THE number of electronic toll collection (ETC) users in Guangdong has exceeded 10 million, Guangdong Provincial Transportation Group said at a meeting Monday.

This year, over 1 million people in Guangdong Province have applied for the ETC service. From May 15 to June 30 alone, the figure reached nearly 600,000, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily.

“We will provide free service for new users of ETC and improve our service to ensure that we can have an additional 8.13 million users by the end of this year,” said Li Bin, general manager of Guangdong Union Electronic Service Corp., an affiliated company under Guangdong Transportation Group that is responsible for the ETC service in the province.

Also, starting July 1, Guangdong ETC users can enjoy a 5 percent discount when paying tolls, according to the report.

The promotion of the ETC service is part of an effort to reach the goal of essentially removing all tollgates in two years, as laid out in the Government Work Report in March. The brick-and-mortar tollgates will finally be replaced with the virtual ETC system, partly to reduce emissions and logistics costs.

Citizens will be able to have their ETC sensors installed at more than 6,000 service points in the province, including over 5,000 branches of six banks, 925 sites in designated departments across 21 prefecture-level cities, and 241 highway tollgates and service zones, said the report.

At present, the transportation group has established six special teams to update traditional tollgates. The modification and construction work on the tollgates, toll lanes and ETC infrastructure is expected to be finished before Oct. 31, while 18 cross-province tollgates are expected to be removed by the end of December.

(Wang Jingli)