The allocation of toll stations in Ho Chi Minh City has been labeled by many as unreasonable and has become a public concern.
A toll station at Phu My Bridge will be put in operation on April 1, and a toll station at East-West Avenue will also be built in 2011. There are already many toll stations at gateways heading to Ho Chi Minh City.
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| Toll stations emerge increasingly in HCMC under BOT projects |
There are currently five road toll stations in Ho Chi Minh City that are not so many in a city with 7 million people. However, they are located right at gateways heading to the city so most vehicles that come to the city have to pay a toll.
For example, there is the Hanoi Highway toll station at the North-Eastern gateway where all trucks have to go through when they enter the city and all people go from District 9 and Thu Duc also have to pay toll. The annual toll revenue is over VND130 billion ($6.7 million).
If they don’t want to enter the city through the North-Eastern gateway, they will encounter a toll station at Binh Trieu 2 Bridge at the Northern gateway. If drivers want to avoid this toll station, they need to drive another 20km towards the North-Western gateway, however petrol expenditure will be equal to the toll.
Similarly, people going to the western areas cannot find anyway to avoid tolls because all main roads have toll stations. There is An Suong – An Lac toll station on National Road 1A, there are toll stations on both Kinh Duong Vuong Road and Nguyen Van Linh.
Le Ngoc, a truck driver said, “It’s impossible to avoid tolls when I want to enter the city even i tried smaller roads.”
In the future, there will be more toll stations, especially routes starting from the eastern area to the western area of the city where most warehouses and harbours are located.
There are two routes connecting the east and the west. Previously, all vehicles would have to pay a toll twice for the second route but as of April 1, people will have to pay another toll at Phu My Bridge.
Thai Van Chung, General Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City’s Goods Transportation Association said, “It’s unreasonable when toll stations stay so close to each other. According to Circular 90/2004/TT-BTC issued by Ministry of Finance on September 7, 2004, each toll station must be 70km away from each other at minimum. However, the distance between toll stations is 30-40km.”
The situation has come to the light of the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) project investor. Nguyen Thanh Thai, General Manager of Phu My Bridge BOT Joint Stock Company (who has rights to collect tolls at Phu My Bridge toll station) intended to sell toll collection rights at Phu My Bridge or buy toll collection rights at Hanoi Highway with an aim of taking tolls from the two projects at one station.
