Single smart card soon for motorists

 The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is working on introduction of a common smart card that will have intra-operative-facility. At present different smart cards are being used in different toll plazas on the same stretch of road.

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is launching the pilot project from October 31 in three stretches Gurgaon-Jaipur, Panipat-Jalandhar and Surat-Dahisar of the national highways for using a common smart card.

The NHAI is testing three technologies- ‘active’ tolling system (tag sends and receives signals), ‘passive’ system (tag sends only signals) and ‘infrared’ system (which sends and receives signals and works through optical fibre).

“After successful testing of six months, the Government will take a final decision on which technology to be used,”  sources in the Ministry told Deccan Herald.

The NHAI will integrate back-end software on all toll plazas on these stretches for these projects.

Currently, the NHAI toll plazas are connected only to the central server at NHAI’s headquarters in Delhi, but the different toll plazas are not integrated with each other.
As more and more roads are being built under public-private partnership on build-operate-transfer basis, a large network of roads will be tolled.

“After the successful test, the NHAI plans to make at least one lane at every toll plaza across the country electronic in the initial stage and later it will be increased,” sources said.