In a recent development, the Union Transport Minister, Nitin Gadkari has announced today that the government is ending toll and the new satellite based toll collection system will be introduced soon.
Union Transport Minister Ending Toll
Further adding, “Now we are ending the toll and there will be a satellite based toll collection system. Money will be deducted from your bank account and the amount of road you cover will be charged accordingly. Through this time and money can be saved. Earlier, it used to take 9 hours to travel from Mumbai to Pune, but now it is reduced to 2 hours.”
Moving ahead, Nitin Gadkari further discussed the ongoing development of Bharatmala Pariyojana, which aims to develop approximately 26,000 km of economic corridors.
He has emphasized its significance along with the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) and North-South and East-West (NS-EW) corridors in handling the bulk of freight traffic on roads.
In his speech, he has expressed confidence that the project will revolutionize the nation’s future by 2024.
Further, Gadkari has articulated his ambition to elevate India’s National Highway road network to the standard of America.
While giving assurance, he has given an assurance in his ability to achieve this goal.
Rolling Out New System
Prior to this, Nitin Gadkari had announced that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) aims to roll out this new system by March 2024 during December.
He has informed that the efforts to streamline processes and reduce waiting times at toll plazas have been communicated to the World Bank.
It appears that the average waiting time at toll plazas has significantly decreased to just 47 seconds with the introduction of FASTag.
Further marking a notable improvement from the previous average of 714 seconds.
Besides this, the construction and expansion activities on National Highways have seen a rise of approximately 10 percent between April and November of the current fiscal year as compared to the same period from 2011 to 2023.
Contrary to this, the allocation of new construction projects has witnessed a decline of 52 percent this year.
Under this GPS based toll plaza system, the NHAI will introduce toll collections that run on GPS technology.
This simply means that drivers won’t have to stop at plazas to pay toll charges as the toll will be deducted automatically from the bank account of vehicle owners.
On the topic of high toll taxes, Gadkari clarified that highways save time and fuel adding “Earlier, it used to take 9 hours to travel from Mumbai to Pune, now it is reduced to 2 hours …”
