Driving to the Rhone Valley - to toll or not to toll?

A snowHead

Hi,

I am trying to put together our annual Christmas/New Year trip to Villars, Switzerland and need to cost up for 4 driving down. The only sticking point is whether or not tolls are worth paying if you are driving overnight?

As a non-toll route we are planning on taking the DFDS Ferry from Dover to Dunkerque, then driving Mons, Charleroi, Luxembourg, Metz, Strasbourg, Basle. The alternative would be Calais-Dover and then either the route above or going the normal toll route in by Geneva.

Route planners tell me that there is very little difference on driving time between the two.

Sadly economy is key on this trip and any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

A snowHead

Plug your options into viamichelin.com - it will give you times, toll costs and estimated fuel cost

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Can't help you with toll versus non as have always bitten the bullet and paid the toll. After 12 hours driving an extra hour of my time is worth quite a lot to me!

However whichever you decide, do consider the route Besancon, Pontarlier, Lausanne rather than the "normal" route via geneva. It's good road, as quick as the motorway but no tolls. Only risk is its quite high if there's snow falling. seems to get cleared very quickly though.

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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

shaky, Metz to Strasbourg will cost around 20 to 30 Euro (24 the last time I went that way which was about 3 years ago). The alternatives are to do as RobW says, but the route is very bad in winter. Or you can go across to the A5 Rhine Valley autobahn. But there are massive road improvements being introduced and that can lead to quite long delays.

I would bite the bullet and take the Metz - Strasbourg route. It is an easy, but boring drive. The Pèage stops actually served to break up the monotony of the drive to be honest. If you carry on down to Colmar on the fast dual carriageway, I think you will miss most if not all the nasty road improvement road works on the A5.

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Personally I'd go Calais to Strasbourg via toll then cross river at Strasbourg and go to Basel on German side this beats finding your way through Basel avoiding trams and so on every time wink

Avoid the Vosges route if the weather is at all cold, I trashed my first car coming down from there towards Basel, it had been a lovely sunny day and we were going down from the high area just as the sun went down, the water was running down the road one minute and black ice the next, went round the third from last hairpin bend and kept spinning... Shocked

Not nice Mind you the plus side was the nice new car from the insurance people as the old one was less than a year old Razz

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Ok - a long time lurker's first post:

We do a similar drive a few times a year, but after a few years fine tuning, we don't do it like that!

We travel with two adults and two (teenage) children and find that:
- It is worth travelling on the autoroute because of fewer stop/ start junctions & roundabouts (so the non drivers can actually sleep)
- We change drivers every 2 hours which allows the non driver to sleep (ear plugs, neck pillow, eye shade useful)
- A toll transponder saves waking up the passenger to pick up ticket or pay is well worth the "2 Euro per month used in France" surcharge (you just drive at about 30mph through the lanes on the left marked with the orange chevrons and the toll barrier magically lifts just before you crash into it). At Easter last year it cost £90 return in French tolls to do the route below (including the 2 Euro surcharge), but you also need to add a Swiss motorway permit on top. If you translate from the French pages here https://www.telepeagepourtous.fr/fr/particulier/souscrire then it's much cheaper than using the English website and they will bill directly to your English VISA card at the end of each month used.

What works for us:
- Eurotunnel Folkestone to Calais (fast, frequent and payable with your Tesco points so it doesn't feel that it costs so much...)
- At Calais go to the Cite Europe shopping centre, because underneath the large car park is a 24 hour self-service petrol/ diesel station which takes both Visa & Mastercard in the pumps. This is the cheapest fuel top up point for miles around that we know of.
- Calais to Dijon - 5 hours 356 miles (we change driver every 2 hours)
- At Dijon top up with fuel (because Swiss fuel is expensive), there is a L'Eclerc close to the Dijon South autoroute junction which also allows you to fill up with food and wine if self catering
- Then a slightly slower speed but far prettier section to cross the border - 4 hours 43miles French motorway; 48 miles A roads; then about 70 miles of Swiss motorway - avoid if lots of fresh snow but you avoid the Besancon lorries grinding across that border route (in fact you avoid loads of traffic).
Saint-Lothian
Vaux-sur-Poligny
Foret Les Nans
Saint-Antoine
Pontarlier (Swiss border)
Lausanne

(I've got the Lattitude/Longitude coordinates if you want them for the above route) - although it's largely leave the autoroute at juntion 9 and head towards Pontarlier - Google maps will show you the way!

