The adoption of FASTag has reduced the average waiting time at toll plazas to 150 seconds this year, compared to 464 seconds last year, which is expected to save fuel worth Rs 20,000 crore for the country, said Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on March 1.
The minister, who launched a live monitoring system for toll plazas across the national highways to gauge waiting time and traffic queue length on a real-time basis, also said the move would reduce carbon emission by 5 lakh tonnes per month.
He said the system will come out with a Daily Congestion Index monitoring the traffic across the country.
The government made FASTags mandatory starting from February 15 this year. As per the current regulations, vehicles not having FASTags will be charged double at electronic toll plazas across the country.
According to the transport ministry data, shared by the minister during the launch, on arriving at the pay-axis of the toll booth, fee payment through FASTag takes 5 seconds as against 40 seconds for cash payments.
Gadkari said India was moving towards a toll-booth free mechanism, and the central government’s income had increased Rs 10,000 crore due to the implementation of the new system.
After the implementation of the FASTag mechanism, national highway toll plazas alone have crossed 6 million transactions worth Rs 100 crore. In addition, there is a 10 percent growth in the number of transactions on a weekly basis, the government data showed.
Also, the number of grievances per lakh FASTag transactions came down to 11 in 2021 as against 24 in 2019.
Gadkari added that the toll-free mechanism will use a GPS-based system to deduct the amount from vehicle owner's account. Already, new commercial vehicles have this technology in place, though it is yet to be activated.
Gadkari also said the construction of roads in the country increased to 33 kilometre per day now, compared to 2 km per day during the UPA regime.