. There is a similar system in France, but it’s not for me.
In France, where I live three months a year, I lease a different car with a different license plate number every year. To get a tele-card or transponder, I’d have to open a new account with each new car, and since I never know the leased car’s license plate number until I get the car, I couldn’t/wouldn’t open the account until after I get to Plobien, after I drive on the A10 or 13 or 14, after the tolls are due—so no transponder for me.
In California, this isn’t a problem. In California, if I drive through a toll area without a transponder—whether it’s my car or a rental—the camera photographs the license plate and the state sends the bill to my home address if it’s my car, or to the rental agency if it’s theirs. If it’s a rental, the agency will add the toll to my bill. Either way, to my home or Budget, I have 30 days to pay the bill. Not in France.
In France, the state doesn’t contact me until I’m already delinquent. To not be delinquent, I have to contact the state—actually not the state but one of the 26 private—for profit!—concession companies France has leased its Autoroute system to, and they tell me what I owe them, after I ask—and I don’t have 30 days to pay the bill, but 72 hours. If the toll is paid after 72 hours but before 15 days, there’s a 10 euro fine, after 15 days it’s 90 euros, after 60 it’s 375, and after that 750.
The system works like this: I’m driving and see a sign that says, Péage, or Flux-Libre, or Section a Péage en Flux-Libre; then in 1500 or 2000 meters, I pass beneath a gantry holding multiple speed-reading cameras, one of which takes a photo of my license plate when I enter the Péage, Flux-Libre area, and another of my license plate when I exit, thereby identifying me and my car, establishing my toll, and automatically deducting it from my account if I have a transponder, or giving me 72 hours to find out what I owe, and pay it if I don’t. The result: traffic will flow freely—flux-libre—and there will no longer be long lines of idling, wasting gas, polluting the air cars at the toll booths. In theory.
In practice—Ha!
Vinci, one of the 26 Autoroute concessionaires, says “The system is a real step backward and a major complication in terms of customer experience.” This from a major concessionaire! And this from Florent—“The system is unbearable”—after he paid a 90 euro fine for a 30 cent toll because he didn’t see the sign or know he had entered a Péage zone… Florent! Not Ed, or Phil, or Nancy, but Florent, a French man—So what chance do I have? I’ll tell you: less than Custer’s. My situation is actually worse than his, because he didn’t know what was coming, and I do. The télépeage website tells me: my toll and fine will be given to a collection agency in the U.S. if I don’t pay, and ignorance, of which I have plenty, is not a winning defense, though, it works remarkably well as offense….
Signage is only one of the problems, and not the biggest. The biggest problem is knowledge: how will non-French drivers who don’t read expat newspapers and won’t see a tollbooth know about this before the collection agency tells them? How many non-French drivers will see the Flux-Libre sign and know what it means? And if a driver does see the sign and knows what it means—I’m on a Péage, and I have to pay—how much will s/he have to pay, and where will s/he pay it? I’ve looked into this for us non-French, non-transponder types, and it’s daunting.
First, you have to go to Autoroutes.fr and find which of the 26 concessionaires has been conceded the portion of Autoroute you drove, so I do. As a test—in preparation for my future and maybe yours, I look up A79 and see the concessionaire is Aliae. On the A13 and 14, it’s Sanef. After that, you have to go to the concessionaire’s website, which I also do—Aliae.com, Sanef.com—where you enter your license plate number, and hope you find it listed there (or maybe better, don’t), and see what they say you owe. Then, when you know what you owe—or what they say you owe—you have to pay it within 72 hours of passing under the exit gantry, which is easy if you’re driving from Paris to Nice in 24 or 48 hours, but not so easy if you’re traveling leisurely on multiple Autoroutes for a 168 hours—a week—through the Loire Valley or along the northern coastal Chanel route, as Donna and I often do on our way to and from Plobien. How do I pay those tolls in 72 hours? That’s what I want to know, because I don’t want to hear the collection company knocking or see Esperian color me red….
Unsurprisingly, France has thought about this problem and has come up with a solution that is… French. When I read about it I was relieved….
I won’t have to remember what day and time I exited the A10 and my 72 hours begins or ends; nor will I have to spend an hour on my phone searching for a Wi-Fi connection and the correct Autoroute concessionaire while I’m traveling. All I have to do is go to one of France’s 23,500 Bar/Tabac’s, which by law are open 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. I walk in, give whoever is behind the bar my license plate number and s/he will go online, look up all the information, tell me what I owe, and I’ll pay right there, on the spot, with cash or debit card.
