National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has floated a Request For Proposal (RFP) to implement ‘Pay as You Use’ tolling on the Delhi-Mumbai Highway, for which bids are expected to be submitted by February 26. A couple of months thereafter, the project will be put into use as a pilot project for a year.
The move comes after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech had mentioned his plans for a ‘Pay as You Use’ tolling system.
“Paving the way for the implementation of the Budget announcement regarding ‘Pay as you use’ tolling in India, the NHAI is executing a pilot project to study the implement ability of the system in the country. The pilot project involves implementing a satellite based electronic toll collection system running on GPS/GSM technology for around 500 commercial vehicles on the Delhi-Mumbai National Highway. The project will run for one year,” read NHAI’s announcement on Wednesday.
Working on a combination of mobile telecommunications technology and the satellite-based GPS, the proposed tolling system would be able to deduct money from a vehicle account, credit the money to the concessionaire within one day and open the toll gate. In case of a failed transaction it would be able to alert the toll operator to not open the gate and collect payment manually.
According to the plans, the pilot project will look at ways to integrate the new solution with the existing pre-paid wallet account offered by NHAI. It will also draw a comparison between distance based tolling and the existing tolling system, as also virtual tolling versus normal tolling.
