India looks at ways to use growing toll revenue

India’s ministry of road transport and highways has embarked on an exercise to see if the government can build more roads through its own resources using the revenue from toll collection. The ministry and the National Highways Authority of India are both flush with cash as more roads have come under tolling. Officials are considering moving away from public-private partnerships until economic conditions improve. Instead they are considering cash-contracts for new road construction and leveraging debt bas
April 10, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
RSSIndia’s ministry of road transport and highways has embarked on an exercise to see if the government can build more roads through its own resources using the revenue from toll collection.

The ministry and the 4855 National Highways Authority of India are both flush with cash as more roads have come under tolling. Officials are considering moving away from public-private partnerships until economic conditions improve. Instead they are considering cash-contracts for new road construction and leveraging debt based on the toll revenue.

Since 2004, the length of toll roads has increased from 1,826 kilometres to 6,660 kilometres for public-funded projects and from 70.35 kilometres to 6,585 kilometres for Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects. This has led to a 700 per cent increase in total toll collection in the period 2004-2005 to 2012-2013. About 63 per cent of this revenue comes from public-funded projects.

Officials say the growth in toll revenue means they have enough money to go ahead with road projects using their own resources.  They also plan to deploy more toll roads to maximise earnings and plough the revenue back into road construction.
Enforcement

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • US eyes European model for Illinois toll road upgrade
    May 30, 2014
    David Crawford welcomes the adoption of European-style ITS technology by the US. The Jane Addams Memorial Tollway in Illinois, US is well on the way towards becoming a ‘smart traffic corridor’, taking full advantage of active traffic management (ATM or ‘managed lanes’) technology that originated in Europe. It is one of the first American toll roads to do so; preliminary work began in 2014 and will continue through to 2016. Jane Addams is one of four toll roads operated by the publicly-owned Illinois State T
    Read More
  • Investigating charging methods for open road tolling
    January 30, 2012
    Toll system suppliers are considering service structures and technologies needed to address issues of social exclusion in open road tolling. Jason Barnes asked Telvent's Pat McGowan to explain moves to address the needs of all toll customers
    Read More
  • Moody’s more bullish on prospects for US toll roads
    December 6, 2013
    Moody’s Investor Services have up-rated the outlook for US toll roads from negative to stable. They think traffic should grow 1.5 per cent on a median basis in 2014, which they describe as a “sustainable comeback” from the three per cent decline since 2009. They think toll revenues should grow to a “mid-single digit percentage range” in 2013 and 2014 which we guess means 4 per cent to 6 per cent. They note such an increase in toll revenues is a slowdown from 2012 when big toll rate increases boosted r
    Read More
  • Time for a rethink on road user charging
    February 1, 2012
    There is no value in further US VMT charging trials, except to delay the inevitable. These trials should end after completion of the University of Iowa's National Evaluation of a Mileage-based Road User Charge. There is far greater promise in unleashing private operators to commence profitable, non-tolling services, then using these for toll assessment and collection as fuel distributors are currently used to collect fuel taxation. Bern Grush writes
    Read More

Highlighted Content