New regulations on rest stops, standing and parking points on expressways in Vietnam

New regulations on rest stops, standing and parking points on expressways in Vietnam (Image from the Internet)

1. New regulations on rest stops, standing and parking points on expressways in Vietnam

According to the regulations in Article 52 of the Law on Road 2024, the rest stops, standing and parking points on expressways are regulated as follows:

- Rest stops are constructed according to national technical standards issued by the Minister of Transport and technical standards announced by the competent authority to serve the synchronized exploitation of expressway projects, providing services for road traffic participants, supporting rescue, maintenance, fuel and energy supply for road traffic vehicles.

- The investment in rest stops is implemented as follows:

+ In case the expressway project is invested through public investment, the rest stops are invested together with the project in the form of public investment or selection of investors according to the bidding law.

+ For a expressway project invested through a public-private partnership, the rest stops are constructed together with the project under the public-private partnership method.

+ For existing rest stops that are public assets, the State selects investors to operate, exploit, or upgrade, expand, renovate, modernize, operate, and exploit according to the bidding law or the law on the management and use of public assets or combined implementation in the expressway project under the public-private partnership method.

- In case of necessity, based on the service demand and project nature, the competent authority shall consider and decide the investment in standing and parking points to serve the expressway traffic participants.

- The location and scale of rest stops, standing and parking points are determined during the project planning and construction design.

- The Government of Vietnam provides detailed regulations on Clause 2 Article 52 of the Law on Road 2024. The Minister of Transport provides detailed regulations on Clauses 3 and 4 Article 52 of the Law on Road 2024.

2. Regulations on expressway user charges in Vietnam

The expressway user charges are regulated in Article 50 of the Law on Road 2024 as follows:

- The State collects expressway user charges for vehicles traveling on expressways owned by the people and directly managed and exploited by the State, including:

+ expressways invested by the State through public investment;

+ expressways invested in other forms that are handed over to the State upon contract termination.

- The management and use of revenue from expressway user charges are regulated as follows:

+ The road management authority organizes the exploitation of assets and submits the collected fees to the State budget according to the law on fees and charges;

+ The organization receiving the fee collection concession, business management concession submits the concession amount to the State budget; the fees collected during the contract period are not submitted to the State budget, except for the revenue share required to be shared with the State according to the law.

- The Government of Vietnam regulates the conditions, timing for collecting expressway user charges; the collection of expressway user charges for expressways under Clause 1 Article 50 of the Law on Road 2024 that do not meet the requirements in Clause 1 Article 45 and Clause 2 Article 47 of the Law on Road 2024.

See more Law on Road 2024 effective from January 1, 2025, except points a and b Clause 2 Article 42, Articles 43, 50, Clause 1 Article 84 of the Law on Road 2024 effective from October 1, 2024.

The Road Traffic Law 2008 (amended by the Law amending  various Laws related to planning 2018 and the Law on Prevention and Control of Harms of Alcohol and Beer 2019) shall expire upon the effectiveness of the Law on Road 2024, except as provided in Article 86 of the Law on Road 2024.

Vo Tan Dai

>> CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ARTICLE IN VIETNAMESE