Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday said the government is considering introducing monthly and annual passes in lieu of toll collection for private vehicles on national highways as the share of private vehicles in the total collection is only 26 per cent.
Addressing a programme, Gadkari said toll collection booths will be set up outside villages so that the movement of villagers is not hampered. “74 per cent of toll revenue comes from commercial vehicles. We are considering introducing monthly or annual passes for private vehicles,” the minister said.
He said the share of private vehicles in total toll collection is only 26 per cent, so the government will not incur any loss.
Toll collection system will be better
Gadkari said that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has decided to initially implement a barrier-free Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) based toll collection system as an additional facility along with Fastag on national highways. He said, “The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) based toll collection system will be better than the current toll collection system.”
In July last year, Gadkari had said that a pilot study has been done on the Bengaluru-Mysuru section of National Highway (NH)-275 in Karnataka and Panipat-Hisar section of NH-709 in Haryana regarding the GNSS based user fee collection system.
The move is aimed at reducing traffic congestion and charging based on the exact distance traveled on highways. The average waiting time for vehicles at toll plazas during FY 2018-19 was eight minutes. With the introduction of FASTag, the average waiting time of vehicles has reduced to 47 seconds during FY 2020-21 and 2021-22.
Although waiting times have improved significantly at some locations, especially in densely populated towns near cities, there are still some delays at toll plazas during peak hours.
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