Traffic Management at Toll Plaza is a major challenge faced by every toll operator in India and to manage them efficiently is a major headache. The Toll Plaza are designed primarily considering average traffic expected to utilise the Highway however we will have peak traffic movement specially during holiday seasons and weekends and that’s were we end up seeing long queues and longer waiting times. As Toll operator since implementation of FASTAG (ETC) we were under tremendous pressure from Governments and Public to reduce the waiting times and long queues at Toll Plaza’s however the technological limitation and collection accuracy however didn’t allow to reduce the waiting time. India decided to use passive tags due to their lower cost and ease of installation inside the vehicles, this tags again had limitation in terms of range and cross talk therefore need for Barrier to open and close after each validated transaction.
Mr. Sandeep Pawar from M/s. Kent Intelligent Transportation Systems Pvt brought to our attention a solution he has been working upon for last 18 months and requested us to allow the installation of the system a couple of lanes within the Toll Plaza to reduce the congestion on the plaza. He informed us about the few aspects of the technology which has never been used in India before.
- High Accuracy of Vehicle Separation and Direction detection by using Laser Sensors
- Generating Accurate Vehicle Count
- Capability of the system to close the barrier only for Invalid or Blacklisted Tags
- Toll Lane Booster was small with high accuracy compared to Light curtains which were big and heavy and weren’t very reliable.
Post the installation of the system at two lanes at our Plaza, we observed the system working of TL Booster for couple of months, the traffic was very smooth in the two lanes and vehicles were passing without any hassle and need to stop the vehicle, this considerably reduced the traffic in those two lanes. As far as accuracy of the Toll system is considered it was also not compromised
Based on our feedback and improvement data collected, we have decided to implement in all the refurbished plazas at our expressway project between Mumbai and Pune, Additionally the we have also helped to contribute on improving the environment with reduction in emissions due to running vehicles waiting at Toll Plaza’s.
Watch this application video to understand more on how Toll Lane Booster solution,
How TL Booster improve efficiency at the toll gates:
- Barrier remains open and closes only for invalidated vehicles
- Response time of drivers to closing barrier is eliminated
- Dealyed reading of tags eliminated
- Exempt and invalidated vehicles authenticated
Benefits of TL Booster:
- Faster throughput of vehicles at Toll
- Reduction of greenhouse gases and pollution at Toll lanes
- Fuel savings for the commuters
Convenient for Toll booth operators
