On August 18, the renovation of 22 lanes and 3 ramp toll stations belonging to the Nanjing 4th Bridge Highway had been fully completed. All the lanes of the highway section support vehicles that have adopted electronic toll collection (ETC) devices, the first of its kind in Nanjing.
By the end of last year, a total of ten toll stations in the main lane of Nanjing 4th Bridge Highway and close to Jiangsu's provincial boundary with Shandong province have been renovated to provide the ETC service, followed by similar efforts at Qixia, Longpao and Hengliang ramp toll stations. These three stations have all been installed with ETC facilities, thus ETC services and the manual toll collection services will co-exist.
At present, the renovation of other high-speed sections under the Nanjing Highway Development is underway, and the ETC services will be available within this month. By then, all 16 toll stations and 135 lanes under the company will support the automatic payment service. On these lanes, ETC will be the main way of toll collection while manual toll collection service will assume a supportive role.
According to the requirement of the Ministry of Transportation, before the end of this October, all lanes of the expressway in China will be equipped with ETC devices. The proportion of ETC lanes in large and medium-sized cities, newly-constructed towns and around scenic spots will be no less than 70 percent of the total, and the 24-hour uninterrupted service should be guaranteed too. Next year, in each toll station, there will be only one lane that would be able to use manual toll collection and the ETC service at the same time, while all other lanes will be converted into ETC lanes, increasing the efficiency for vehicles to pass the toll stations.
The moves are part of a broader plan to improve the efficiency of road transport and reduce logistics costs.