If it's snowing heavily then Dijon -> Geneva -> Montreux is the safe and generally snowploughed route, although I find the Swiss driving a bit of a shock after getting used to the French.

After all it is free

shaky, ...it's a route I have done hundreds of times since we have a family home in the Rhone Valley. You can use Route Nationale through France if you choose and it will add about 3-4 hours to your journey and save around 60-80gbp in tolls.

You will need a Vignette for Switzerland and the customs may 'strongly encourage' you to get one at the Jougne crossing. try googling uk climbing you might be able to get a vignette on there.

TOP TIP - go via Besancon - but on the autoroute approach to Lausanne follow signs to "Brig/Simplon" otherwise you will do a huge loop that you do need to do, into Lausanne.

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D G Orf, I agree with you about the scenic route in the Vosges. I lived for 2 years and 3 wonderful winters in Strasbourg and we avoided that side like the plague in winter except to drive over to La Bresse for skiing during the week or at weekends when we were not in the Alps! We would perhaps risk Gerardmer but no further Laughing

After that - here be dragons as the say (especially in winter wink

)

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Now to discuss winter tyres and snow chains...

I'll get me coat.

snow reports

my two overnight trips were plagued with fog. driving 300 miles in freezing fog is not a pleasant experience so my advice would be, any inclement weather, stick to the peage, especially at night.

You know it makes sense.

Petrol is a bit cheaper in Switzerland than France, has been for years and years (probably the only thing that is these days!)

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

South of Dijon leave A39 at exit 7
A391 then N5 passing to the south of Poligny & Vaux-sur-Poligny
In Pont de Gratteroche turn left onto the D21
Then D471 around Onglieres
Then N57 to the border
Then first left to the A9 Swiss motorway

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Thanks for your helpful suggestions.

We have driven the Dijon/Geneva/Lausanne route for the last two years and fully understand the benefits of the toll routes. However, when we looked at the journey times on viamichelin/google we saw that they were the same for the Geneva route as for the toll-minimising route via Strasbourg. Without having driven the non-toll options, particularly overnight which is our plan, it is impossible for me to gauge whether the trip can be done in 10 hours overnight.

Is this a likely time or is the reality that there will still be commercial traffic etc that will slow us down? We will be leaving Calais around 9pm if it helps.

There are 4 of us, late 20s, who can share the driving and realistically none of us are too fussed about the comfort or sleep. It really is a trade off between time and cost with logistics dictatating that we have to travel overnight.

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Chris, from general experience of driving in France particularly, usually having left the autoroute to avoid jams, I found that using the "routes nationales" does take longer, the limits are lower, there are junctions and roundabouts, towns to pass through, and while local traffic should be light in the night, these other factors will still apply.

I don't know how viamichelin come up with their journey times but I find them generally on the optimistic side

Also from my experience if everyone else in the car is asleep it is easy to take a wrong turn with no navigator Sad

Hopefully someone will have specific experience of the northern route as I would be interested in knowing their view as well

Cheers Tim

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Using the Autoroute I've gone from Christchurch in Dorset to Lauterbrunnen Switzerland in 13.5 hours of driving not including eurotunnel time

That was keeping dead on the speed limit for most of the route in good weather with much of the route in daylight, think it would have been a tiny bit quicker if I'd been able to swap driving more often but not by much, had minimal stops for toilet/fuel and customs breaks

Help!!

Driving to the Rhone Valley - to toll or not to toll?

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