Chinanews, Beijing, August 8 – Currently there are 140 thousand km of toll highways in the world, of which 100 thousand km are located in China. Though the Ministry of Communications requires there should be only one toll station along every 40 km of a highway, some local governments have set up one toll station every 20 km along the high ways.At first, the fees collected at toll highways are meant to pay the loans invested on building them. However, statistics show that toll stations along these highways have collected much more money than needed to repay the loans, so much that the practice has become a heavy burden upon the society.For example, the Beijing-Shijiazhuang Highway has even generated a profit of 600 million yuan, and its manager has not shown any intention of stopping collecting tolls. It is said that the Airport Expressway in Beijing has netted a profit of nearly 10 billion yuan, while it only cost 1.2 billion yuan to build it.Many of these toll highways were built by local governments, and they were only allowed to collecting tolls for no more than 15 years. However, when the time limit draws near, some of the local governments have transformed the public highway into operational toll highways by selling them to other enterprises, while keeping the general public in the dark about it.