Now the commuters of the State need not stop their vehicles near the National Highway (NH) tollgates to pay tax by putting other vehicles in a queue behind on the road. Introduction of new smartcard system at the automated tollgates would solve this problem, said officials at the Indian Roads Congress’ (IRC) platinum jubilee celebration here on Sunday.
IRC president Sunil Bhowmik said they would introduce smartcard system for the vehicle owners to pay their toll tax in a smart way. In the first phase, the facilities would be installed in the Rourkela-Sambalpur road in Odisha, he added.
IRC’s State Steering Committee Chairman and Works Department Secretary Nalini Kanta Pradhan said they would upgrade the existing software at the tollgates and introduce a new method through which sensors would automatically capture a vehicle’s license plate and debit the toll from the vehicle owner’s smartcard account.
“There is no need to pay cash and wait for receipt from the employees of the tollgate which is time consuming. The censors fixed at the tollgate would do all these works smartly,” Pradhan said and added that it would facilitate smooth traffic flow on the roads. Pradhan said the new system would be used in the Rourkela-Sambalpur road corridor by the end of the year.
Director General of Roads SN Das briefing the mediapersons said the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways would construct cement concrete roads to increase lifespan of the road to over 30 years. “lifespan of bituminous road is 15 years and needs attention for repair within four to five years, but the cement concrete roads last longer and don’t seek attention for its repair within 10-15 years,” said Das, adding, “So the Ministry would focus on concrete cement roads in the country.”
About the IRC’s objective, its Secretary General SS Nahar said the ongoing five-day conference would discuss mainly on five things, road safety and minimising of accidental hazards, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges in a modern way, environment protection and promoting use of standard specifications and proposing of specifications.
Around 4,000 participants of civil infrastructure professionals, IRC members and renowned highway and bridge engineering experts from the State and the Central Governments and public and private sector organisations across India and abroad, would attend technical and commercial sessions during the congress, said the IRC president.