The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on Wednesday issued new guidelines saying that it should take no more than 10 seconds to process a vehicle at a toll booth, even if it’s peak hour traffic. The NHAI said in its statement that this will maintain seamless traffic flow at toll plazas while it will also limit the queueing of vehicles to 100 metres or less in each lane.
NHAI mentions that this won’t be applicable to toll stations that have fully implemented FASTag as they can process vehicles much faster and don’t require manual intervention at booths.
“...if there is a queue of waiting vehicles of more than 100 metres due to some reason, the vehicles will be allowed to pass without paying toll till the queue comes within 100 meters from the toll booth.” the NHAI explained in the statement.
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A yellow line will be marked 100 metres from the toll plaza on each lane which would serve as an indicator to toll operators at the site.
“Keeping in view the growing Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) penetration in the country, it has been emphasised to have a new design and construct the upcoming toll plazas as per traffic projections for the next 10 years to have an efficient toll collection system,” the agency further said.
NHAI acknowledged that the social distancing norms right now have led to more commuters registering their vehicles under FASTag so as to reduce human interaction.
Earlier this year, Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Nitin Gadkari said that toll plazas will be removed within one year while clarifying that toll collection will continue via cashless payment methods.
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