The relief comes following the amendment in the National Highways Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules, 2008 by the ministry of road transport and highways.
Instead, fees will now be charged on the actual distance travelled, if the distance exceeds 20 kilometres as per the new regulations, known as the National Highways Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Amendment Rules, 2024. “A driver, owner or person in charge of a mechanical vehicle other than a national permit vehicle who makes use of the same section of the national highway, permanent bridge, bypass or tunnel, as the case may be, shall be levied a zero-user fee up to 20 kilometres of a journey in each direction in a day under Global Navigation Satellite System based user fee collection system,” the notification said.
The road ministry in July had said it has decided to initially implement a GNSS-based toll collection system at select national highways on a pilot basis as an added facility along with FASTag.
Road ministry had done a pilot study with regard to a GNSS-based user fee collection system on the Bengaluru-Mysore section of NH-275 in Karnataka and Panipat-Hisar section of NH-709 in Haryana.
The ministry had held a stakeholder consultation with both domestic as well as international players on June 25, 2024, and invited global expression of interest on June 7, 2024. NHAI will implement the GNSS-based Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system within the existing FASTag ecosystem, initially using a hybrid model where both RFID-based ETC and GNSS-based ETC will operate together.