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Updated Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:32 am TWN, The China Post news staff

ETC to be in all vehicles using freeways in late 2012: MOTC

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The electronic toll collection system will be fully applied to all vehicles running on the national freeways, starting Dec. 22, 2012, according to the Taiwan Area National Expressway Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.

Officials with the expressway bureau said that after the across-the-board implementation of the ETC system, all the vehicles using the national freeways will be subject to tolls based on their mileage driving on the freeways.

This means, the officials said, drivers will pay tolls whenever their cars get on the freeways.

The expressway bureau will work out new toll rates in April 2010 for both short-distance and long-distance run on the freeways. In principle, the unit toll will be lower for longer mileage of driving on freeways.

Expressway bureau officials projected that the number of vehicles using the freeways will drop as a result of short-distance freeway users choosing to drive on the general highways instead in order to save on tolls.

At the moment, there are a total of 6.76 million registered vehicles around the island, and it's not necessary for all the vehicles to be installed with the on-board units (OBUs) needed for ETC use, Lee Ming-tai, director of the expressway bureau, said at the transportation committee meeting of the Legislative Yuan yesterday.

Lee explained that his bureau will come up with a spate of complementary measures to smoothen the across-the-board implementation of the freeway ETC system. For instance, for vehicles which seldom use the freeways, the bureau will make OBUs easily rentable to such vehicles if they want to get on freeways.

At the committee meeting, Lawmaker Yeh Yi-ching of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) requested that the MOTC offer OBUs free of charge if the ETC system is to be fully implemented.

In response, Deputy Transportation and Communications Minister Yeh Kuang-shih said the government won't rule out the possibility of subsidizing the purchase of OBUs, which is now priced at around NT$1,200 per unit. He said the MOTC is negotiating with Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co. (FETC), which has been consigned by the MOTC to operate the ETC system on freeways, on possibly supplying free OBUs to all vehicles.

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	Deputy Transportation and Communications Minister Yeh Kuang-shih yesterday told lawmakers that his ministry is actively negotiating with the FETC over supplying OBUs free of charge to facilitate across-the-board implementation of electronic toll collection system on freeways. (CNA) Enlarge Photo


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