Surveillance Cameras at Toll Plazas to Help NHAI Check Vehicular Congestion

1. Surveillance Cameras at Toll Plazas to Help NHAI Check Vehicular Congestion Due to the increased vehicular density in India, the roadways in India often got choked by the undesired congestion. Especially the national highways, which represent only 2 percent of all the roadways in India, carry a whopping amount of 40 percent of all the trade happening in the territorial limits of India and most often face the heat of congestion problems. As many of the economic activities are linked with the national highways, the traffic hiccups on national highways result in frequent hiatus and leave a negative impression on the nature of national highways. So, in order to deal with such pressing problems, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways swung into action and came up with different congestion-curbing initiatives like FASTag, Video- based surveillance systems, and NFC Toll payment systems. The latter two are yet to be operational across India and the National Highways Authority of India is all set to test them by implementing in different phases. Vehicular-based surveillance system, one of the recent initiatives from the NHAI is all about monitoring the traffic on national highways through a centralised camera system. Toll plazas would be installed with efficient cameras and other supporting infrastructure. To facilitate the smooth dissemination of the traffic data, Toll plazas would be connected with 100 mbps internet connection. This system would click pictures related to traffic at a regular time intervals and relay the same to the NHAI’s headquarters and regional offices. The entire set of vehicular traffic data would be constantly monitored round the clock and commands would be delivered accordingly. Also, this mechanism is designed in such a way that whenever there would be a standstill at Toll Plazas, the cameras there would be switched to video mode and broadcast the footage to the regional offices and concerned authorities making them act faster.

2. This system will be implemented in ten Toll plazas in the first phase and in the successive months NHAI is going to identify around 200 busiest Toll plazas, which witness a daily traffic of ten thousand vehicles. Soon, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) would be entering into an agreement with the Korea Expressway Corporation. This corporation has expertise in utilising technology for better management of traffic. So, it has been tasked with management of highway network in Korea. The Korean expressway corporation monitors and manages the Korean highways’ traffic from its Traffic Management centre located in Korea using advanced and cutting edge audio-visual technologies. So, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has planned to rope in this corporation and leverage their expertise in implementing the video-based surveillance system. Experts believe this system would complement the existing FASTag Toll collection system, which was started with an aim to reduce congestion at Toll plazas. In the coming days, many more such measures/initiatives can be expected from the NHAI and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. With such commuter-friendly systems are on the way, commuters and traders can experience seamless travel on the national highways. This would also send positive signals across the trade parties and logistic sectors that national highways are there to serve best. #TollPlaza #FASTag #MinistryofRoadTransport