Free pass

The policy will allow small passenger cars and motorcycles to pass freely on tolled roads and bridges nationwide. It will come into effect on Sept 30 and run until the end of the legal holiday period, according to the ministry.

The traffic is expected to be heaviest on the first and the last day of the holiday, when an estimated 86 millions passengers could use the roads, He said.

"We suggest people avoid peak hours and travel when there is less traffic, based on real-time traffic condition information provided by authorities," He said.

Although small passenger cars do not have to pay highway tolls, they still have to slow at tollgates to get a pass card, which may lead to serious road congestion.

"To ease traffic, we have asked road companies to set up special lanes for cars eligible for a free pass, and we have erected signs to separate such cars from trucks or buses before the vehicles pull into the tollgates," He said.

He added that tollgate entry lanes may be changed into exit lanes if there is more traffic from the other direction.

In East China's Jiangsu province, 400,000 highway pass cards will be added to tollgates to cope with the possible traffic surge, according to the provincial expressway network operation and management center.

The center told China Daily that drivers should take a card when entering the highway and later return it at the exit point. The bars at the tollgates will be removed to speed up traffic.

According to Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway Co Ltd, which manages the province's busiest highways, a driver could go through such tollgates in two or three seconds instead of about 16 seconds, which is the time it took in the past.