Automatic Number Plate Reading Cameras To Soon Replace Toll Plazas And FASTag System

The Government working on a plan to remove all toll plazas across India and replace them with automatic number plate reading cameras which will read vehicle number plates and automatically deduct toll from the linked bank accounts of vehicle owners. Minister of Road, Transport, and Highways (MoRTH), Nitin Gadkari has told The Indian Express in an interview that a pilot program of this scheme is underway and legal amendments to facilitate this transition are also being moved. And hence now FASTags that were mandated in India just last year are likely to become a thing of the past soon.

At present, around 97 per cent of the total toll collection of nearly Rs 40,000 crore happens though FASTags while the remaining 3 per cent pay double the rate for not using FASTags. According to the claims, vehicles using FASTags take 47 seconds to cross a toll plaza and more than 260 vehicles can be processed per hour via electronic toll collection lane as compared to 112 vehicles per hour via manual toll collection lane, according to government data.

That said, congestion is still reported at toll gates due to authentication and the automated cameras are likely to deal with this issue and make highway commuting even more seamless. Some of the issues with the FASTags, which were made mandatory from February 16, 2021, include: users with low balance entering the fee plaza lane eventually resulting in longer processing time; internet connectivity issues at remote fee plazas due to which the status of low-balance is not updated to active FASTag in time by the plaza servers; wear-and-tear of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader and tag; and improper affixation of FASTags by users.

That said, the report also states that the ANPR camera is accustomed to reading nine numbers of the number plate and, if there is anything beyond that - like something written on the number plates that we normally see in most of the vehicles in our country, the camera will not read it. Previous tests have shown that the camera misses about 10 per cent of the number plates because they had text beyond nine words and numbers. The government will have to come out with some regulation of technology upgradation to ensure the cameras don't miss any registration plates in a bid to avoid any revenue loss.

Source: The Indian Express