Road tolls for passenger cars cut during holidays
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E-mail Xinhua, August 2, 2012
The State Council, or China's Cabinet, has approved a plan to lift road tolls for passenger cars taking highways during major Chinese holidays, according to a notice posted on the Chinese government's official website on Thursday.
Toll gates have been blamed for causing major traffic jams on highways during annual holiday travel periods.
According to the notice, passenger cars with seven seats or less and motorcycles will get a free pass through toll roads, bridges and tunnels during Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day, Labor Day and National Day.
But it will be up to local governments to choose whether to remove tolls on airport highways, the notice said.
To ease traffic woes, authorities have adopted a slew of measures, including promoting the use of "no-stop" electronic toll collection systems and increasing the number of toll gates during periods of heavy travel.
Experts at the Ministry of Transport said travelers will save 10 billion yuan (1.59 billion U.S. dollars) annually after the exemption.
The nation's highways have expanded rapidly since the 1980s, when the country opened the way for social capital to construct roads and allowed investors to collect tolls in return.
Over the past decade, the length of China's roads has expanded to 4.11 million km from 1.77 million km, with highways reaching 84,900 km, the second-longest in the world.
These roads shoulder more than 75 percent of the country's total freight traffic and over 90 percent of passenger transportation.
According to He Jianzhong, a spokesman with the Ministry of Transport, a total of 3.65 trillion yuan was invested in China's tollways, with 2.32 trillion yuan yet to be paid off.
Experts started to call for toll reform after high tolls and illegal tolling raised logistics costs and triggered public outcry.
"Some tollways still collect fees after charging people for 20 or 30 years. Nobody knows whether their debts have been paid off," complained Wang Li, who often drives between Beijing and the neighboring city of Tianjin.
Chinese law specifies a maximum of 15 years of toll collecting after a highway opens, but some "profit-oriented" highways toll as long as they can.
The government should eliminate the toll stations after construction debts are paid back and cut or lower tolls for government-funded roads, suggested Xu Guangjian, a professor at the Renmin University of China.
During a campaign launched by five central government departments in June 2011, 328 tollbooths were eliminated or adjusted and 182 tollways lowered their charges.
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