Proposal to pilot cashless road toll collection

The Vietnam Road Administration has just issued a document proposing to the Ministry of Transport to allow the pilot application of a cashless form of road toll payment for one-stop toll lanes.

According to the Vietnam Road Administration, there are currently more than 100 toll stations nationwide; of which, 86 toll stations (74 toll stations on national highways, 12 toll systems on expressways) are managed by the Ministry of Transport and 15 toll stations are managed by localities.

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Currently, the Ministry of Transport has implemented automatic non-stop toll collection (ETC) on National Highway 1 and Ho Chi Minh Road (section through the Central Highlands) under the BOO (Build - Operate - Own) form by the consortium of Tasco Joint Stock Company (VETC Joint Stock Company) and Vietin Infrastructure Technology Investment Joint Stock Company (Vietinf) at 37 toll stations on National Highway 1 and Ho Chi Minh Road through the Central Highlands. It is expected that in the period of 2016 - 2019, automatic non-stop toll collection will be applied on 1-2 toll lanes in each direction. After 2019, it will be applied on all lanes of toll stations nationwide.

With such a roadmap, in the coming time, when non-stop automatic toll collection is implemented, the one-stop toll collection will still exist at toll stations. At the same time, experience in most countries in the world that have implemented non-stop toll collection shows that there will still be at least 1 one-stop toll lane on each direction of traffic when non-stop automatic toll collection is implemented.

Researching the application of cashless payment for road tolls in the one-stop toll collection system is necessary to implement the proposal of the Ministry of Finance on the application of cashless payment for road tolls.

Therefore, the Vietnam Road Administration proposes to pilot a cashless payment method for road tolls using the VietinBank Prepaid Card (E-Fast). The pilot implementation unit is VietinBank. The pilot installation of Touch and Go prepaid card payment will be implemented at 1 one-stop toll lane on each direction of traffic, at 1-2 toll stations using VietinBank's E-Fast card. The proposed pilot period is expected to be from now until the end of 2016.

Quang Toan/baotintuc