Editorials
Tolls on the road
(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-06 08:03
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Cheap and easy highway use seems a little nearer since the spokesman for the Ministry of Transport (MOT) promised at a press conference late last month that 96 percent of China's highways will be free of tolls.
Of course, the general public hoped that the MOT meant what it said and would take measures to close the hundreds of tollgates, which have been a target of public complaints for their contribution to the excessively high travel and transport costs.
The closure of 26 tollgates in Shenzhen last week has added to the hope that the MOT's promise will become reality in the not too distant future.
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Most of China's expressways were constructed with loans from banks. Tollgates were established to collect tolls from users to pay back the loans. This seems to be the reason why about 70 percent of the world's total tollgates are in China.
What riles the general public is the fact that some expressways are still charging motor vehicles even after they have already paid back the loans. Some of the highways were constructed with taxpayers' money, and some also collect tolls in the name of road maintenance.
In a notorious case in which a rural villager used plates of the armed police on his two trucks to evade tolls, the villager was sentenced to life imprisonment for evading tolls totaling 3.68 million yuan ($562,562) in less than two years. How can two trucks be charged such a figure for using a section of an expressway around 2,000 times?
Despite the explanation that the 3.68 million yuan included fines five times the tolls evaded, the charges are still too high and it is impossible for highway transport to make any profit without being overloaded.
This case clearly highlighted the fact that there are too many tollgates and the issue became a hot topic at the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in early March.
It is high time that something is done about it. An investigation needs to be conducted to find out how many sections of expressway or highways are still collecting tolls even after the loans for their construction have already been paid back.
A similar investigation should also find out where the collected money has gone and whether some tollgates are overcharging drivers.
The MOT's promise is welcome, but it needs to be more specific about the measures it will take and specify the timetable for solving the problem and find out ways for road maintenance.
(China Daily 04/06/2011 page8)
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