Tolls on China's roads are here to stay as they are the only way
to pay for the rapid construction and maintenance of expressways
and highways, Minister of Communications Li Shenglin has
announced.
"Without this policy, the national road network development plan
would not be realized within the time limit and the huge debt would
never be repaid," Li said.
The road tolling policy established in 1984 stipulated that toll
revenues be dedicated to repaying the cost of construction and
supporting maintenance and new road construction.
Official figures show 90 percent of expressways, 70 percent of
first-grade highways and 40 percent of second-grade highways are
funded with toll revenues.
However, a growing number of motorists have expressed resentment
at the policy, calling for more free roads.
China has 3,112 toll charge points and 71.4 percent of the
world's 140,000 kilometers of tolled roads.
Li pointed out that toll charges on second-grade highways were
the worst problem.
"Toll charge points on second-grade highways need to be cut as
they have two thirds of the country's tolled mileage and points,
but contribute less than one third of the total toll revenue," Li
said.
"However, the road tolling policy should remain unchanged as
China will need it for a long time to come."
Li said the ministry was considering measures to control the
scale of tolled roads, while encouraging local governments in
developed areas to buy out some of the second-grade roads.
At the end of last year, 1.597-million kilometers roads had been
built in China with expressways and first and second-grade highways
accounting for 20.4 percent.
China has classified main roads into expressway, and
first-grade, second-grade, third-grade and forth-grade highways
according to their traffic volume and function. The expressway and
the first-grade highway require an average daily traffic volume of
more than 10,000 small passenger cars and second-grade highways
2,000 to 7,000.
(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2006)