China is set to launch a national unified electronic toll collection (ETC) system by the end of next year to solve freeway congestion, save costs and cut emissions, reported Xinhua.
Xu Chengguang, spokesman of the Ministry of Transport (MOT), told the state news agency that the new ETC network will be "primarily completed by the end of 2015." The network will have a nationwide scope, but will still be based on a "regional system that will cover 14 provinces."
Xu also stressed that the new network once completed "will top the world" in terms of the total length of express highway that will be within its coverage.
While China has 260 million vehicles, only around 13 million users currently pay toll fees via the present ETC system. Once the unified national ETC system is in place, "no less than 25 percent of passenger cars will be equipped with transponders and all the toll stations along major expressways will be covered," according to the MOT spokesman.
Wang Gang, director of the ETC center under the MOT, told Xinhua: "An ETC lane equals to five other lanes where tolls are collected manually as transit time is cut to three seconds from 14 seconds. It can ease traffic jam substantially."
Once the new unified ETC system is in place, it is expected to solve China's prevalent traffic congestion at the front of toll gates, especially during long holidays, when Chinese passengers have gotten used to getting away with skipping the ropes because of the seemingly endless waiting time.
Wang also said that once the new unified ETC system is established, the logistics cost will decline, with an estimated 87 percent of expenditures on toll station and an estimated 20 percent of service cost being saved.
In addition, around 20 percent of fuel will be saved and carbon dioxide emission will be cut by 50 percent compared with the traditional manual toll collection method.