More cash lanes opened at toll plazas to ease vehicle movement

According to NHAI sources, all lanes of the toll plazas at Parannur and Athur on NH 45 (Grand Southern Trunk Road) and Nemili and Chennasamudaram on Chennai-Bengaluru Highway and Vanagaram on Chennai Bypass were converted into hybrid lanes after vehicles piled up for more than a kilometre, causing severe congestion.

“Being a Sunday, the traffic was comparatively less in most of the toll plazas. The plazas which witnessed heavy traffic pile up, more toll lanes were converted into hybrids to ease the vehicle movement,” a senior NHAI official said, adding that since it is a period of transition and the intention was not to create inconvenience for motorists.

NHAI officials in the State have directed toll plazas to reserve a minimum of two toll lanes as hybrids at each plaza across the State to ensure free movement of the non-FASTag vehicles from Sunday after the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways directed to them convert 25 per cent of the toll lanes to hybrid lanes. “Due to pile of up of vehicles at Vanagaram and Parannur toll plazas, we had to convert all toll lanes into hybrid lanes,” the NHAI official said.

Additional personnel were deployed in all 48 toll plazas in the State to guide the vehicles into FASTag and cash lanes. vehicles lined up at Parannur toll plaza on both sides as not many drivers were aware of the new system of automatic payment of toll fee. When vehicles without FASTag moved into the lanes exclusively meant for cashless transactions, traffic jams increased.

K Govindan, a resident of Ambattur, who often uses the Chennai Bypass road to visit his relatives at Tambaram, said that the NHAI should not have hurriedly implemented the FASTag based payment without creating much awareness among the motorists. “I had ordered a FASTag through PAYTM app on November 25 but have not received it yet. When there is no supply of FASTags, the NHAI should not have implemented the system at haste?” he said.

On the other hand, vehicles with the FASTag had relatively easier entry and exit at toll plazas. Satish Babu, an executive of IT company, who drove to the city from Trichy, said that he could easily pass through four toll plazas at Samayapuram, Tirumandurai, Sengurichi and Vikravandi on NH 45 but the traffic piled up at Athur toll plaza near Melmaruvathur. “Vehicles piled up for more than a km at Athur toll plaza with no separate lanes for FASTag affixed vehicles. So it took more than 15 minutes to cross the plaza,” he complained.

A FASTag is a sticker containing an embedded chip and antenna. It is affixed on a vehicle’s windscreen to enable automatic collection of toll charges when the vehicle passes through a toll plaza, without the need to stop at the toll booth. At the front-end, the FASTag employs radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to help recognise the passing of a vehicle along with details such as the vehicle class and the status of the tag. At the back-end, it is connected to your bank account or wallet to enable automatic deduction of charges.