No more waiting at toll plazas! New FASTag rule soon: What is it? How will it stop delays?

 

No lines at toll booths soon

Very soon, commuters who travel on the highway may not have to wait for long durations at toll booths - something that is faced throughout India at hundreds of toll plazas. Even though toll has become cashless, technical glitches in reading FASTag-enabled vehicles have become a hassle and resulted in long queues.

FASTag transactions made hassle-free

In a major rejig of the system, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has ordered a change in the deployment of devices. The IT system and hardware at toll plazas that process transactions on FASTag will now have to abide by a number of rules in order to ease the pressure on commuters, The Times of India reported.

Only experienced players

The highways authority will now appoint only experienced players, and they will be required to purchase equipment from manufacturers approved by the Ministry of Electronics and IT's Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification directorate.

New features mandatory

According to the guidelines published by IHMCL, the NHAI arm in charge of toll management, the STQC certification will be required for all equipment. This includes the RFID reader along with the antenna, automated number plate scanner, toll lane controller, and toll plaza server.

Work or get suspended

As per the latest guidelines, system integrators are required to give an undertaking to IHMCL that if any deviation is found at a toll plaza assigned to them regarding the equipment, the authority will have the right to suspend the empanelment and forfeit the bank guarantee immediately, TOI reported.


Two-pronged approach

“We are taking a two-pronged approach to address issues people face due to technical reasons. First, people with experience can only get empanelled and the equipment has to be certified by the most credible govt agency. We are also going to deploy engineers at the regional offices of NHAI for better monitoring and resolution of issues,” an official was quoted as saying by TOI.

Why is NHAI doing this?

The NHAI's aim is to reduce hassle for commuters travelling on highways. At present, commuters have to face difficulties at toll plazas even though their FASTags have sufficient balance due to technical glitches and subpar hardware systems that don't read tags.

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