In two years, there will not be any toll plazas on the highways, which means vehicles do not have to stop or slow down at plazas to make payments. Toll charges will be collected from vehicles such as trucks and buses with the use of GPS technology, which will map the distance moved by these vehicles and the toll amount will be automatically deducted.

While speaking at Assocham conference here on Thursday, Road Minister Nitin Gadkari said the Ministry is working on a proposal to use GPS-technology based tolling. All new vehicles will come attached with GPS systems, he added.

It may be noted that the slowing down or stopping of vehicles at toll plazas have lowered with the adoption of Fastags, the RFID-based cashless toll collection method.

Also read: Number of FASTag users rises sharply to over 2 crore: NHAI

Toll collection from the National Highways in present fiscal will touch (a targeted) ₹34,000 crore for, Gadkari said. Last year, the toll collections were at ₹24,000 crore, said Gadkari.

Hill station development

Inviting the industry to participate in infrastructure creation projects, Gadkari added that the government is planning to make a hill station on the lines of those in Switzerland near Zojilla tunnel. Located near Kargil, the 19-km stretch of land can become a good tourist place.

“The proposal is to get land from Leh and Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir on long-term lease of ₹1. These State governments will have equity in the project. It is being designed by Architect Hafeez Contractor along with Swiss architects. Hotels and resorts can be built in that beautiful stretch, which has good road connectivity,” said the Minister.

The Minister added that there are returns to be made in infrastructure projects citing the manifold increase in land prices after a road is made. For the highways sector, he asked the developers to get together and form a non-banking finance company.

He also said the Ministry is also planning to make projects of ₹500 crore to enable participation from Indian players.

Expressways

Recently, speaking at CII conference, Minister said that the work on the 1300-km-long Delhi-Mumbai access-controlled Greenfield expressway, which is 50 per cent complete, should be completed in the next two years. The Bengaluru-Chennai access controlled express highway is also expected to be complete in next two years.

Also read: ‘Govt will resolve all issues for global investors’

Another project, Delhi-Meerut Expressway should be complete in January reducing the travel time between Delhi and Meerut to 45 minutes from over 4 hours. Also, work on ₹65,000-crore access-controlled projects connecting Delhi-Amritsar-Katra and Amritsar-Ajmer will start from the next month.

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