Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has sent a request for proposals to implement barrier-free tolling on the Dwarka Expressway connecting Dwarka in Delhi with Gurgaon in Haryana.
Gadkari shared the information while replying to questions in the Rajya Sabha on whether the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) proposed to build or convert existing toll plazas in the country into unmanned toll plazas and select toll plazas at the initial stage for conversion. The Union Minister said that it has earlier been decided to implement barrier-free Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system with available technology and existing toll plaza infrastructure on selected sections of National Highway (NH).
“A request for proposal (RFP) has been invited/floated for implementation of barrier-free tolling system in Dwarka Expressway project, with the possibility of implementing it in other toll plazas in a phased manner based on the results and effectiveness of the implementation. Dwarka Expressway,” he said.
About the cost of the project, Gadkari said that it is expected that the cost of operating the physical user fee plaza can be reduced by using a barrier-free user fee collection system.
The 29 km long Dwarka Expressway – 18.9 km (in length) in Haryana and the remaining 10.1 km in Delhi – starts from Shiva-Murthi on National Highway 8 and ends near Kherki Daula Toll Plaza. The Gurgaon part was opened after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated it in March this year. The project, which is being constructed at a cost of around Rs 10,000 crore, proposes to connect Sector 21 of Dwarka with the proposed Global City via Sectors 88, 84, 83 and 99-113 of Gurgaon. , before ending on NH-8 in front of Kherki Daula Toll Plaza.
The Ministry has made such provision while revising the National Highway Toll (Rate Determination and Collection) Regulations, 2008 in July this year. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)– based electronic toll collection. GNSS will allow the collection of tolls or highway user fees without stopping the vehicle at a toll booth boom barrier to read a FASTag barcode.
According to the MoRTH, by March 2024, more than 98 percent of user fees at toll plazas were being paid through FASTag. Toll is collected for about 45,000 km of national highways and expressways through 1,200 toll plazas maintained by NHAI or concessionaires.