The Government of India would be deploying state-of-the-art technology in order to increase the average distance covered by vehicles per day from 250 km to 400 km, thus bringing it nearer to the average in developed nations.
The Government of India is in the process of finalising a uniform tolling technology for electronic toll collection (ETC) and is finalising for either microwave technology or infrared technology as standardised tool for electronic toll collection (ETC) throughout India. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) would be commissioning consultants for conducting studies, and the technology is likely to cover the whole network by 2010. Microwave technology, which is used in mobile phones, is based on radio frequency waves to pass on information from the vehicle to the toll collection plaza. Microwave technology is more versatile since it can be used for road safety, traveller information systems, fleet management etal. Infrared technology, which is used in remote controls, is a relatively new technology for toll collection. Under the new technological paradigm, when a vehicle with On-Board Units (OBUs) approaches the toll plaza equipped with ETC, the OBUs communicate with the Road Side Unit (RSU). OBUs and RSUs exchange information such as registration number, vehicle class, identification numbers etc. Upon receiving the information from OBUs, RSU will send it to the central processing system. Central processing unit will then calculate the exact user fee to be deducted from the road user and send this information back to RSU. RSU in turn will send information to deduct the calculated amount equal to the kind of the vehicle from the balance amount in the OBU.
