The Indian National Highway network – second largest road network in the world – has been acting as a facilitator to trade and other socio-economic activities. Although the national highways constitute just two percent of all road networks (including State highways, district roads, and village roads), they support 40% of all trade happening across India. This means that the national highways are operating beyond their capacity, and often times this scenario would result in vehicular congestion at Toll plazas. So, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has decided to put in place special cameras at Toll Plazas to monitor traffic, which could relay traffic updates thus helping the managerial bodies to curb traffic snarls.
The National Highways Authority of India, which is a statutory body established through NHAI act 1988, was delegated with developing, monitoring, and managing the assigned portion of the national highway network. The NHAI has been one of the executing bodies of the National Highways Development Program (NHDP), which was launched with the aim to widen the national highways and also connect all the economic bastions of the nation.
One of the aims of the NHDP is to reduce vehicular congestion on the national highways. And there have been many instances where NHAI has used cameras to map congestion and traffic on national highways. One such program in which the NHAI has been using cameras to map traffic is Bharatmala Pariyojana. Bharatmala subsumed NHDP. Under the Bharatmala, which is going to be executed in two phases and completed by 2022, the executing agencies including NHAI have been monitoring the traffic on targeted routes through modern cameras. This technology-based traffic surveys would help the MoRTH in better appropriation of resources by using Automatic Traffic Counter and Classifier (ATCC) system.
Taking a cue from the Bharatmala program, the Central government has asked the NHAI to design a traffic monitoring system in the lines of the ATCC to overhaul the existing traffic movement at Toll plazas. In order to implement this system, the NHAI will be providing Toll plazas with a video-surveillance system and high resolution cameras. Each camera would provide real-time data pertaining to the traffic movement at Toll Plazas and communicate the same to the Regional offices (ROs) and the headquarters of NHAI.
By adopting the camera-based monitoring system, the NHAI would provide commuters with seamless travel experience by containing congestion near the Toll plazas. If this system would be put into operation across the country, then the existing FASTag Toll collection system could complement and give further stimuli to the camera-based traffic monitoring system. For now, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is planning to put this system in around 10 Toll plazas and would extend it to 200 Toll plazas which witness a daily traffic flow of 10,000 vehicles.
To support this system, the Toll plazas would be provided with supporting tech-infrastructure like Internet connectors, data storage facilities, and computers. Apart from the visible benefits, the NHAI can acquire traffic-related data, which would be helpful in executing its future undertakings, through this traffic-monitoring system.
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