[fhdowntheline]

I think the idea of collecting a toll tax on fuel is not bad as it sounds. This will also ensure that local people who dont pay the toll but use it the most, also are part of the coverage. There are too many freebies as it is under all categories.

[jkrishnakj]

I like the idea of a toll cess through the fuels too. For that matter, anything creative that will help zip through those booths are fine with me. The current wait and idle and crawl and wait mode on the highways is just a big waste of time with fuel consumption and pollution at the booths just being too much.

The toll cess can actually make it cheaper compared to fuel consumption due to idling and crawling at the booths.

[drsingh]

A lot of interesting analysis here.
You have to look at this in terms of the bigger picture:

1.Surveillance 'requirements' of the state.
2. Total addressable market type thinking of new IT players.
3.Internet of things aspirations of private telecom players, government, foreign companies.
4. Data mining and sale of data to insurance industry, law enforcement, lawyers , parking companies, logistics firms, mapping industry, traffic analysis etc.
5. Monetisation of smaller roads, parking monetisation in smaller cities, ability to tap into additional source of revenue like fuel price changes.
6. Increased monetisation and captive pool of GPS tracked vehicles as a network can be leveraged by finance people to attract long term FDI for infrastructure projects.
7. Restrictions of movement to reduce congestion or implementing rationing of vehicle use to reduce pollution, riots etc.
8. Automatic Challans for any violation. More efficient connection of fines .
9. Ability to discipline the population by having 'big brother' always watching.
10. Ability to police the driving behaviour on a mass scale.
11.Geopolitical reasons to increase market access to Russian companies in exchange for weapons systems.
12. Possibility to pay Russia in currency swaps and trade instead of USD.

You have to look at this development from a Chinese style command and control aspirations to monetize and control the population instead of a Western market economy perspective.

If Aadhaar,jio,4g are considered, state policy aligned with big private interests is a powerful force to get things done. Specially when it is an asset light system to leverage tracking technology that is already being built in to new vehicles.

To be successful a 30% market penetration will be profitable enough. It will generate data good enough for big profits.

[warp_10]

Originally Posted by anb

What is need of the toll when we pay Rs.18 as road infrastructure cess for a litre of petrol and diesel ? Where is this money going ?

I believe like most economies India as well relies on petrol / diesel sales to build up much of their coffers to run the government. The government acts more like a company with each being a separate division with funds generated internally and also pumped in from other divisions.

The excise duties on petrol and diesel contributed nearly 1,420.3 billion rupees ($19.24 billion), or nearly 11 percent of total tax revenue for the year ended March 2019.Mar 13, 2020

Well, substantial part of India's coffers are pushed by petrol taxes and so doing away with it is unlikely unless we are a developed nation.

[Prowler]

I noticed one thing with my Garmin device - that if my windshield is dirty with a film of dust, the sat signal strength drops down. Now if they are going to implement the GPS thing which tracks your car's movement, it can easily be 'disabled'. Once someone figures out where the GPS device is located, it will be easy enough to cut the power supply through a switch so that when you go for a long drive, you disable the device.

It is not a bright idea to depend on GPS to track your car for tolls.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

I think the idea of collecting a toll tax on fuel is not bad as it sounds. This will also ensure that local people who dont pay the toll but use it the most, also are part of the coverage. There are too many freebies as it is under all categories.

There are numerous countries in the world that have “road tax” included in their fuel prices (e.g. France) but still charge toll for the use of their motorways, tunnels etc. (e.g. France)

Of course, collecting (road) tax is an important aspect, but to the best of my knowledge all these toll booth barrier free type of system have been deployed primarily to relief congestions and to influence people’s behaviour on driving cars. (by different pricing for rush hour, inter versus intra city driving etc.)

Jeroen

[fhdowntheline]

Agree- but we will not be able to replicate the western road infrastructure model, try as much as we want.
Certain user behaviours are endemic to Indians-using highways for local traffic, using the wrong side to avoid long U turns/diversions, creating pathways where none are supposed to exist, and so on. It's in our DNA to traverse the most convenient path instead of the most safe one. The only way it works well is if village areas are bypassed by a wide margin or villages are re-settled. Both are subject to excruciating litigation.

[KL01toKA03]

https://www.businesstoday.in/current...ry/434186.html

The central government is planning to roll out complete GPS-based toll collection within a year. If this plan follows through then toll booths will be defunct in the country. The announcement was made by Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday in Lok Sabha.

I hope they are planning to use FASTag in some manner for this. Else, what was the need for making it mandatory?

Advantages:

Will speed up the toll collection process
Eliminates or reduces evasion of toll

Disadvantages:
If not linked to FASTag, this will make the existing tags redundant.
If there is no prepaid wallet linked to each cars, collecting toll will be difficult in India. Not sure what happens if somebody does not pay toll.

[PrideRed]

If this is coming what made Govt. push Fastag? Keep my money in bank account without interest so that Banks prosper? Govt. knows we humans are addicted to cars, hence they are going all guns blazing to extract the maximum.

[Dry Ice]

A sincere appeal to the Govt - GPS, Fastag, NFC, Chip in my head, whatever it is, just look ahead and plan for a minimum of 15-20 years. Improve the system incrementally. Please do not go experimenting with all the latest tech you can get your hands on. It's not a play school where you are trying to join the blocks and building something. Starting over ever so often. All your actions have real impact on people on the ground. You cannot keep ignoring the realities.

Fastag is good enough if it can be enforced diligently. Several people occupy the lanes and then reason with the operators about paying by cash, being exempt etc etc.

GPS isn't a fool proof solution. Several years ago, I hired a Uber to go from GGN to South Delhi. The cab/phone had a faulty GPS which recorded us going on to the airport access road which had a dedicated toll. This toll was added to my final bill and I had to reason with them for 6 months to revert this charge as the cab did not take the airport ramp.

[androdev]

GPS based over-speeding tickets, anyone?

[shamanth]

I guess this was coming, they jumped into Fastag RFID without verifying other technologies available across the world.

Then NHAI and transport minster suddenly realize, this is redundant technology, where toll booth wait time never reduced even with fastag. Now exploring newer technology, they should have done this homework earlier and got better technology in 1st go.

[saikarthik]

GPS of what? Many cars on the road doesn't have a GPS device in-built. Are we going to be forced to buy some device to retrofit? if not, then there will be 2 systems in place, FASTag for old vehicles, GPS based toll for new till the transition is complete. And even then it will be the user who will need to pay additional amount for this device.

This is a nightmare scenario for users. Government is perfecting the "fickle is fun" attitude(sadly)! Who is paying for all the impulsive and short time implementations on infrastructure? I now know where all the tax money is going!

[dinesharun]

In addition to the fact that many vehicles lack GPS (and retro-fitting would be costly and error prone), we need to remember the fact that the original GPS is an American technology which they could theoretically stop at any point. So building a national system that depends on infrastructure of another country seems risky. Although Indian is currently building it's own GPS network - NavIC , it is nowhere near mature enough and the civilian receivers are not prevalent enough.

[libranof1987]

Don't quite understand this, and also fully expect that there is misreporting of what Gadkari must've said.

I don't understand why there's a need to reinvent. World over, there are booth-less tolls where you just keep driving and overhead sensors capture details via the RFID tags. No stopping, no slowing, proven technology, minimal infrastructure, all automated.

Why not start there.