Relief for commercial vehicles: Up to 50% reduction in toll for elevated sections on NHs

NEW DELHI: After announcing the Annual Toll Pass for private cars on NHs, the road transport ministry has notified a new rule to reduce the toll rate up to 50% for structures such as bridge, tunnel, flyover or elevated sections. This will bring relief to commercial and heavy vehicles, particularly on tolled sections that have more such structures.

TOI on June 27 had first reported the govt decision to rationalise the toll.

Till now the toll charge for structures on NHs and Expressways under Central govt was 10 times more than the normal user fee. But as per the fresh amendments to NH Toll Fee Rules notified on June 1, there will be two methodologies to calculate the toll charge and whichever is lower will be applicable.

As per the new norm, the toll charge for a section of NH consisting of structure or structures will be calculated by adding 10 times the length of structure to the non-structure or normal road length or five times the total length of section of a tolled NH, whichever is lesser.

This will bring major relief to those using highway stretches that have more than 50% length as structures.

Take for example, if a tolled section of NH is 40 km — 30 km structure and 10 km normal road — then the minimum length will be computed as 10x30 + 10 = 310 km or five times the total length of the section which is 5x40 = 200 km. So, in this case, the toll charge will be collected for 200 km since it’s lower.

But suppose, the 40 km tolled stretch has 10 km structures and 30 km normal road, then the minimum length will be calculated as 10x10 + 30 = 130 km or five times of the total length of the section which is 5x40 = 200 km. So, in this case, the toll charge will be collected for 130 km, something that is in practice now.

In case the entire tolled corridor is one or more structures, the toll charge will be simply reduced to 50%.