Tolls
When the 5th Ring Road was completed (and even while segments were already open to the traffic), the expressway became a toll ring road. The charge was 0.5 CNY per kilometre as a minimum for small vehicles (which would equate to just around 6 cents U.S.).
The charge, although small, was exorbitant for many drivers, who shied away from the expressway. Further protests derived from the apparent fact that drivers were being charged the full CNY 5 for just one kilometre of the road, from Yizhuang to the Jingjintang Expressway. Additionally, users of the Badaling Expressway and the Jingkai Expressway, which have toll gates within the 5th Ring Road, moaned about being charged twice - once for the 5th Ring Road, and once again for the expressway connecting the ring road.
Beijingers soon learned to avoid this pricey path at all costs, preferring to sit out hours in jams on the 4th Ring Road and roads more central to Beijing. Thus, the 5th Ring Road became a virtually "wasted" ring expressway. As a result, this expressway was the subject of a heated debate in 2003. It became apparent that the 5th Ring Road was made just for those who could afford both the petrol and the tolls. Meanwhile, it became a kind of an unofficial test track for new drivers, who racked up spectacular (and, strictly speaking, illegal) speeds on the nearly empty expressway.
With Shoufa, the company running the expressway, unwilling to budge, standing firm to its view that the prices were authorised by the local Price Bureau, and with enough disgruntled Beijingers posting on message boards demanding the removal of the tolls, the authorities stepped in at the end of December 2003 and decreed that the road be made free on the first day 2004. (At the same time, all charges for expressway exits within the confines of the 5th Ring Road were also done away with.) When the tolls were removed, usage of the 5th Ring Road gradually increased. The ring road previously managed with only 10% of its total designed capacity.
The expressway ring road, even without the charges, remains uncrowded today, except for any occurrence of a serious accident.
Read more about this topic: 5th Ring Road (Beijing)
Famous quotes containing the word tolls:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)