New Delhi: FASTag may soon be obsolete, since the government plans to implement new toll revenue collection technologies.
The federal government wants to use GPS satellite technology to collect toll fees. According to sources, a pilot study in India is currently being carried out to test the new methodology.
According to this approach, the toll would be paid based on how many miles an automobile drives on a roadway. Therefore, using a highway or expressway will require a person to basically pay a toll based on the distance they go.
The government would eliminate toll plaza booths statewide within a year, according to Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, who made the announcement earlier this year in March during a speech in the Lok Sabha.
Additionally, he said that a GPS-based toll collection system would fully replace toll booths. He also said that GPS imaging would be used to collect tolls from moving automobiles.
Currently, the toll charge is determined by how many kilometres a car drives on a roadway.
However, efforts are being made to adopt the GPS-based strategy in India as well because it has been successful in European nations. It is being evaluated as a pilot experiment.
Currently, the toll is gathered along the entire route between toll booths. The toll must be fully paid even if a vehicle doesn’t cover the entire distance but instead completes its trip in another city.
In Germany, satellite navigation systems are in most cars. The tax calculation starts as soon as a vehicle enters a toll area.
As soon as the car leaves an expressway and moves onto a road without tolls, the toll for the distance travelled is subtracted from the account.
Before putting the new system into place, the transport strategy must also be changed. 1.37 lakh cars nationwide have been covered by the experimental programme.
FASTags, which were released in 2016, make it simpler to make electronic toll payments at toll booths.
Making the tags required would also aid in ensuring that the flow of traffic through the toll plazas is uninterrupted since the toll would be paid electronically.
