Author | Huang Qingchun

Title map | Oriental IC

In 1996, Beijing Capital Expressway Development Co., Ltd. and Amtech of the United States conducted ETC on the Capital Airport Expressway. > Trial operation, after that, Guangdong, Beijing and other places took the lead in conducting ETC field tests. Thanks to the dividends of reform and opening up, Guangdong and Beijing had more vehicles in the 1990s, and ETC has become an innovative technology that replaces artificial labor.

However, in the past 22 years, this kind of equipment to alleviate high-speed congestion, improve traffic efficiency, and reduce logistics costs has not been promoted.

According to statistics, as of the end of 2018, the national highway mileage reached 142,600 kilometers, and there were about 9,400 toll stations, of which 244 were provincial toll stations. The number of ETC users nationwide is only 76.56 million, less than one-third of car ownership.


ETC promotes “changing flavor”

In 2019, ETC suddenly “accelerated”.

In May, the State Council issued the “Implementation Plan for Deepening the Reform of Toll Road System and Cancelling Provincial Toll Stations on Expressways”, which proposed the basic elimination of toll stations on provincial borders across the country to achieve the goal of reducing logistics costs. The key ; In June, the Ministry of Transport issued the “Implementation of Implementation of ETC Expressway Electronic Non-stop Express Toll (ETC) Application Service Implementation Plan”, and proposed that by the end of 2019, the installation and utilization rate of ETC should be increased to more than 80% And over 90%.

The original intention of the two documents is to realize quick toll collection without parking, and to improve the people’s sense of happiness and security. However, when the policies are implemented at the grassroots level, the subjective initiative of implementation has changed to a “taste”.

In 2019, Tianjin Binhai and other 6 toll stations postedNotice: From December 15, 2019, only ETC vehicles are allowed to enter, manual toll lanes are no longer reserved, and high-speed ETC toll booths also hang banners such as “No ETC is prohibited to enter the highway”; Hunan Liling Toll The station slogan “From January 1st, vehicles without ETC equipment are not allowed to use high speed”; even bank staff wearing “audit” clothing, pretending that traffic police stopped vehicles in front of toll stations to request ETC, completely confusing law enforcement And business borders.

As of December 18, 2019, data from the Ministry of Communications: ETC customers nationwide reached 192 million, completing 100.72% of the total issuance target. ETC’s promotion in 2019 was completed as scheduled in the dispute.

However, in response to the chaos in the promotion of ETC, the Ministry of Transport responded at a press conference of the State Council Information Office:

“It is strictly forbidden to force or disguise the installation of ETC by any means, and it is strictly forbidden to impose obstacles on non-ETC vehicles on highways or for car-related business.”

Ma Liang, a professor at the School of Public Management, Renmin University of China, said: “The problems in the promotion of ETC have exposed the problems of formalism and laziness in some grassroots administrative departments.”

A good reform must be the repeated debugging between the system and human relationships. The relevant departments must do a good job of scientific demonstration when conducting work. Various plans are widely solicited for discussion, instead of using individual administrative orders to implement “one size fits all, movement” Pushing technology 22 years ago. Although this can complete the task in a short time, the social and psychological trauma is difficult to heal, and some will bring greater governance costs.

As Xia Kedao commented: “The promotion of ETC is a good thing, but it is still easy to over-rush the country to make up the historical debts of the past ten years in just a few months.”

ETC CongenitalInsufficient

ETC technology has major hidden dangers and cannot be modified through remote upgrades, which may be the main reason why many car owners refuse to install.

From 00:00 on January 1, 2020, after all 487 provincial toll stations in 29 networked provinces across the country have been cancelled, a dispute about ETC billing has started on the Internet.

Shandong, Hebei, Hunan and other truck drivers said on social platforms that truck tolls have increased on tolls since January 1; truck tolls in some localities have been abnormally high and ETC has failed; a vehicle owner in Tianjin told < a href = "http://www.cb.com.cn//index/show/bzyc/cv/cv13443571647" target = "_ blank" rel = "nofollow"> Reporter from China Business Daily , The round-trip fare on the same section changed from 150 yuan to 330 yuan; a driver in Shaanxi also told reporters that After New Year’s Day driving more than 200 kilometers, ETC shows 223 yuan when going, and ETC shows more than 7,000 yuan when returning; Wuhan truck drivers also abusive charges for questioning the toll of 2623 yuan The crew vented their anger on hot search.

The reason for these encounters has caused widespread discussion on the Internet, because disputes over ETC deductions have become common, but they do n’t even know which section of the highway toll, and even the complaints have no basis, let alone go to X The province is still looking for Y city.

Theoretically, the abolition of provincial toll stations and the change of charging methods from weight-based charging to shaft-based charging will greatly speed up traffic efficiency. However, in fact, after the weighing equipment was cancelled along with the provincial toll booths, the ETC deduction method for trucks was unified to be charged based on axles, and the ETC system faced a surge of 100 million car owners in 2019, and there was duplication in billing.Deductions, multiple deductions, ETC failure, system time confusion, and many other issues.

Freeways are the arteries of logistics, and they are upstream of the price system. Slight changes in upstream prices will be enlarged to the industrial sector and the service industry layer by layer, which will bring about changes in the entire price system. If the charging burden actually increases, can the implementation of the ETC charging system be done?

In the news webcast, Kanghui expressed the voice of the majority of car owners: “In the final analysis, technology is for people. You can’t stop people, let alone stop them artificially.”

