The Paranur toll plaza on the Chennai–Tiruchi National Highway has become Tamil Nadu’s first booth-less toll facility, with a multi-lane free-flow system beginning operations on Wednesday night to allow eligible vehicles to pass without stopping at toll booths.
The system uses FASTag technology to identify and record vehicles before they reach the toll plaza. According to sources in the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), vehicles fitted with valid FASTags, along with vehicles carrying exempt tags, will be able to pass through without waiting at manned toll counters. Exempt categories include judges, district collectors, Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assembly.
The Paranur plaza handles around 46,500 vehicles a day. Under the new arrangement, FASTag cards will be scanned ahead of the plaza through equipment installed on tall gantries. Vehicles without FASTags or those with insufficient balance will be issued challans, according to the report.
The gantries have been fitted with RFID readers, radar scanners, audit surveillance cameras and a FASTag-enabled automatic number plate recognition system. These systems are intended to identify vehicles, record passage and support toll enforcement without requiring drivers to stop at individual booths.
The change removes the manned toll booths that previously formed the point at which vehicles stopped for toll processing. The multi-lane free-flow system is designed to process vehicles while they remain in motion, reducing the queueing associated with booth-based collection. Its immediate operational relevance is particularly high at a plaza that carries traffic between Chennai and destinations along the southern route.
The new system is also being introduced ahead of the festive season, when vehicle movement towards southern parts of Tamil Nadu generally increases. The report said the facility would be especially useful during this period, when higher traffic volumes can place additional pressure on toll-plaza operations.
The shift to booth-less collection also changes the way motorists must comply with toll rules. Drivers using the route will need to ensure that their FASTags are available for scanning and have sufficient balance. Vehicles that do not meet those requirements will not be processed through a conventional cash or manned booth arrangement and may instead receive challans.
NHAI’s system at Paranur brings toll collection infrastructure closer to a fully automated highway-monitoring model, combining electronic identification, number-plate recognition and surveillance at a single facility. The plaza’s performance will now depend on the accurate reading of tags, enforcement against non-compliant vehicles and the ability of the equipment to handle daily traffic without creating new bottlenecks. The facility became operational on Wednesday night, with the festive travel period set to provide its first major test under higher traffic conditions.
