Tolls on China's roads are here to stay as they are the only way to pay for the rapid construction and maintenance of expressways and highways, Minister of Communications Li Shenglin has announced.

Minister of Communications Li Shenglin [file photo]

"Without this policy, the national road network development plan would not be realized within the time limit and the huge debt would never be repaid," Li said.

The road tolling policy established in 1984 stipulated that toll revenues be dedicated to repaying the cost of construction and supporting maintenance and new road construction.

Official figures show 90 percent of expressways, 70 percent of first-grade highways and 40 percent of second-grade highways are funded with toll revenues.

However, a growing number of motorists have expressed resentment at the policy, calling for more free roads.

China has 3,112 toll charge points and 71.4 percent of the world's 140,000 kilometers of tolled roads.

Li pointed out that toll charges on second-grade highways were the worst problem.

"Toll charge points on second-grade highways need to be cut as they have two thirds of the country's tolled mileage and points, but contribute less than one third of the total toll revenue," Li said.

"However, the road tolling policy should remain unchanged as China will need it for a long time to come."

Li said the ministry was considering measures to control the scale of tolled roads, while encouraging local governments in developed areas to buy out some of the second-grade roads.

At the end of last year, 1.597-million kilometers roads had been built in China with expressways and first and second-grade highways accounting for 20.4 percent.

China has classified main roads into expressway, and first-grade, second-grade, third-grade and forth-grade highways according to their traffic volume and function. The expressway and the first-grade highway require an average daily traffic volume of more than 10,000 small passenger cars and second-grade highways 2,000 to 7,000.