The National Highway Authority of India, a nodal agency of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, is determined change the face of the Highway structure of India. NHAI has initiated many projects keeping in mind the requirements of highway commuters.
The NHAI is an autonomous agency of the Government of India; it is responsible for the management of the Highways network of India. All the works and project implementations in NHAI are done under the dynamic leadership of Honourable Minister Shir Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highway.
Ever since its creation, the NHAI has taken the responsibility of the development, maintenance and management of National Highways, and also the toll collection on several highways. In its quest to provide Indian with the world-class facilities on the highways, NHAI has launched one sub-project of its Wayside Amenities mega-project called Highway Nest (Mini) in more than 50 locations on the occasion of the Republic Day 2018. The GOI has also made it mandatory for all the four-wheelers purchased after December 1st, 2017 to have the FASTag devices fixed on the windscreens by the manufacturers or authorized dealers. The NHAI is also aiming to implement "pay as you use" tolling system in India, it has started a pilot project on the Delhi-Mumbai Highway to study the feasibility and implementability of the system on Indian roads.
In order to achieve the ambitious target of redesigning the Indian Highway Network, the NHAI has amalgamated various and most relevant Information Technology in this Sector. These efforts include:
• Electronic Toll Collection (ETC)
• Advance Emergency Traffic Incident Management
• Wayside Amenities
• Construction of new National Highways
• Hitech Monitoring/Planning, Operation and Maintenance of National Highways
Easy Toll Payment
The NHAI has launched two new mobile apps -- MyFASTag and FASTag Partner -- for the effective implementation of the Electronic Toll Collection system. NHAI Chairman Deepak Kumar said, “The cumbersome method of purchase and recharge of FASTags has been one of the major challenges with the Electronic Toll Collection project. These mobile apps will ease the process, making it possible to buy or recharge FASTags at the click of a mobile button," he said.
MyFASTag is a consumer app, which enables the user to purchase or recharge FASTags, whereas FASTag Partner is a merchant app. The NHAI chairman has also said that by March 31st, 2018, all the 371 NHAI toll plazas in India will at least have one FASTag enabled lane for Electronic Toll Payments.
Another ambitious plan by NHAI for making toll payments simpler is "pay as you use" system, currently, it is a pilot project which is being tested on the Delhi-Mumbai Highway.
What is ‘Pay as you use’
The “Pay as you use’ project is a satellite-based electronic toll collection system, it runs on the GPS/GSM technology. As of now, around 500 commercial vehicles on the Delhi-Mumbai Highway corridor are using this technology to pay their toll fee.
Through this new project, the Highway commuters will be able to pay only for the distance they are going to travel. All they have to do is to put their specific travel details like the origin and destination points, and the will notify them the toll fee according to the distance they are going to travel and the money will get deducted from their account. Once the money is being paid, all the toll gates will remain open for the commuter throughout their journey. In case of a failed transaction, the system will send an alert to the toll operator, so that they can collect the toll payment manually.
The idea behind this pilot study is to look at the ways to integrate this new solution in the already existing FASTag program and also to analyze the comparison between the distance-based tolling and the existing tolling system.