- Vehicles queued beyond 100 metres to be exempt from paying toll

- A yellow line to be marked at 100 metres from the booth

National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has laid down new guidelines to minimise the waiting time at toll plazas. As per the fresh rules, no vehicle should exceed the service time of 10 seconds at the toll plazas.

To ensure seamless flow of traffic, vehicles that queue up beyond 100metres from the toll plaza will be exempt from paying the toll and allowed to pass until the queue comes within 100 metres. For this purpose, each toll lane will have a dedicated yellow line marked at a distance of 100 metres from the booth. NHAI states that this move is introduced to inculcate a further sense of accountability in toll plaza operators.

Earlier this year, NHAI successfully switched to 100 per cent cashless FASTags from midnight of 15 February, 2021. Since then, the overall FASTag penetration in toll plazas has reached over 96 per cent.

A press statement released by NHAI stated, “Keeping in view the growing Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) penetration in the country, it has been emphasized to have a new design and construct the upcoming toll plazas as per traffic projections for next 10 years to have an efficient toll collection system.”