Expressway Toll Waiver is not to Blame for Traffic Jams
On the first day of this year’s Mid-Autumn Day and National Day long holiday, traffic jams were partially found on all major expressways nationwide. According to the information provided by the transport and communication authority, there were altogether 24 traffic accidents in some expressways in 16 provinces (cities), particularly including Beijing, Guangdong, Hubei, etc., by the end of 15:00 p.m. on the first day of the expressway toll waiver, thus having caused the movement of the vehicles at a snail's pace in some sections with the increasing influx of vehicles.
What has caused so many traffic jams? Many economists said the waiving of tolls played a lot. Just as David Li said on Weibo, “price is the social coordinating mechanism, and the waiving of tolls is actually mobilizing all of us to drive our cars for a concerted travel at the same time!” Is it true that such policy has caused traffic jams? I am afraid it is not that simple.
First of all, the traffic flow during public holidays is far more than usual. Moreover, this long holiday is composed of the Mid-Autumn Day and the National Day for 8 days, the “longest golden week” in history and Mid-Autumn Day just fell on September 30, so the majority of passengers were eager to get back for the family gatherings on that day, and it is inevitable that we had the concentrated passengers on the very day. In fact, the beginning of each golden week holiday, in recent few years, witnessed the traffic jams and it is not something fresh today.
Of course, some people might say the expressway toll waiver on public holidays allured some people who didn’t plan for any trip to drive out for the sake of saving money. Here we’d like to take Zhejiang Province for instance; there were altogether 0.6263 million vehicles through the entrances of the expressways and 0.6223 million vehicles through the exits in the entire province for the period from zero hour September 30 to 12:00 at noon, particularly 0.5332 million minibuses through the entrances, increased by more than 100% than the usual flow, and up to 56.09% than that the first day of the national day long holiday in 2011.
Can we simply attribute the increased traffic flow to the expressway toll waiver? I am afraid it is not so simple. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Public Security, the total number of cars within the territory of China by the end of June 2012 aggregated up to 114 million vehicles and the vehicle drivers reached 186 million. However, by the end of 2011, the total number of vehicles nationwide added up to 106 million and during the short period of six months, there were 8 million more vehicles thus increased. Obviously, the newly increased number of vehicles should be taken into account while we think of the traffic flow of this golden week.
Taking the abovementioned two factors into account, how much was the toll waiver to blame for the traffic jam? Little hard evidence is yet available.
However, not all sections of the expressways are jammed, and even at the sections where the jams occurred, it must be the one-way traffic congestion. A section of Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway was heavily choked with traffic vehicles but the other side of the road was still available for traffic. The one-way traffic congestion didn’t merely occur on Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway, and almost any expressway may have such a jam here and there, which tended to occur at the section where more vehicles for mega cities bound toward medium and small-size cities, taking Beijing for example, the vehicles outbound outnumber the inbound ones. According to the statistical data from Transport and Communication authority, there were, all told, 71354 vehicles inbound to Beijing on Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, but 91680 vehicles outbound from Beijing; there were, all told, 94367 vehicles inbound for Beijing on Beijing-Tibet Expressway, but 116221 vehicles outbound from Beijing.
Why are traffic jams usually one-way? It is because the population of the two cities at both ends of the expressway is quite different, so even the same expressway is subject to the different pressure at the different direction. Now let’s take Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway for instance, Shanghai has the permanent population up to 24 million while that for Hangzhou reaches 8.7 million. Provided that the number of travelers from both cities is proportionally the same, the same proportional passenger flow will exert the same pressure onto the expressway. Furthermore, the bigger the city, the more passengers will be. Among the permanent population in Shanghai, the none-household residents account for approximately 40% while those in Hangzhou account for 27%. Just this very reason has contributed to the one-way traffic jams on public holidays; so on the first day and the last day of the public holidays, there may be traffic jams on the sections where more vehicles outbound from the mega cities and the more vehicles inbound .
At the same time, the traffic report from China Highway Information Service also indicates some other things quite meaningful, and the majority of non-traffic accidents occurred at the surrounding areas of the mega cities and China's economically developed eastern coastal areas. As “2012 National Day Special Report for Road Network Operation and Monitoring” shows, expressway sections in economically developed areas take the greatest running pressure, while expressways in Middle West China account for a smaller proportion in this respect.
How can we think of these traffic jams? It seems to me that the sections of expressways in these areas are likely to fall short of the actual demand. However, the majority of expressways nationwide are highly involved with the excessive investment, which has actually sounded the alarm to the current expressway construction. According to the overall plan of the expressway construction of the Ministry of Transport, the expressway projects under the current construction or those to be built are mostly located in central and western regions characterized by the lower income, low population density and lower traffic flow. Most of these expressways are the integral part of the national strategic road network support system. Under such a situation, no matter how many expressways we have built, they won’t help to improve the traffic conditions at the busy sections, but on the contrary, they may easily evoke the financial risks: the local governments will be heavily burdened with debts and their capacity for repaying the principal and interests will drop sharply. As a matter of fact, the traffic jam is quite identical to the conclusion reached by some researchers, the research team spearheaded by Prof. Huang Shaoqing from Shanghai Jiaotong University drew such a conclusion of the investment efficiency of the provincial-based infrastructure construction in China by pointing out that the infrastructure facilities of most provinces in the central and western regions are excessively built while most eastern regions still leave much to be desired in this respect.
If the above argumentation stands true, we may as well reach such a conclusion: the traffic jams represent a peculiar phenomenon on public holidays and the expressway toll waiver does not likely to exert much impact. When we pay attention to the traffic jams, we should actually notice the social governance mechanism behind such traffic jams. Nowadays in China, what we most need to do for solving the jams is to do away with the idea for excessive emphasis on “regional balanced development”. If we pay excessive attention to the regional balanced development in terms of the road network construction regardless of the de facto economic imbalance, even more expressways thus built can not help us to solve the traffic jams, or even the financial risks may be thus caused totally beyond the endurance of the entire society.
Originally published on Oriental Morning Post | 2012-10-8
