New Delhi: Come 1 December 2019, not having FASTags could hold you up indefinitely at toll plazas, with the Modi government looking to all but ban cash payments across India’s 370 national highways, ThePrint has learnt.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre is planning to restrict cash payments to one lane at each toll plaza, keeping the others reserved for vehicles equipped with ‘FASTags’ for automatic payments, senior officials in the Union Road Transport and Highways Ministry said.
“Allowing cash payment in just one lane for all vehicles will be a huge deterrent as there is bound to be long queue in that lane,” a senior highway ministry official stated.
According to the plan, the officials said, drivers of vehicles not fitted with FASTags or ‘Radio Frequency Identification’ tags, will have to cough up double the fees applicable to that category of vehicle if they enter the reserved lanes.
The one lane where cash payment will be allowed will be a “hybrid” passage, where FASTags will work as well. It has been kept thus to monitor overloaded vehicles, the sources said, adding that this will also have to be converted into a dedicated FASTag lane in a time-bound manner.
A vehicle equipped with a FASTag can drive past toll plazas without having to wait in a queue to pay toll. Such tags have a unique code to identify the vehicle when it passes through an electronic toll collection (ETC)-enabled toll plaza. The system will automatically read the code and deduct the toll. The tag can be recharged once the balance runs out.
The initiative is already operational at 450 toll plazas on national highways, though not mandatory yet.
RFID tags can either be installed by automobile manufacturers, or, alternatively, purchased from designated banks and toll plazas. The NHAI has issued 58 lakh FASTags so far.
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The highways ministry decided on the 1 December deadline Friday, according to the officials. They said the ministry has now written to the chairman of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to inform him about the decision.
“It has been noticed that the increase in the users making payment of the toll in the fee plazas on the national highways through the mechanism of FASTag is not increasing in the manner desired,” the ministry’s letter to the NHAI chairman states. “This further leads to the payment by cash and further increases the jams at the fee plazas,” adds the missive, which was accessed by ThePrint.
Once the plan is rolled out, the NHAI, an autonomous government agency that oversees India’s highways, will have to ensure that all toll plazas are made ETC-enabled by 1 December.
The ministry has also directed the NHAI to ensure that FASTags are made available in requisite numbers across the country, so that commuters do not face any hassle.
When the project becomes fully operational, India will become the only country to have a uniform inter-operable ETC facility across its length and breadth. In the western world, different cities in the US and European nations have different ETC systems.
Though initially meant for ETC, the system can be scaled up at a later stage to help security agencies track stolen vehicles, the sources said.
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