Workshop on Tolling of National Highways and Implementation of Electronic Toll Collection Begins

Workshop on Tolling of National Highways and Implementation of Electronic Toll Collection Begins
Electronic Toll Collection Across all the Toll Plazas on NHs by Year End -Shri Vijay Chibber

A day long workhop on tolling of National Highways and implementation of Electronic Toll Collection in the country began here this morning. Speaking on the occasion Shri Vijay Chibber, the Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said that the Government has decided to implement RFID (Radio Frequency ID) based Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system across National Highways. The Ministry aims to implement ETC across all the toll plazas on National Highways in the country by the end of this year. The RFID technology shall expedite the clearing of traffic at toll plazas and the need of carrying cash shall also be eliminated when Toll plazas shall be duly integrated with each other throughout India. 

Elaborating the steps taken Shri Chibber said, Government has issued orders to incorporate ETC lanes as a mandatory clause in the contracts awarded for all the Highways projects. Necessary amendments have already been made in the Central Motor Vehicle Rule, 1989 for fitment of RFID tag on vehicles for ETC. A pilot project on Interoperability of ETC system for 10 toll plazas between Mumbai (Charoti) and Ahmadabad has already been tested and successfully operational at present. For implementing ETC on pan India basis, a new Company “Indian Highways Management Company Limited”(IHMCL) with equity participation from NHAI (25%), Concessionaires (50%) and Financial Institutions (25%) has already been constituted. The objectives of the new Company are collection of toll through ETC and to manage the project strategically, administratively, legally technically, commercially and to provide services of a central system which includes toll transaction clearing house operations , help desk support and setting up of call centers for Incident Management. 

IHMCL has already finalized the Service Provider Agreement for Central Clearing House (CCH) Services for Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) with the ICICI Bank and has placed orders for 1st consignment of hardware’s for 20 toll plazas on NHAI managed highways stretches. The Ministry proposes to launch a seamless ETC service on the NH – 8 from Delhi to Mumbai in a couple of weeks. 

National Highways are tolled,under the provisions of the National Highways Act,1956.The first major National Highway stretch brought under toll was Kotputli-Amer section of NH-8 with effect from March 30,1998.Presently, 15,506 Km length of the National Highways is under tolling through 302 Toll Plazas. 

There are 374 toll Plazas in the country.Out of these 164 are underBOT(Toll),138 are under public funded and 72 are on bridges. 

Earliar Shri Alkesh Sharma ,Joint Secretary ,Ministry RTH welcomed the participants. The senior officers of the RTH Ministry, representatives from the states and UTs, transport organizations and other stakeholders are participating in the workshop.