Not only has the tolls generally increased, but after the ETC users surged from 76.56 million to 192 million within a year, during the New Year’s Day, the ETC corridor caused many high-speed sections to be paralyzed.

On January 1, some ETC corridors in the main line of the first ring road in Foshan, Guangdong were closed, causing a large number of vehicles to be congested for several kilometers. On the morning of January 1, a traffic accident occurred on the Shanghai S4 highway. Ambulances will be equipped with ETC equipment in the future. Tolls were forcibly collected at the exit of the bridge; on January 2nd, only two artificial passages were opened at the high-speed station entrances such as Huangcheng Expressway East and West Ancient City, Xinyuan Expressway Yuhua Road, etc. around Shijiazhuang. A few kilometers.

A large part of the congestion and paralysis of these high-speed sections is due to the blind expansion of ETC channels and the reduction of manual toll channels. As a result, ETC failed to assist remote maintenance when the traffic peak occurred, and it was only released when facing a large area of ​​paralysis. .

Today, iterative upgrades of smart phones, smart TVs, and smart homes are the most basic requirements. Remote assistance and firmware upgrade technologies have long been popularized in hardware products, but ETC equipment does not have these functions at all. In addition, the convenience provided by ETC for 2B and 2C is very limited. Problems such as unintelligent ETC ports, incorrect charging, and inaccurate estimated traffic jams also indicate that ETC does not have the ability to apply in a large number of scenarios.

ETC lacks future-oriented scalability

The many issues of ETC have not only attracted the attention of News Network, People’s Daily, and Local TV, but also caused extensive discussions on social platforms.

First of all, many owners who have installed ETC said that in some places, the ETC card system upgrade never actively informs the user, and the user knows that the upgrade is needed after the toll station is stopped. When encountering problems such as poor contact, upgrade of the charging system, replacement of cards, recharge, etc., it is necessary to run one or even several card processing points. It is not as convenient and labor-saving to go through the manual channel.

Secondly, the ETC trading area is 8 meters. Some owners will be too close to the car to fail to recognize them. Some owners will deliberately ask others to leave the car at a high speed. ETC lanes require speeds below 20 km / h. Successfully read vehicle equipment information; vehicle owners should also properly keep ETC electronic tags, pay attention to moisture, water, and strong magnetism. Excessive thickness of the front windshield may also cause poor induction. The bulk of ETC technology is one of the reasons for frequent congestion of channels.

Thirdly, drivers of state-owned enterprises and drivers of the transportation market run rental. They have a strong demand for invoicing and reimbursement, and the entire ETC invoicing process is too complicated. For example, using a special China car to go to the airport, ETC invoicing requires the driver to travel to a certain place, and the cost of time and labor exceeds the amount of invoicing.

In addition, once an ETC card is bound to a credit card, there are also risks of high management costs and theft of swipes, inexplicably opening high-interest small loans, and difficulty in cancelling.


It can be seen that in terms of convenience, ETC has lost its forge and determination in improving service and has lagged behind the development of this era.

WeChat and Alipay, which have risen in the market competition, provide services to hundreds of millions of users. The iteration of their technologies still needs to keep pace with the times, adapt to user needs, and constantly update their pain points. Why can ETC push against the laws of the market?

ETC design is based on the latest technology of the year, but the number of Chinese cars, high-speed mileage, toll stations in 1997 and 2020 are completely different from the order of magnitude.The technology framework must be a backward framework compared to today’s technology. From the reports frequently seen in the media in the past month, it can be seen that ETC’s era limitations in service scenarios, technology implementation, and convenience.

Also, ETC is different from 12306. The 12306 server is down, users can still grab tickets tomorrow; once ETC is down, a high-speed tens of thousands of cars will be paralyzed on the road, and they can only be lifted to release. This is still the case on New Year’s Day. How to solve the more severe paralysis caused by the Spring Festival, May 1st and 11th?

Even if you worry about the basic functions, ETC technology is obviously unimaginable in the face of future scalability.

For example, toll audit business, the data shows that only 550,000 manual inspections are performed in Guangdong Province each year, and more than 200 million flow records are analyzed, and the annual toll collected through audits is more than 70 million. With the cancellation of provincial border stations, the means of fee evasion are also more hidden. Such a huge data processing requirement requires a system based on big data and AI inspection to collaborate. Can ETC do it?

In the future, parking, traffic deductions, and consumption will meet the needs of many life scenarios. Can ETC carry it?

We could skip the current stage and directly promote electronic license plates, but now we choose to return to the credit card era from mobile payment and push ETC.

Note: Thanks to Mr. Li Tong for his guidance and contribution to this article. ( The above does not constitute a suggestion. China Mobile Payment is unique in the world. There are always more solutions than difficulties. I believe we can find the perfect solution for high-speed toll collection Question)

Reference:

[1]. Your greatest contribution to society is the installation of ETC, autocarweekly, Li Qingke

[2]. “Destiny” recommends ETC, banks compete for 180 million users, Economic Observer, Hu Yanming

[3]. Is there any reason to launch a surprise promotion of ETC, Xia Kedao, Yuwen Reg?

[4]. The logic of ETC and investment opportunities, Zhengshitang 2009, Gu Ziming

[5]. ETC does not show the total amount of traffic, ca n’t or not, Guangming.com,

[6]. Disputed ETC bills, China Business Network, Zhao Yue, Yin Rong, Feng Yingzhang, Tong Haihua