FASTags. We have all seen them. They were introduced to cut travel time by trimming the minutes lost at toll plazas. Adoption rose to 97 per cent in a little over two years and nudged to 98 per cent after four, yet many lanes still clog. The simple truth is that system has yet to realise its full potential because of lingering operational issues and everyday behavioural habits.
A May 2021 notification was explicit: "This notification states that if a vehicle is delayed in a queue for over 10 seconds or is queued more than 100 meters from the toll collection point (a distance marked by yellow lines at the booth), it is entitled to pass without paying the toll."
In reality, that relief has rarely been extended to motorists. At times, the delays are caused by user errors and faltering systems. The solution: India must roll out a fully automated satellite-based toll collection system to fix the mounting problems with the current FASTag system.
The rapid rise of toll roads
Since the introduction of FASTag in 2019, the length of toll roads has risen by over 75 per cent in just five years. The pace is among the fastest anywhere for a country the size of India.
According to the latest reports, toll plazas have jumped from 855 to 1,150 quickly. The infrastructure has grown, but the experience has not kept up.
The gap between purpose and reality is not hard to spot. The simple logic of a radio tag on the windscreen and instant debit on the wallet keeps breaking down under everyday Indian conditions. Rain streaks the lens, grime blurs digits, low sunlight produces glare, a tag is poorly placed, or a reader is misaligned. The system drops to number plate recognition or manual entry, and with each fallback, the delay grows. The more we rely on people to patch the system in the moment, the more we drift away from true automation that should prevent a queue in the first place.
Inconsistent practice makes matters worse. Drivers and staff are unsure about exemptions when the fault lies in the machine. They are unclear about what to do when a reader misfires or a tag refuses to respond. A routine passage becomes a small negotiation. A delay for one vehicle travelling down the line increases the waiting time of everyone behind in that lane.
Immediate solutions
Two quick fixes may help:
Create a sustained guidance programme with clear lane-side signs, app and SMS nudges, and a simple entitlements card. Set up a system to issue an incident number whenever a FASTag reader or ANPR camera fails and establish an on-site and app-based grievance desk as the first help point.
Create one national playbook, booth job aids, and a standing order that lets supervisors resolve failures at the booth. Install tools to auto-waive the amount when a reader fails, issue time-limited payment links when camera confidence is low, log incidents automatically with real-time dashboards and provide regular training.
This process cuts waiting time because it keeps vehicles moving instead of being stuck at the barrier.
The car is waved through and logged without charge if the reader fails. If it does not, a quick retry is made, and failing that, the system shifts straight to number plate recognition. Matches are billed instantly; low-confidence cases get a slip with twenty-four hours to pay, so the lane is never blocked. Disputes are handled by a grievance officer on the spot within ten minutes or waived. Clear, predictable rules reduce arguments, speed up decisions, and shorten queues.
In the AI era, a light digital copilot at each plaza can turn improvisation into accountability. Call it "Toll Sense". It would fuse radio reads and camera frames, flag standard failure modes such as glare or rain on the lens and prompt the following action. A small language model can act as a live coach, telling the operator exactly what to do when the system detects a known fault.
It can enforce confidence-based charging so that camera deductions happen only above a published threshold; otherwise, it issues a time-limited link. It can create a one-tap grievance ticket that includes time, lane, images and logs, with a countdown to resolution and a named contact at the site. Most importantly, it can keep auditable privacy first logs without hoarding personal data.
The grievance system must be visible and strong. Every plaza should display a toll helpline and the name or role of the on-site grievance officer.
A three-step ladder can build trust: resolve at the booth within ten minutes, at the plaza desk the same day, or through a regulator portal within seventy-two hours, with tracking always visible to the driver. Publish monthly scorecards for each plaza showing average booth dwell time, share of waivers due to system faults, and grievance closure times. When performance is measured in public, performance improves.
Finally, design for Indian conditions, rather than treating rain and dust as excuses, and enforce one hundred per cent High Security Registration Plates.
The choice is simple. We either restore genuine automation with humane fail-safes or institutionalise manual patches that look clever but feel medieval. FASTag has not failed, but we have been unable to run it with discipline, which has prevented it from unleashing its full potential.
