Though the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has decided to defer collection of user fee at toll plazas only through FASTags till February 15, 2021, the NHAI is to keep up the momentum and improve electronic toll collection for seamless movement of vehicles.
The NHAI decision to begin user fee collection through cashless mode only from February 15, 2021 came on Thursday when the authorities were gearing up to enforce user fee through FASTag from Friday. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) had earlier made FASTags mandatory on all four-wheelers in the country from January 1, 2021.
Now, the NHAI had asked its regional officers and project implementation units to carry out trial runs frequently at toll plazas and educate and convince road users to adopt the FASTag and carry out frequent checking of the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) equipment to ensure maximum collection of the user fee using FASTag.
The deferment came when the authorities were to deploy marshals for lane management and set up kisoks with POS to purchase FASTag on the approaches to the Pampampallam, Ponnarimangalam, Paliyekkara, and Kumbalam toll plazas under the NHAI from Friday. As the plan was to avoid collection of user fee in cash at the toll plazas, those without FASTags and those vehicles that were not having sufficient balance was to pay double the user fee to cross over toll plazas.
Vehicle insurance
To ensure full compliance, MoRTH had made FASTags mandatory for vehicle insurance. A new third-party vehicle insurance from April 1, 2021 will be issued only if the vehicle has a valid FASTag.
Official sources in the NHAI said the local residents within 10 km of the Paliyekkara toll plaza will have to take a monthly pass for ₹150 and those near the Pampampallam, Ponnarimangalam, and Kumbalam toll plazas, a ₹275-pass to cross over. Toll plazas never offer free rides and the State was not ready to share the cost of the user fee of the local people as agreed with the NHAI, he said.
Two more toll plazas are getting ready under the NHAI in the State — Kollam NH 66 bypass and Kazhkuttam-Karode NH 66 bypass. User fee at the Kollam bypass would be collected from the road users in one or two weeks, he added.
A flagship initiative of the MoRTH, passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is used for collection of the user fee.
