Satellite-based toll collection to replace toll plazas soon: Nitin Gadkari

Toll plazas on national highways will soon be history as India prepares to shift to a new toll collection system which will make them redundant. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that toll barriers will be replaced by satellite-based toll collection which will use GPS and camera to deduct fees from vehicles. The new toll collection system, which Gadkari said will implemented from March this year, is expected to start by summer this year. Currently a pilot run of the new GPS-based toll collection is underway to test its feasibility.

The new toll collection system will deduct fees directly from the user's bank account. The amount of toll will depend on the distance a vehicle has travelled. All these information will be gathered through GPS. Currently, toll fees are fixed at every plaza irrespective of the distance covered by a vehicle.

In December last year, Gadkari had announced that the new satellite-based toll collection system will be implemented by the end of this month. However, due to ongoing model code of conduct for Lok Sabha elections, the implementation has been postponed. On Wednesday (March 27), Gadkari explained how the new toll tax system will help save time and fuel. He said, “Earlier, it used to take nine hours to travel from Mumbai to Pune. Now it is a 2-hour journey. Seven hours of diesel get saved. Naturally, we have to pay some money in return. We are doing it through public-private investment. So we will have to return the money too." Gadkari had earlier said that test runs of the new system are already been conducted at two places.

Toll plazas on national highways currently deduct toll fees through RFID technology called FASTag. It was implemented as the mandatory toll collection system from February 15, 2021. The toll fee gets deducted at toll plazas equipped with RFID-enabled barrier. Cameras installed at the barrier reads FASTag IDs of vehicles and charge fees based on distance from the previous toll plaza. The toll fees are paid to National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).

The new system now plans to improve the collection system by using GPS-based information on distance travelled by each vehicle which is expected to rationalise toll fees.