Toll Plaza Farewell

For decades, the toll plaza has been an unavoidable irritant on India's highways - a queue of idling vehicles, a haze of exhaust fumes, and a slow crawl towards a barrier that lifts only after money, or at best a FASTag beep, changes hands. Union Minister NitinGadkari's announcement that a fully barrier-free, multi-lane free-flow tolling system will be operational nationwide by February-March 2027 deserves to be welcomed unreservedly. It marks not merely an upgrade but the beginning of the end for an infrastructure model that has long outlived its usefulness.

The case is compelling on every count. India is a country of over 150 crore people, and its roads are correspondingly crowded. Even with FASTag having done away with cash transactions, the physical barrier itself remains a bottleneck. During peak hours, what is meant to be a facility often turns into a nuisance, with queues stretching back for kilometres and waiting times once running as high as 30 minutes. Multiply that delay across thousands of toll points and millions of vehicles, and the scale of wasted fuel and squandered time becomes staggering - precisely the Rs5,250 crore in fuel and Rs 68,500 crore in commuter time that the minister has cited.

What makes the MLFF model so persuasive is that it does not merely tinker with the existing system; it dispenses with the very need for a physical stop. Overhead gantries equipped with sensors identify and charge vehicles as they pass at normal speed, eliminating the barrier altogether. This is precisely the kind of technological leap India's roads need. The pilot at the Mundka-Bakkarwala plaza in Delhi has already demonstrated that the concept works in practice, not just on paper. The Minister's own estimate-that operating costs could fall from 12-15 per cent to as little as 2-4 per cent-makes the economic argument as strong as the convenience one, promising annual savings of Rs6,000-7,000 crore.

In an age when banking, shopping and even Government services have moved to one's fingertips, it is faintly absurd that a driver should still have to stop and wait to pay a toll. The technology to end this has been tested; what is required now is speed of execution. The Minister's own timeline - 60-70 per cent completion by the end of 2026, full rollout by early 2027 - is ambitious but achievable if bureaucratic and contractual hurdles are cleared without delay. Toll plazas' time is up.