Skip to main content

China making plans to boost toll roads

China is considering regulations that would allow road operators to levy a toll on users beyond the current 15 to 30-year limit, according to Bloomberg. The plan would potentially boost an industry that has been plagued by losses as companies struggle to earn enough to cover their debt and operating costs. “The extension of the tolling period can help to woo private investors into highway development,” said Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase in Hong Kong. The plan shows the government’s
August 7, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
China is considering regulations that would allow road operators to levy a toll on users beyond the current 15 to 30-year limit, according to Bloomberg. The plan would potentially boost an industry that has been plagued by losses as companies struggle to earn enough to cover their debt and operating costs.

“The extension of the tolling period can help to woo private investors into highway development,” said Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase in Hong Kong. The plan shows the government’s desire to promote joint government and private-sector projects, he said.

China’s government is trying to avoid incurring massive debt to stimulate the economy, opting instead to inject money into lenders and free up more commercial-bank reserves for lending. Extending toll collection by 10 years would generate $640 billion more revenue, according to Bloomberg’s calculations based on last year’s fee revenue.

Related Content

  • Infrastructure and the autonomous vehicle
    December 12, 2014
    Harold Worrall ponders the effect of autonomous vehicles on transportation infrastructure. For the last century the transportation industry has been focused on the supply of infrastructure to support the ever growing fleet of vehicles and the greater number of miles covered by each vehicle. Our focus has been planning, funding, designing, building and maintaining roadways. Politicians, engineers, planners, financial managers … all of us have had this focus. We have experienced demand growth since the first
  • ARTBA proposes path to breaking gridlock on transportation funding
    March 13, 2015
    The American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) has outlined a detailed proposal it believes could end the political impasse over how to fund future federal investments in state highway, bridge and transit capital projects. The ‘Getting beyond gridlock’ plan would marry a 15 cents-per-gallon increase in the federal gas and diesel motor fuels tax with a 100 per cent offsetting federal tax rebate for middle and lower income Americans for six years. The plan, ARTBA says, would fund a US$401 bil
  • Countering congestion’s cost
    May 6, 2015
    A new report on the economic costs of traffic congestion predicts the problem will worsen significantly in future. Jon Masters reviews the figures and some suggested solutions. New figures on the rising economic and environmental costs of congestion have been published by the US traffic data specialist Inrix and the UK’s Centre for Economics & Business Research (Cebr). Their report finds the problem much bigger than previously thought.
  • Making the most of Michigan
    January 9, 2018
    Michigan DoT’s Kirk Steudle takes time out from the ITS World Congress in Montreal to talk to Colin Sowman. Thirty years ago, a professional engineer named Kirk Steudle joined Michigan Department of Transportation (MDoT). Today he’s the state transportation director, responsible for more than 16,000km (10,000 miles) of state highways (including 4,000 bridges), some 2,500 employees and a budget of more than $4 billion. We caught up with Steudle during the ITS World Congress in Montreal and asked how he