Several issues plague Day 2 of FASTag era
Queues, unreadable FASTags, commuters fighting with toll officials were some of the scenes witnessed at the toll plaza
GURUGRAM: Day two of the FASTag implementation at Kherki Daula toll plaza saw traffic congestion for up to 2km on the Jaipur-Delhi side of the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway on Monday. Commuters were seen arguing with toll operators and lifting boom barriers even as many others remained stuck in long queues in the 19 FASTag lanes. The National Highways Authority (NHAI) officials said traffic congestions are part of initial teething issues that arise when something new is introduced and by January 15, everything will fall into place.
The NHAI headquarters on Saturday had allotted 30 days in which six lanes of the plaza would be made cash-only and 19 lanes would be made FASTagonly. After the 30 days, 24 out of the 25 lanes will accept toll only through FASTags. Ashok Sharma, project director, NHAI Gurugram, said, “Within 30 days there will be only one cash lane instead of the present three on one side at the Kherki Daula toll plaza.”
Several commuters wanted to pay toll through cash on Monday morning which resulted in traffic jams. At 1pm, the Gurugram traffic police tweeted about the traffic situation at Kherki Daula toll plaza. “Traffic congestion has been reported at the Kherki Daula toll plaza on both sides due to FASTags. The traffic police are on the spot to facilitate the movement of vehicles.”
Sharma added, “The Gurugram traffic police is segregating traffic at the toll plaza so that people who want to pay through cash don’t enter the FASTag lanes. Traffic jam is only happening when commuters who pay cash enter FASTag lanes and the boom barriers don’t lift up.”
FASTag lanes turned into slow lanes on Monday, with tagged vehicles waiting to pass through the toll plaza for more than 15 minutes. Commuters were seen fighting with the toll plaza officials. Rajendra Singh Bhati, project head, Skylark, operator at Kherki Daula toll plaza, said, “There have been many instances of boom barriers being lifted by commuters. People lose their cool if they have to wait for more than 10 minutes.”
Commuters were also seen complaining to the toll operators that RFID readers were not reading the FASTags. Raunak Singh, a resident of Rathiwas, said, “I have a FASTag but the RFID reader didn’t read the tag. I had to wait for a marshal with a hand-held machine to come so that the FASTag could be scanned.” Other commuters stood in the queue for more than 20 minutes in a FASTag lane. Vibhuti Kaushik, resident, Sector 83, said, “What’s the point of having a FASTag and standing in the queue? There is no marshal to manage the lane either.”
On Monday, till 3.30 pm, 2,289 vehicles had paid double the toll as a penalty as they had entered the FASTag lanes without having FASTags. NHAI officials said that marshals were telling commuters who paid cash not to enter the FASTag lanes, but no one was listening to them and this was creating traffic chaos. “We are closely monitoring the situation at the Kherki Daula toll plaza. My officials and I are personally looking into the situation,” Sharma said. The sale of FASTags at the Kherki Daula toll plaza also went up from 708 on December 13 to 1,162 on December 15 at the Kherki Daula toll plaza. Those standing in the queues complained that bank servers were slow, forcing them to wait for more than three hours. Shyam Veer, a resident of Uttar Pradesh, said, “I have been standing for more than three hours to get a FASTag and yet the queue hasn’t moved.”