Tolls on Indian roads will take a greater toll

livemint.com:

₹250 one way. The concept of pay-and-ride on Indian roads has been on the rise. The bulk of India’s road toll revenues come from national highways, rising from ₹17,759 crore in 2015-16 to ₹48,028 crore in 2022-23.

According to union minister for road transport Nitin Gadkari, the government is targeting revenues of ₹1.3 trillion by 2030, reflecting an average annual growth of 15%. Since 2013-14, the total length of national highways has risen around 1.5 times to 145,000 km. However, the last few years have seen the length of highways subject to tolls double.

Further, the number of toll plazas on national highways has risen more than five times between 2014-15 and 2021-22, now totalling 959, as per information available on the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) website. Under the government’s National Monetization Pipeline to monetize public assets, around ₹6 trillion of revenue was expected between 2021-22 and 2024-25. Of this, the roads sector is expected to be the biggest contributor, at 27%, according to NITI Aayog.

Approximately 26,700 km of road assets are set to be monetized, focusing on highways with four or more lanes, excluding certain sections operated by the private sector. This suggests continued sharp increases in both the extent of tolled highways and the number of toll plazas. But not all highways are equally lucrative.

As the government increases the number of toll plazas and the length of highways being tolled, by design, it ends up adding sections that are less remunerative. Thus, the average toll revenue per plaza has declined from ₹116 crore in 2015-16 to ₹46 crore in 2021-22. Seen another way, the average revenue per tolled kilometre has declined from ₹94 lakh to ₹88 lakh over this period.