This, I think, is a plan that works for me, especially when I find out 41% of the Bar/Tabacs in France are in communes of fewer than 3500 people, because I’m certain at least one of them will be in Loscoat, a village of 6,000 people and multiple Bar/Tabacs less than a mile from my house in Plobien.
I’m so happy with this plan I’m not even upset when I read only 10,000 of those 23,500 Bar/Tabacs will accept my toll payment. It’s not until I discover I have to go online to another concessionaire—Nirio.fr—to find which of those 10,000 is nearest to me that I’m disconcerted…. If the goal is to make the process simpler and easier, it fails….
For the hell of it—literally—I go online to Nirio.fr, type in Loscoat, and read Aucun Résultat, none: there are no approved toll-taking Bar/Tabacs in Loscoat. The closest one (actually seven) is in Quimper, a city of 70,000 people twenty miles away.
I’m double disconcerted when I find out Nirio is part of the FDJ conglomerate, La Francaise Des Jeux, French Games, the leading betting and gaming—lottery—operator in France, and that they are actively lobbying to have all bills—water, electric, garbage—paid through them at Bar/Tabacs.
If it was up to me, I would have used France’s 22,000 pharmacies or 30,000 independent bakeries as payment centers—both of which are in trouble and could use a little government help—but little is up to me. In the U.S., I can sometimes make things happen the way I wish, but in France I get what I get and go with what I got….
Luckily, Brittany has no Autoroutes or toll roads (or nuclear power plants). When I drive, I use the N(ational), D(epartmental), and C(ountry) roads, and now with Flux-Libre I intend to do the same as much as reasonably possible when I drive outside of Brittany. It takes me a while to realize—thanks to my annoyance and complaints—that this is precisely what France wants me to do: drive slower, use less fuel, create less pollution, and save the environment by using the smaller, prettier roads and staying off the Autoroutes.….
Once more, I give up and in, and to my satisfaction and contentment, France and I are again in synch. I can’t say the same for the other non-French, non-transponder drivers, but one way or another, 10, 90, 375, or 750 euros later, they will be in synch too…. We each move forward, slower or faster, sooner or later, with greater or lesser losses, depending on the tolls we pay and the routes we take, because everyone wants to visit and see the world’s number one tourist destination, and no one wants to be fined or delinquent.
This is how it is in 2025 at 7, Rue de GG, two doors to the right (as you face it) of the now closed restaurant GG.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorization System) and EES (Entry/Exit System) to go into effect at the borders. I already know from their names and repeated delayed implementation they’re not going to work as expected, as we’ve been told, promised….
As always, I’ll keep you posted.
NEWS ABOUT I’m Finally, Finally French, my accidental life in Brittany
The same discerning Hungarian publisher that bought the rights to (not quite) Mastering the Art of French Living has bought the rights to I Am Finally, Finally French… When it’s published Donna and I will go to Budapest—where my father and grandfather were born. The language is Magyar, linked to Finnish and Ugric, and the money is the forint (387 forint = 1 dollar; 1 forint = .0026 dollars). I’ll tell you all about it when it happens.
Both I’ll Never Be French (no matter what I do) and (not quite) Mastering the Art of French Living have been translated and published in Poland. I Am Finally, Finally French… is currently being reviewed there, and I’m hoping they will publish the trilogy.
Meanwhile, I’ve begun working with my Skyhorse editor on the final version of the book. Lots of writers, I know, don’t like their editors or the editing process, but I view it as the final step—last chance—at revision. In my experience, my editors have made me a better writer and made my books much better books. We’re working on the edits now: three chapters have been moved forward, one has moved back; italics have been added and dropped, repeatedly; French people are speaking better, and I’m speaking worse. We’re also working on the book cover, the draft of which I like a lot. When it’s finished, you’ll be the first (after Donna and me) to see it. The plan is a late fall—just in time for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa—publication.
If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at:
· Email: mark@markgreenside.com
· Web site: www.markgreenside.com
· Substack: mgreenside.substack.com
· Facebook author page : facebook.com/markgreensideauthor
· Amazon author page: amazon.com/author/markgreenside
Please, feel free to share this newsletter with anyone. If you’d like to read previous newsletters, they are available here on my website and Facebook.
Thank you.
Yours Sincerely,
Mark
Copyright © 2025 Mark Greenside
Illustration by Kim Thoman