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Transport firms bemoan new toll placement
A plan to move a tollbooth on Ho Chi Minh City’s Hanoi Highway has drawn the ire of transportation companies who say it will force them to pay fees for infrastructure they don’t use.
The HCMC Goods Transportation Association has submitted its complaints to the Ministry of Transport, the municipal People’s Committee and other relevant agencies.
The association said the current toll, nearly two kilometers from Saigon Bridge, which connects Binh Thanh District and District 2, was supposed to remain in place until 2012. The toll represents the city’s main northeast entrance and exit.
The toll has been in operation since 2001, collecting funds to pay for the widening of Nguyen Huu Canh and Dien Bien Phu streets, which lead to the Saigon Bridge.
But the new toll will pay for the new Rach Chiec Bridge project and the widening of Road 25B, which connects the Highway to Cat Lai Port in District 2.
Duong Quang Chau, Vice Investment and Trade Director of the HCMC Infrastructure Investment Joint Stock Company (CII), said on Tuesday that the new toll booth, located two kilometers northeast of the current toll, would open in September.
Chau said the new toll was necessary as the current booth stands in the way of a planned metro project.
The new toll will continue paying for the Nguyen Huu Canh and Dien Bien Phu investments through 2013, after which point the collections will go toward the new Rach Chiec Bridge.
The placement of the new toll means that anyone traveling in or out of the city on Hanoi Highway will have to pay the toll fee. The previous placement allowed travelers on Road 25B to skip the toll.
The association says that many transportation companies use Hanoi Highway directly from Road 25B without ever traveling on Nguyen Huu Canh or Dien Bien Phu. Therefore, the association’s logic goes, those companies shouldn’t have to pay tolls that go toward those two roads.
Mai Vong
thanhnien
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