Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday made a big announcement and said the Central government was considering the launch of monthly and yearly passes to collect toll for private vehicles plying on National Highways as they contribute for only 26 per cent of total collections
Giving details about it, Nitin Gadkari said the toll collection booths will be set up outside villages so that it does not disturb the movement of villagers. He said that only 74 per cent of toll revenue comes from commercial vehicles and the Centre is considering introducing monthly or annual passes for private vehicles as well.
Gadkari stated that the Road Transport and Highways Ministry has planned to initially implement a barrier-less global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based toll collection system on national highways as an added facility along with FASTag.
Trhe Union Minister had in July last year said that a pilot study with regard to the GNSS-based user fee collection system was done on Bengaluru-Mysore section of NH-275 in Karnataka and Panipat-Hisar section of NH-709 in Haryana.
He also stated that the Centre was considering detecting the weight of trucks to penalise overweight trucks. Giving another update about tenders for the barrierless tolls, eh said that the tender for the barrierless toll project will be issued in the next 15-20 days and added that the government looked towards transparency, perfection in the system and preferably using Indian technology.