Government data analyzed by News18 shows average toll collection per day reached an all-time high of Rs 150 crore during the first eight months in the financial year 2023-24. This is an improvement from the average collection of Rs 131.5 crore per day during 2022-23 and Rs 93 crore in 2021-22.
As of November, the total toll collection, called user fee, stood at Rs 36,377.79 crore, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) documents seen by News18 show.
Toll collection on national highways has steadily improved over the years. The main reason for this was the shift from manual toll collection to electronic – FASTag.
Other factors contributing to the increase in toll collection include traffic growth, revision in user fee rates and new tollable road length.
As of October 2023, the total length of national highways in India was 1,46,145 km and currently 98.9 percent of fee collection is through FASTag.
MoRTH data shows that toll collection on national highways across India has increased almost three-fold between 2015-16 and 2022-23 – from Rs 17,759.12 crore to Rs 48,028.22 crore.
In this financial year, daily toll collection reached an all-time high on April 29 when Rs 193.15 crore was collected in a day with 1.16 crore transactions.
In July, News18 reported that the average monthly toll collection through FASTags for the first quarter of 2023-24 was Rs 4,406 crore. This is higher than the average monthly collection of the previous quarter (January-March 2023), which was Rs 4,083 crore, and also higher than the first quarter of 2022 (Rs 3,841 crore). The average monthly toll collection for the April-November period stood at Rs 4,550 crore.
Arrival of Fastag
FASTag has been made mandatory from February 15, 2021. From that day, all lanes of toll plazas on national highways were declared as FASTag lanes. This was done to achieve 100 percent electronic toll collection.
The ministry has also ordered that any vehicle which is not equipped with a functional FASTag will have to pay double the amount applicable for that category at toll plazas on FASTag-mandated lanes.
How are tolls calculated?
User fee rates are calculated as per the National Highway Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules, 2008 for publicly funded fee plazas and the fee rules for the time being in force and the provision of concession agreement of BOT (Toll) fee plazas.
As per the provisions of the National Highway Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules, 2008, the rate of fee for the use of a stretch of a National Highway of four or more lanes is the product of the length of that stretch and the base rates for a year.
These user fee rates per kilometer are revised from 1st April every year as per the existing fee rules.
For expressways, this fee is 1.25 times, and for two lanes with paved shoulders and above but below four lanes, it is sixty percent of the user fee charge for a national highway with four lanes or more.
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