The government has cut toll fees by as much as 50 percent on certain National Highway stretches with infrastructure including bridges, tunnels, and elevated roadways.
Government Reduces Toll Charges: Giving a major relief to commercial vehicle owners, the PM Modi-led central government has slashed toll rates by up to 50 percent. The rate cuts will be applicable to sections of National Highways with structures like tunnels, bridges, flyovers, or elevated stretches. Notably, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has revised the National Highways Fee Rules, 2008, introducing a new formula for calculating toll charges.
The government notification issued on July 2 reads, “The rate of fee for use of a section of national highway comprising of structure or structures shall be calculated by adding ten times the length of structure or structures to the length of the section of national highway excluding the length of structure or structures, or five times the total length of section of national highway, whichever is lesser.”
‘Structure’ means bridge, tunnel, flyover, or elevated highway.
The Ministry Provided A Brief Example To Clarify The New Toll Charges
If a 40 km national highway section is fully made of structures, then the toll will be calculated on the higher of two values: 400 km (10 times the structure length) or 200 km (5 times the section length).
“User fee shall be calculated on the lesser length, i.e., for 200 km” rather than 400 km. In this situation, the user fee applies to only 50 percent of the calculated road length.
What Was The Earlier Rule?
As per the existing rules, people are bound to pay 10 times the normal toll for each kilometer of structure on national highways.
According to a senior official from NHAI, the new toll calculation method is aimed at recovering the higher cost of building this kind of infrastructure.
He further stated that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ new update is going to cut the toll rate for flyovers, underpasses and tunnels up to 50 percent.
