A smooth cruise through toll plazas for vehicles which display FASTag is only partially possible at best owing to some unexpected hitches and even glitches in the electronic system of toll collection. It has been about two months since the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) was made mandatory, but problems resulting in unnecessary wait for road users at the plazas persist.
The Nirmal Project Implementation Unit (PIU) of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), which has six toll plazas starting with the Pipparwada plaza in Adilabad district to Manoharabad toll plaza near Toopran in Medak district, is a good example of how even avoidable problems are hindering smooth operations of NETC.
The plazas at Pipparwada, Rolmamda, Gamjal and Indalwai have all the infrastructure needed for the NETC. However, brief laxity on the part of the staff at respective plazas often results in a non-FASTag vehicle entering one of the four dedicated FASTag lanes, creating a problem.
While the driver will argue endlessly when asked to pay double the toll amount for his mistake, he cannot turn his vehicle back from the lane as other vehicles would have queued up behind it by that time. “I drove into the FASTag lane as the signboard was not visible,” pointed out Ahmed Altaf from Lucknow, driver of a heavy vehicle destined for Hyderabad, at the Indalwai plaza.
Yes, the toll plazas are poorly illuminated in that the sign designating the lane as FASTag is hardly visible at night and there are no staffers to guide the drivers. Besides, drivers experience a lot of confusion when approaching the plaza as the staff close down a lane temporarily using the rather invisible empty water barrels.
The toll plazas at Bhiknoor and Manoharabad present a picture of chaos with construction work going on there. The staffers scan the FASTags using hand-held scanners, which are prone to malfunction. And when that happens, the flow of traffic is stalled until a new device is put to use. “Poor internet connectivity sometimes has the hand-held devices getting hung and the issue of closing of lanes temporarily arises if the computer systems malfunction,” said Nirmal PIU Project Director A. Tarun Kumar. “With regard to poor visibility of the FASTag signboards, we will rectify the problem,” he asserted.