Ever since our erstwhile finance minister and present-day Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh waved his magic wand of economic liberalization, a new buzzword caught fancy of government officials and projects - public-private partnership, and no other sector has used it more than the highways sector.
During NDA's stint (1999-2004) many ambitious projects pertaining to highways were unveiled and they explored different models of PPP. Probably our very own NHAI has transformed itself from a maintenance behemoth to a custodian behemoth who has willfully learned that it makes more sense to view things from the fence rather than get the hands dirty with mundane issues that deal with highways. But this particular article is not about highways or even about public private partnership models, but about something which directly affects the common man. It has to do with our highway organisation's idea regarding toll and what a mess it has made of toll plazas.
We all know that toll roads are paid roads and no matter what model they follow, the bottom line is you must first pay the toll to use the road. However, there are times when the pricing pattern creates more mess than help resolve traffic congestion. A common person like me wonders what logic lies behind calculating toll rates.
Since I have some degree of government experience, I know the government has a peculiar socialist concept of 'justified pricing' which means not a penny more, with no place for a simple concept of rounding off to the nearest currency unit. One often finds that toll rates are peculiarly odd figures, like Rs 17 or Rs 43 and so on. Though these figures might look justified, they make more of a mess than any good. Imagine, for Rs 17 toll rate one can only take out Rs 20 rupee note or two 10ers, or even Rs 50 note or Rs 100 note. But the time taken to return the change seems endless. Such waste of time deprives one of the benefits of the toll system and a smooth drive. One wonders if the rate was a round same figure of Rs 15 or Rs 20, what difference would that have made to financial modalities of the project. Rs 15 would mean a few more years of toll, or Rs 20 would mean a few years less, but the driver can save his precious time and petrol.
The pricing is not the only issue that reflects short-sightedness of toll road operators. Let's take for example of a recently unveiled and much-hyped Gurgaon-Delhi toll road. The road started to operate without service lanes. While it clearly mentions that two- and three-wheelers cannot ply, there is no other choice in the absence of service lanes. What's more, the toll plazas have their way of functioning.
On one hand, concessionaire is promoting smart tags to cut down on the mess they have made, but on the other little is done to change the process. Post their massive promotion, almost all regular users have switched over to tags for smooth driving, only to find that now the clogging has shifted to the tag lanes vis-à-vis the non-tag ones. Further, as there are no tag readers in the non-tag lanes, tag users cannot use those lanes. Tag readers should be installed in every lane, because it doesn't cost a bomb. If the service provider is facing issues in handling present traffic, what would happen when the traffic grows. There are also no pedestrian bridges even though the road passes through high-traffic zones of Udyog Vihar. Hence, accidents are a common sight.
Why should the public pay for a system that is faulty and inadequate to meet the needs of those who ply their vehicles on highways and expressways? What they need is a seamless drive, but who knows, the road ahead may prove jerky. Blame it on toll plazas!
(The author can be contacted at kaushika.pankaj@gmail.com)