Nitin Gadkari outlines how much fuel India will save with mandatory FASTags
Days after the Centre implemented mandatory FASTag for highways across India, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said it will help save massive amount on fuel spent annually by consumers, as well as time spent at the toll gates due to long queues.
Gadkari was speaking at an event where live monitoring system was launched to keep an eye on toll plazas. According to Nitin Gadkari, India will save ₹20,000 crore per annum on fuel if all vehicles use FASTags to travel on national highways. Not only that, Gadkari estimates mandatory FASTags will also help boost revenue by at least ₹10,000 crore.
"Making FASTags mandatory for highway users for collection of electronic toll has significantly reduced delays at toll plazas. This will result in a significant saving to the tune of ₹20,000 crore per annum on fuel cost," Gadkari said was quoted by news agency PTI.
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FASTags were made compulsory for all vehicles to pay user fee at national highway toll plazas from February 16. Since then, toll collection through electronic mode has witnessed manifold growth. According to the NHAI, FASTags have helped its daily toll collection shoot up to ₹104 crore.
"The toll collection during this week has been more than ₹100 crore daily. On 25.02.2021, the toll collection through FASTag reached the highest ever mark of ₹103.94 crore with over 64.5 lakh daily transactions," NHAI had said in a statement a few days ago.
NHAI said that the implementation of FASTag has witnessed growth of 20 per cent in terms of electronic toll collection transactions and 27 per cent in terms of collection of user fee through FASTag
Gadkari said FASTag has resulted in seamless traffic across highways with lesser worries of long queues at the toll gates. He specifically cited the example of Jaipur plaza, where waiting time for vehicles have reportedly gone down to just 5 minutes from 30 minutes.
Gadkari said, "There is zero waiting time at 80 per cent of the total toll plazas and toll collection through electronic tolling has reached 93 per cent from 80 per cent during the last fortnight after the FASTag was made mandatory."
According to NHAI, the FASTag drive has witnessed nearly 20 lakh new FASTag users in last two weeks of February, taking total subscribers to 2.8 crore.
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