For National Highway users, long wait at toll plazas will soon be a thing of the past. Country’s first radio frequency identification (RFID)-technology based toll collection plazas will be inaugurated on April 19 at Chandimandir near Punchkula in Haryana on Delhi-Chandigarh highway.
The RFID toll collection system not only plugs leakages in the toll collection but also helps smooth uninterrupted travel on highways in the country.
The system works like this: On the Delhi-Chandigarh highway there are three toll plazas run by L &T, Soma Enterprises and GMR companies. At present, road users have to stop at all the toll plazas and pay cash to pass through.
Once the RFID system is introduced, if one agency issues a chip-embedded sticker to a vehicle, the same can be used at all the three plazas without paying money at each plazas. Money collected from the vehicle will be pooled at one place electronically and distributed among all the three toll gates managements if the vehicle have used all the three plazas.
As the government plans to introduce a single RFID smart tag that can be used at all toll plazas across the country by end-2013, it will first be implemented on pilot basis on Delhi-Chandigarh Highways, sources added.
For getting RFID tag, the road users will have to register at toll maintenance agency by giving name, address, vehicle type and registration number. The information will be stored in the central data base along with unique identification code of tag. To begin with 1 or 2 lanes in each direction will be dedicated to electronic toll collection at each toll plaza. The number of lanes may be increased depending on the number of tag users.
Each plaza will be equipped with automatic vehicle classification (AVC) system for cross verification of vehicle categories to avoid any misuse of tags. The censors placed at toll gates will read the tag from a certain distance and boom barriers will go up automatically , a senior official from the Road Transport and National Highways told Deccan Herald.
Money will be automatically deducted from tag once the vehicle passes certain toll plazas and message will be sent to a centralised back office or Central Toll Clearing House (CCH).