(Ecns.cn)—One month after the year-long campaign was launched by the central government to crack down on illegal tollgates, problems on toll roads linger, according to a China News Service report on Wednesday.
The campaign, which will end on May 31, 2012, aims to close tollgates that collect more money than needed to repay loans for expressway construction, lower overpriced tolls and reduce the total number of tollgates to a "reasonable" amount.
Most of China's transportation takes place on its expressways, which handle 74.1 percent of the country's freight carriers and 94.5 percent of passenger volume, according to the Ministry of Transport.
Statistics also show that the total cost of logistics related to tolls was about 18 percent of China's GDP last year. With expressways providing passage for up to 75 percent of the total freight volume, tolls charged along the way make up an average 20 to 30 percent of transport expenses.
The crackdown
Starting July 1, the Beijing transport authority lowered tolls for drivers heading toward the capital airport and canceled them completely for those heading back downtown.
In East China's Jiangxi Province, the provincial government pledged to close seven types of illegal tollgates, including those on bridges and tunnels.
Shandong, another eastern province, said in an announcement that it will not only stop eight types of illegal tolls, but also reduce the minimum toll for expressways inside the province to five yuan (US$0.78) per vehicle as of June 28.
The provincial government of Guangdong vowed to remove illegal tollbooths by the end of May 2012, said Tong Xing, the deputy provincial governor, at a meeting on Monday.
As of last year, 234 tollbooths, nearly half of the total in Guangdong, were shut down, according to Tong.
Guangdong, China's richest province, is the birthplace of the nation's toll road. In the 1980s, the cash-strapped province turned to tolls for capital to build up its infrastructure.
The toll-road system was innovative 30 years ago, but it needs to be reformed now, said Wang Yang, chief of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, during an online chat with web users earlier this month.
