From 17 February, a new pass system started a trial run on all expressways in Zhejiang province. This yellow pass contains a chip that is able to record the actual mileage of a vehicle and thus adjust the toll fee accordingly. A total of 100,000 passes have been issued for the trial run, which will be used in conjunction with the existing ones; for the time being, toll fees will not be calculated according to mileage. Fifteen reading systems have been installed on major expressways such as the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo expressway.

In another development, the provincial government commissioned a health check on all its expressways and concluded that most of them were well maintained and in good shape. In 2008, official statistics showed that the provincial government spent a little over Rmb1.2bn on maintaining its expressways, equivalent to about 10 per cent of its total income from 2007 tolls.