Finally the "nail household" that has blocked the construction of a vitally important arterial road in Beijing for four years is gone.

Last Friday, the house owner moved from the site soon after the construction company informed him that the compensation money had been remitted into his bank account. The workers tore the house down overnight.

Five years ago, Beijing's urban construction authorities decided to build a road linking the Fifth-Ring Road and the Huilongguan sub-district, a northern suburb where large residential communities concentrate, in a bid to alleviate traffic congestion in the northern part of the city.

When completed, the road is expected to help divert about 40 percent of the traffic off the Badaling Expressway, a highway notorious for frequent gridlocks.

The construction of Lincui Road began in 2007 with the removal of local village houses at compensation agreements reached between the villagers and the government. But one house continued to stand in the way as its owner refused to move. The road is almost completed but has to narrow into one lane to round the house, leaving the passage clogged daily during rush hours.

Questioned by angry road users, the local government said construction stalled because the house owner, Xu by surname, asked for 5.8 million yuan ($871,000) in compensation, several times higher than the 1.8 million yuan the government offered.

Now that the deadlock has been settled, a question naturally surfaces in everybody's mind: "How much did the government pay?"

Neither Xu nor the relevant government department would reveal the amount. There is obviously some tacit agreement between the two sides.

The government should not hide the truth. The public has the right to know if the sum was reasonable. If it was exactly or close to the amount requested by Xu, the deal constitutes unfairness to his fellow villagers who had moved for much smaller compensation. And the authorities have no right to use taxpayers' money to appease someone who has severely harmed the public interest because of his or her greed.

If the compensation was really that high, the case has conveyed a ridiculous message: In cases of government requisition of land, whoever blocks the project the longest gets the largest compensation. What kind of message does this send for the future?