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The term shunpiking comes from the word "shun", meaning to avoid, and "pike," a term referring to turnpikes, which were roads which required payment of a toll to travel on them. Payment was made at a toll station where a pike, a long wooden shaft, was placed across the road barring passage. After payment, the pike would be turned, or raised, to allow vehicles to pass. Persons engaged in shunpiking are called shunpikers.

Shunpiking has also come to mean an avoidance of major highways (regardless of tolls) in preference for bucolic and scenic interludes along lightly travelled country roads.

For some, practice of shunpiking involved a form of boycott of tolls, (rather than just avoidance of them for financial reasons) by taking another route, perhaps slower, longer, or under poorer road conditions.

Shunpiking as a historical boycott in Virginia

One such example of shunpiking as a form of boycott occurred at the James River Bridge in eastern Virginia. After years of lower than anticipated revenues on the narrow privately funded structure built in 1928, the Commonwealth of Virginia finally purchased the facility in 1949. However, rather than announcing a long-expected decrease in tolls, the state officials increased the rates in 1955 without visibly improving the roadway, with the notable exception of building a new toll plaza.

The increased toll rates incensed the public and business users alike. In a well-publicized example of shunpiking, Joseph W. Luter Jr., head of Smithfield Packing Company, the producer of world-famous Smithfield Hams, ordered his truck drivers to take different routes and cross smaller and cheaper bridges. Despite the boycott by Luter and others, tolls continued for 20 more years. They were finally removed from the old bridge in 1975 when construction began on a toll-free replacement structure. Perhaps ironically, the newer toll plaza at the southern end out survived the original bridge by more than 30 years as an administration building before it too was demolished early in the 21st century. At that time, in what might be construed as a final irony, preservationists petitioned against the demolition of the toll structure.

Shunpiking in the UK

2003 saw the completion of the M6 Toll, the first tolled ordinary Motorway in the country. The road was originally planned to be free to use as the 'BNRR' (Birmingham Northern Relief Road), but was built with tolls in order to reduce the cost to the government of building the road. Road and fuel related taxation has been historically high in the UK, and as such many motorists resent the imposition of tolls on new roads. The government has also announced an intention that future Motorways may be funded by tolling. As such, a large number of drivers boycott the M6 toll, preferring instead to use the congested M6 through Birmingham, which the toll road was intended to relieve. Also, most of the road haulage and logistics operators in the Midlands do not allow their trucks to use the road.

Scotland has also seen a campaign against bridge tolls, especially on the Skye Bridge, built under a controvertial PFI contract. Tolls ceased on 21 December 2004 when the Scottish Executive bought the bridge. The Executive also abolished tolls on the Erskine Bridge from 31 March 2006.

Shunpiking in New Zealand

The term "shunpiking" is not used in New Zealand, and toll roads are very rare there. For many years the only toll road in the country was the bridge carrying State Highway 2 across Tauranga Harbour from the town of Mount Maunganui to Tauranga. Despite being a considerably longer route, many motorists took a more circuitous route around the harbour while the toll was in place.

A similar toll was in place on the Auckland Harbour Bridge for some years after its opening, but the distance saved by this route made the cost of avoiding using the bridge prohibitive for most motorists.

• Toll bridges
• Toll roads
• Toll tunnels