'Fuel, time worth Rs 12,000 crore wasted at toll plazas per year'

NEW DELHI: India could save up to Rs 12,000 crore every year in terms of fuel and man-hours with the switch to 100% FASTag-based toll collection on national highways (NH) from December 1.

Live monitoring of traffic by a Noida-based startup shows long waiting times at many of the 488 NH toll plazas. At 2pm on Thursday, the average waiting time was 5-10 minutes at 188 plazas and 10-20 minutes at 32 others.

The startup - BullEye Technologies - launched by two IIT-Kanpur alumni estimates 35% of the Rs 12,000-crore loss is on account of wasted fuel while 54-55% is on account of wasted man-hours. Carbon emissions make up the rest of the lost value.


Sources said National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had evaluated their technology at 50 toll plazas for three months last year and found it reliable in more than 90% of cases. "To tally their claims with the ground situation, we called the officials posted at plazas and also got photos. Their projections were correct," said an NHAI official.

NHAI officials said more than 72 lakh FASTag have been sold so far and daily sales have crossed 1 lakh for the past three days. A highway ministry official, however, said they did not get a satisfactory reply from the startup's representatives when a presentation was made before highways minister Nitin Gadkari.

"We have submitted a proposal. We thought of making this portal public so that people can plan their route to avoid congestion. Government agencies can also use it to prevent revenue leakage," said Anand Shenoy, co-founder.