Q. What is the technology being employed for electronic toll collection on highways? What are its advantages and limitations? What are the proposed changes that will make this process seamless? Would this transition carry any potential hazards?
UPSC Mains 2024 GS3 Paper
Model Answer:
India’s current Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) relies on FASTag, utilizing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, which has achieved over 98% penetration on national highways.
Current Technology (RFID): Advantages and Limitations
- Advantages:
- Efficiency: Reduces waiting time, cuts fuel consumption, and eases highway congestion.
- Revenue Buoyancy: Enhances transparency and plugs cash leakages (collecting ₹150+ crore/day).
- Limitations:
- Physical Bottlenecks: Still requires physical plazas and boom barriers, preventing continuous traffic flow.
- Technical Glitches: Scanner misalignment, server downtimes, or damaged tags cause localized delays.
- Rigid Pricing: Flat-rate plaza deductions rather than precise distance-based tolling.
Proposed Seamless Transition (GNSS) & Potential Hazards
The government proposes a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to enable virtual, barrier-free, exact distance-based tolling.
- Privacy/Surveillance Risks: Continuous spatial tracking raises data privacy concerns (necessitating strict DPDP Act, 2023 compliance).
- Toll Evasion: Deliberate tampering or switching off On-Board Units (OBUs) by users.
- Network Blindspots: Satellite signal drops in tunnels, extreme weather, or remote terrains.
- Transition Costs: Retrofitting millions of legacy vehicles with GNSS OBUs is capital-intensive.
Transitioning to GNSS (similar to Germany’s Toll Collect) will revolutionize logistics efficiency, provided robust data anonymization laws and a hybrid RFID-GNSS infrastructure are established during the phase-out.
