In 2018, the state explicitly proposed to “promote the cancellation of expressway
toll stations at provincial boundaries.” Electronic toll collection (ETC) has
become the main toll collection method on expressways. With the construction of
ETC toll lanes, the proportion of ETC vehicles in the expressway traffic flow is
increasing, and the rapid processing of vehicle special situations is facing
challenges. At present, various provinces have adopted various methods to
improve the traffic efficiency and transaction success rate of ETC from the
issuance link, customer service link, and lane transaction link. According to
statistical data, the average transaction success rate of ETC lane is not higher
than 99% at present. As of October 2021, the number of ETC users nationwide has
reached 256 million, and there are an average of 40 million ETC transactions per
day across the network, that is, about 400,000 special cases need to be
processed. How to efficiently deal with special vehicles in the new mode and
avoid ramp toll stations becoming traffic bottlenecks is a new problem facing at
this stage. In order to fit the application scenarios of ETC lanes and solve the
problems of time-consuming, labor-intensive, and high safety risks of
traditional special situation processing methods, this article sorts out the
classification and application scenarios of expressway ETC special situations
under the new model. The development status and existing problems of ETC special
situation processing are studied and analyzed. This article also establishes a
more rapid and convenient special situation handling mechanism, which simplifies
the processing process of ETC lane special situations to the greatest extent,
and avoids traffic congestion and potential safety problems caused by ETC
special situations. Finally, the self-service processing and unattended lanes
are realized, which improves the efficiency of special situation processing and
ensures fast passage.
