Highways: Electronic Toll Collection Evolving in India
- Drivers in New Delhi will soon be able to use the same kind of electronic toll pricing system as the one proposed in Singapore. An RFID-based payment system will be set up on tags installed in the cars as well as in roadside units at toll plazas. This solution would cost 100 rupees per unit (less than 1.50 euros).
- The amount due is to be debited from the driver’s prepaid account automatically. However, the government has not yet decided whether the payment clearing process would be a daily or a monthly system.
- Meanwhile, a credit/debit card-based solution should also be rolled out (the cost of which would be comprised between 1,500 and 2,000 rupees –21 to 30 euros) and should take four to five years to be set up.
- The lower cost of these devises has played a part in their adoption, just as the notion of time saving (relieving traffic congestion at toll collection points): according to CRISIL Research (Credit Rating and Information Services of India), truck drivers could save more than 10 billion rupees (about 143 million euros) in fuel annually.
- These solutions may also remedy under-reporting of toll revenue collection, today affected by annual losses assessed at 12 billion rupees (more than 171 million euros).
- This announcement again illustrates the variety of possible RFID applications. The often prohibitive cost of the tags and adapted readers should however soon be absorbed. This kind of toll collection system, called Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), is common in Singapore, for instance, where it has been rolled out in 1998.
- In Europe, remote toll collection is also rather successful as solutions like the liber-t case (France) or viatag contactless stickers (Germany) are proposed (see August and July 2011 Insights).