| Address: 411048 |
| Website: nhai.org |
We have been using Fastag for last couple of months. We travel frequently on Pune-Bengaluru, Bengaluru-Mangalore, and Bengaluru-Mysuru routes. The design of the system at the toll gates for Fastag carrying people seems to be quite good - i.e. a separate lane, with an automatic barrier to detect Fastag and then a slip lane in case mistake is made. This is all designed to make easy passage for Fastag vehicles, and perhaps encourage use of Fastag.
However, the actual implementation, especially at night (because that's the time we travel more often), leaves a lot to be desired. And in fact it almost penalizes people who have Fastags as compared to Cash paying people. This is due to the following reasons:
1- The Fastag lane is normally blocked, and there's a person sitting there, who opens it when we convince him that we have a Fastag. Many times, despite us telling him that we have a Fastag, he asks us to take the Cash lane, and when we get to the Cash counter and tell them that we have a Fastag, they get very upset and that leads to lot of argument. In fact in one instance, they literally forced us to pay cash. Even if they have a hand held machine, they seem very reluctant to bring it. Such incidents seem to happen more often between Sira and Bengaluru.
2- Many times the Fastag lane is full of vehicles, usually trucks and buses, and is moving very slow, and the cash counters are moving quite fast. In such cases, when we get to the counter and tell them that we have Fastag, they have to then go and get the hand held machine to scan. This indicates that the vehicles ahead o[censored]s did not have Fastag, but were still allowed in the Fastag lane.
3- In very few tolls there's an automatic scanner in place. And in none of them there's a scanner at the beginning of the lane to screen vehicles without Fastag, and is always done by a person, who makes a mistake, as mentioned in point 1.
Overall, we get a feeling that if we pay cash, we have option of a number of lanes, and if we have Fastag, we have only 1 lane and that too with lot of hassles.
Few weeks back, I had written to your Mumbai regional office on the email address provided in your Contacts section, but there was no response from there. Hopefully this complaint here would lead to some action.
Praveen
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