South Delhi Municipal Corp to start e-toll collection
The South Delhi Municipal Corporation is planning to install electronic toll system for collecting tax to decongest toll plazas. The equipment will be installed at 13 locations by March-end on a pilot basis, officials said. The e-toll system involves tax payment through radio frequency device system which allows automatic deduction of toll tax from a customer's account.
The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) plans to install an electronic toll system for collecting tax, in order to decongest toll plazas.The equipment will be installed at 13 locations by the end of March, 2017, on a pilot basis.?We have started the tender process and a total of 65 lanes will be developed at 13 toll plazas for e- toll collection system. Based on the reviews, we will extend it to other locations. We will complete the work by end of the financial year,? said Puneet Goel, commissioner, South Corporation. ?It will work faster, compared to the manual process of collecting toll tax and also help reduce traffic jams,? he added. The toll points selected for the project include Ghazipur (main and old), Shahdara flyover, Kundli, Rajokri, Kalindi Kunj, Tikri, Kapashera and Aya Nagar.The terms and conditions for the functioning of the system have been laid out on the advice of the Environment Pollution Control Authority.The e-toll system involves tax payment through Radio Frequency Device System (RFDS), which allows the automatic deduction of toll tax from the customer?s account. ?We will sell the Radio Frequency Identification cards to the vehicle owners and recharge it with a certain amount. The ID will be pasted on the windshield of the vehicles. The e-toll machine installed at the toll plaza will read the ID card at a distance of 100 metres and automatically deduct the amount from person?s account,? said Shailendra Singh, standing committee chairman. Read more: South Delhi residents to soon get integrated grievance redressal cellThe initiative has been taken following the instruction of Supreme Court on July, 2016 to modernise toll collection by introducing RFID-based systems and install CCTV cameras at all the 124 entry points to the city.According to an SDMC official, the RFID will also boost cashless transactions. ?The corporation often receives complaints from toll points about drivers not paying the environment compensation charges (ECC). By introducing RFID, the taxes will be collected directly through e-purses,? an official said.In October 2015, the Supreme Court had asked the municipal corporation to levy ECC tax on commercial vehicles entering the city, citing increasing air pollution. The tax was implemented in November and within two months, the number of trucks entering the capital declined by 20%. This also brought down the tax collection of three corporations by one fourth. This year, the South Corporation collected a total of ?630 crores from toll plazas.Sunil Dahiya, a Greenpeace India campaigner, said the equipment would help monitor the vehicles entering the city and reduce the emission of fuel. ?It will no doubt help reduce air pollution. But the technology is based on electronic payment and I doubt how prepared the corporation is, to popularise the concept ,? he said. 