DNA Special: How removal of toll plazas will accelerate the speed of India's travel

Toll plazas are one of the reasons for traffic jams. Cars have to stop to pay toll tax and when traffic keeps piling up, then it results in a jam. But now the government has also found a solution to this problem.

The government is working on a plan to remove toll plazas on all national highways. For this, such cameras will be installed on highways which will scan number plates of vehicles and then the toll money will be deducted directly from your bank account. 

After the implementation of this scheme, you will not have to stop at the toll again and again while travelling on the highway. For this, the Union Transport Ministry has also started a pilot project.

Once the new system is implemented, all toll plazas and the fast tag system will be abolished. Your vehicle will continue to run and the toll will be deducted automatically. It will be just like the speed detection cameras on the roads which catch the speed of the car and the speeding ticket is generated automatically against violators. 

FASTag was made mandatory in India in February 2021. Its purpose was to eliminate the long traffic jams at toll plazas. But this system also did not prove to be foolproof, due to which there are often long lines of vehicles at toll plazas. 

This is because sometimes the FASTag of a vehicle does not work and sometimes the FASTag scanning system gets damaged. Apart from this, there can be the problem of internet connectivity at far-flung toll plazas, due to which there is delay in toll collection and this delay becomes the reason for long traffic jams.

At present, about 97 percent of the toll collection of about 40 thousand crore rupees is done through FASTag. It takes an average of 47 seconds per vehicle to cross a toll plaza with FASTag. 

According to government data, 112 vehicles pass through the manual toll collection lane every hour, whereas every hour more than 260 vehicles move through the FASTag lane by paying toll.

The government plans that after the new scheme of toll collection is implemented, the FASTag system for toll collection will be abolished.

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