The mainland boasts the world's longest toll road network, with charges that rank among the most dubious thanks to illegal toll gates and the frequent flipping of licences by road builders eager to prolong toll terms.
The expressway boom started more than 15 years ago and the mainland's network now ranks second only to the United States. However, most of the interstate highways in America are free of charge, while mainland motorists have to pay their way.
According to state media reports, there are 140,000 kilometres of toll roads globally, with the mainland home to more than 70 per cent - 100,000 kilometres. In 2008, following a survey of 86,800 kilometres of toll roads in 18 provincial-level regions, the National Audit Office found illegal highway tolls had cost mainland motorists at least 23.1 billion yuan (HK$26.3 billion). By the end of 2005, it said, 14.9 billion yuan had been collected by 158 illegal toll gates, with another 8.2 billion yuan raked in from illegal toll increases. Xinhua reported that the regions surveyed had an average of one toll station for every 30 kilometres of expressway.
Guangdong province, which kicked off the expressway boom, has 3,000 kilometres of expressways, the mainland's longest and densest network. It was the first province to allow the builders of high-quality roads to access bank credit and then charge motorists to repay loans. Last year, Guangdong provincial Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference delegate Huang Chenguang tabled a proposal calling for the number of toll gates to be reduced. He backed up his proposal with the example of the 198-kilometre expressway from Heyuan to Guangzhou. Huang said a motorist would typically have to pass through seven toll gates on the journey, five of them within Guangzhou. He said that in the 25 kilometres starting from Luogang , on Guangzhou's outskirts, to Huocunnan, Guangdan, Huangpu and Beierhuan, a motorist would have to stop five times to pay tolls, seriously reducing the efficiency of the expressway. 'That's one toll gate on every 5 kilometres of road, the highest density in the world,' Huang said.
In response, the provincial transport department said it had begun to minimise the number of times cars have to stop for gates by combining Guangdong's expressways, based on geographical zones. It relied on an electronic charging network that would collect tolls based on traffic flow and redistributing income to various operators to help ensure smoother traffic flow. However, little progress has been made, even a year later after Huang's complaint.
Zhong Zengquan, of the department's fee-collection division, said this was largely because few road owners trusted that the electronic toll charging network would record their earnings accurately. Despite that, he said, administrative measures were being put in place to speed up implementation of the system.
Dr Lin Kun-chin, a lecturer at King's China Institute at King's College London, in a recent paper, 'The Development of Road Networks in China', wrote: 'Highways would seem indispensable as a developmental tool for local officials keen on bringing the benefits of the market economy into remote regions of their jurisdiction. At the same time, highway projects are also breeding grounds for corruption and oppressive taxation, environmental movements, grass-roots protests, land-use disputes, and violent confrontation between local states and societal groups.'