NEW DELHI: Travellers in near future may only have to pay highway toll based on the distance they travelled rather than a general toll fee for using national highways in the country.
Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said that with advancement in technology, the ministry in process of adopting new technologies for faster, cheaper aceess to road for commuters.
"We are in process of bringing technology that would make travellers pay highway toll according to kilometers travelled. Say, if you have travelled 10 km or 25 km pay for same rather than the entire stretch," Gadkari said at the inauguration of India Integrated Transport & Logistics Summit.
Many countries like US, Europe, Australia have been doing trials on the distance-based electronic tolling.
In the existing systems being tried to determine and record travel information, each car must be equipped with an on-board unit that have a GPS receiver, a set of digital maps identifying jurisdictional boundaries, an odometer feed, a rate table for computing distance charges, and some form of wireless communication technology for reporting billing data.
Post demonetisation and push to digital economy, Government has asked automobile manufacturers to provide a digital identity tag in all new vehicles, including cars, to enable electronic payment at all toll plazas and ensure seamless movement at check posts.
The National Highways Authority of India has already used radio-frequency identification tags on cars so that toll can be detected electronically from account of driver.