NHAI sets new design rules for barrier-free toll plazas

What changes at the toll plaza

On November 6, the National Highways Authority of India issued guidelines that standardise how barrier-free toll plazas must be designed and built on national highways of four lanes and above. Until now, each Multi-Lane Free Flow, or MLFF, plaza NHAI has opened, at Choryasi in Gujarat, Mundka in Delhi, Daulatpura in Rajasthan, Gharaunda on NH-44 in Haryana and Manoharpura on NH-48, was built to its own layout. The new circular fixes one national standard instead.

The guidelines cover plaza layout, the number of tolling lanes, where gantries sit, road safety features, lighting, signage and the other supporting infrastructure a plaza needs. NHAI's own reasoning, reported by Deccan Herald and The Tribune, is that once a vehicle no longer has to stop at a boom barrier to be tolled, a plaza simply does not need as many lanes as a conventional one built for queuing traffic.

Under MLFF, a car's FASTag is read by RFID readers mounted on an overhead gantry and its number plate is logged by ANPR cameras as it drives through at normal speed, with no boom barrier to slow for, a system 10BM News has described in its reporting on NHAI's rollout. The toll is deducted from the same FASTag wallet drivers already use, so there is no new payment method for owners to set up.

Who has to apply it, and from when

The standard applies going forward, not to every plaza already running. Projects still at the detailed project report stage will have the new layout built into their tender documents from the start. Projects that are already awarded or under construction, but where toll plaza construction has not yet begun, will get the new design through changes to their existing contracts rather than a fresh tender. NHAI has directed its field offices, the regional officers and project directors who oversee individual highway stretches, to use this layout on all upcoming works and to push the change through on live projects wherever that is still possible.

For a driver, this changes nothing about how to pay. FASTag stays mandatory and is read the same way it is today. What changes, over the coming months and years as new or upgraded stretches open, is the plaza itself: fewer physical lanes, no boom barriers to queue behind, and overhead gantries doing the reading instead of a toll operator at a booth. Existing plazas that already run MLFF, or that still use the older barrier system, continue as they are until their turn comes up under these new contractual provisions.

Why NHAI is doing this now

NHAI has been building MLFF plazas one at a time for roughly a year, each announced separately as a pilot or a first for a state. This circular is the first attempt to lock that experience into a single design rulebook that every future four-lane-and-above project must follow, rather than leaving each contractor to work out plaza layout, lane count and gantry placement on its own. NHAI's stated aim, per the guidelines reported by Greater Kashmir and TheAarchNews, is to cut queues and waiting time at plazas, lower fuel use from vehicles idling at barriers, and make the toll stretch itself safer to drive through.

For an Indian car or truck owner, the practical outcome is slower moving but real. Over time, more of the toll plazas on national highways will look like Gharaunda or Choryasi rather than the long rows of barrier lanes still common today, and FASTag will remain the only thing an owner needs to carry to use them.

Sources