| Highways can be divided, according to their functions and administrative grades in the highway network, into state roads, provincial roads, county roads, township roads and village roads, of which county roads, township roads and village roads are referred to as rural highways. Good highway maintenance can prolong the service life of highways, reduce the consumption of land or other resources and increase social transportation benefits so as to improve environment, promote investment and raise fiscal revenue. So it is clear that highway maintenance is very important.However,there were such many drawbacks that have a direct impact on regular service, traffic safety and long-term development in rural highway maintenance management. Therefore, General Office of the State Council printed and distributed the Plan for the Reform of Rural Highways Maintenance Management System on September, 2005, calling on all provinces, all cities and all autonomous regions to formulate plans and implement reforms on the basis of the Plan's requirements and their actual situation. As a typical"rural urbanization"prefecture-level city, Dongguan still has been generally using the system of unified leadership and classified management, which was built in 1956 and issued as a regulation in 1987. In this system,county roads are managed and maintained professionally by gang maintenance equipped with technicians and maintenance machinery, which is set by the local highway management station under the leadership of Dongguan Bureau of Transport and maintenance funds are from municipal fiscal revenue and provincial automobile road maintenance fees. For township roads, only some primary roads are maintained by township governments and maintenance funds are self- financed by township governments while the left by their own administrative status of villages and maintenance funds by village committees. The maintenance professionalism isn't high enough. Village roads are managed by their own administrative status of villages and maintained by villagers, who are organized voluntarily with low professionalism and the maintenance funds are mainly self-financed by village and moderately subsidized by township governments depending on their own fiscal revenue. Nowadays, the drawbacks have increasingly becoming serious problems, for examples, no guaranty for funds and no insurance for maintenance, no clear line between the functions of public institutions and enterprises and no clearness of the relations between them; overstaffing and insufficient supervision. Thus, they are not only unfavorable to cost-saving and highway preventive maintenance but also inconvenient for the people. With our socialist market economy being pushed forward, it is imperative for rural highway maintenance management system to reform.At present, the plan of Dongguan rural highway maintenance management system isn't put into practice. As an officer working for rural highway maintenance management, the author introduces a new-type maintenance management system which can adapt to the development of Dongguan rural highway. It also can be a reference for Dongguan system reform. The author intends to discuss it from the following parts.Firstly, the goal of reform should be set in accordance with national papers for the purpose of establishing rural highway maintenance management system and operation mechanism in light of specific situation and socialist market economy, guaranteeing daily maintenance and normal use and realizing the normalization and standardization for rural highway maintenance management.Secondly, learning experience from other provinces or cities, the author makes a contrast among different reform programs. Although all provinces and cities have something common in raising funds, distributing responsibilities and conducting high-technical maintenance projects, they are different in dealing with minor repair and maintenance. Because there are varieties in organization structure, management and market circumstances. Thirdly, the author also takes the actual situation into account in Dongguan, like active local economy, increasing traffic flow, ban on motorcycles, derating highway maintenance fees, imposing bunker surcharge, low-level village roads, great potential safety hazards for bridges, regional interest protection, integration and convenience for the people.Fourthly, the level-to-level maintenance management system is suggested to be built on the principle that township and village roads are maintained by municipality for Dongguan. In the aspect of organization structure, the original county-township maintenance management system should be abolished. Since there is no county under Dongguan city, the rural highway maintenance management system is to be built with municipality as major. That is to say, the municipal department in charge of transport and communications---the Municipal Bureau of Transport is responsible for the unified management of rural highway, remaining the original local highway administrative stations, local newly-set highway maintenance substations by towns. All township governments transfer the right to maintenance of township roads and village roads to local newly-set highway maintenance substations which are in charge of unified maintenance for all county roads, township roads and village roads. Since then, all rural roads are managed regionally, and a three-level management structure town is formed from Municipal Bureau of Transport, local highway administrative stations to township highway maintenance substations. For the management of production, it is necessary to separate management from maintenance and promote the marketization of rural highway maintenance. The technical operation is not so complicated that cleaning and minor repair work for rural highway are encouraged to be contracted with cleaning companies or groups or general professional maintenance teams as package through competition in the form of contract management and measurement-based payment for bill of quantity. According to the size, large and medium-size highway projects can be openly bided as package or a unit. In terms of maintenance funds, steady funds sources should be built up for rural highway maintenance and funds using controlled. The funds under the new rural highway maintenance management are mainly made up of three parts: provincial financial aid (proportion sharing of bunker surcharge), municipal finance and township finance.Fifthly, compared the new system with the old one, unified management can be implemented and strict and effective supervision system built up; the separation between public institutions and enterprises has been achieved and their relations rationalized. It is advantageous to saving maintenance cost and social resources, improving economic performance for maintenance, professionalizing maintenance and balancing local interests and convenient for the people.Sixthly, there is no straight way for any reform. The process of establishing new system is also a process to overcome all obstacles brought by old one. When building a new system, it is inevitable to face some objective problems: changing mind, dispersion of personnel, replacement of property right of state assets and immature maintenance market. The countermeasures are suggested including conducting general education, relieving employee's psychological burden and eliminating antagonism. Furthermore, the government needs making corresponding policies such as encouraging people to start their own business or dispersing redundant employees to junior maintenance companies, offering preference to those companies and helping and supporting the original local stations. Meanwhile, the reform should be implemented step by step. |
PDF Full Text Request