The State Council approved on Wednesday a measure to waive tolls for passenger vehicles with seven seats or less on four important national holidays, which is good news for many car owners, says an article in the First Financial Daily. Excerpts:

Tolls on highways and other types of roads have become a tool for companies to make money, which is against the roads' public nature. Random toll collection has invited public complaints for a long time.

The short-term waiver is a response that local governments gave to the people's call, but it's still relatively limited. It's obviously more important to solve the problem of arbitrary toll collection than to simply exempt tolls on holidays.

One of the fundamental reasons why the previous cleanup of toll collection systems failed is that some local governments have to some extent become vested interest groups. If the issue remains unchanged, any more cleanup moves would also lead to dissatisfying results.

Hopefully the plan jointly initiated by the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Finance, and other government departments could be a good start for more effective cleanup measures to curb arbitrary fee collection on toll roads.