The General Office of the State Council has recently issued the Implementation Plan for Deepening the Tollway System Reform to Remove Expressway Tollbooths at Provincial Borders (the "Plan").
The Plan maps out four tasks which are: 1. establishing and improving the expressway toll collection system at a faster pace; 2. accelerating the expansion of the wider application of the non-stop electronic toll collection (ETC) system; 3. revising and improving relevant regulations and policies as quickly as possible; and 4. facilitating the swap of the government's existing debts in tollways. Among others, the Plan clearly states that an implementation plan for accelerating the expansion of expressway ETC application services will be formulated and released to encourage the ETC application in parking lots and other vehicle-related venues, adding that actions will be taken to have existing vehicles equipped with ETC devices as soon as possible and to promote the pre-installation of such devices on vehicles. Meanwhile, the standard entitled Classification of Vehicle Models for the Collection of Tolls for Tollways will be amended. The way in which the toll on a freight vehicle is calculated will be adjusted, as tolls on freight vehicles will be all calculated and collected on the basis of vehicle (axle) model from January 1, 2020, in order to ensure tolls on freight vehicles will not be increased; also, freight vehicles will be able to undergo weight tests without pulling up at the entrance of the access-controlled expressways.