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Digitalise road toll – Kasoa residents to govt

Residents of Kasoa and adjoining communities have urged the government to add the collection of tolls to its flagship digitalisation projects.

That, they said, would help ease the burden of vehicular congestion and traffic at the various toll collection points across the country.

They said the policy must be properly thought through before it was fully rolled out.

Sharing their thoughts on the announcement of the reintroduction of the collection of tolls on roads in the country with the Daily Graphic in Accra, they said inasmuch as they were not against the payment of tolls, current conditions on roads in the country did not warrant the collection of tolls.

These, the residents said, included poor street lighting, lack of road signs and markings, poor maintenance and weedy medians.

Gridlock traffic

The residents particularly recalled the gridlock vehicular traffic caused by the tollbooth at the Tuba Junction on the Mallam-Kasoa road and said they were not ready to endure such “punishment” any longer.

“I am not against the payment of road tolls but I want to tell the Roads Minister that I am not ready to stay in any traffic for an hour or more just because I must pay a toll,” Mr Kwesi Amankwah, a resident of Galilea said.

He called on the authorities to relocate the tollbooth from the present location to a place where there would be more toll gates to ease traffic flow.

Mr Amankwah said the current increase in fuel prices did not warrant vehicle users to stay in traffic for that long, adding that “we will resist this policy with all legitimate means”.

Flooding

A commercial driver, Mr Mark Tetteh, also called on the authorities to fix the perennial flooding on the Kasoa-Mallam stretch of the road, as well as improve lighting and other conditions on the road before the introduction of tolls.

He said drivers who plied their trade on the Accra-Kasoa road had advised themselves and would resist any form of “frustration” the introduction of the toll would bring.

“Master, just look at the silt and sand that is washed down from the hill onto the street just after the tollbooth whenever it rains. We encounter the same situation around the SCC Junction and this has been happening for more than two decades, yet we see no solution in sight. I tell you, we will not allow any payment of tolls on this stretch till these problems are fixed,” he said.

A baker at the Kasoa Market, Madam Ekua Esuon, called on the Roads Minister and the ministry to digitalise the collection of tolls.

She said ever since the collection of tolls was abolished, especially on the Mallam-Kasoa section of the Accra Cape Coast road which she said was notoriously known to be traffic-prone, it had never experienced any gridlock vehicular traffic.

She, therefore, called on engineers in the country to be proactive and advise policymakers against the manual collection of tolls, especially on the Mallam-Kasoa stretch.

Madam Esuon also added her voice to the calls for the relocation of the booth, saying “We will demonstrate if those tollbooths are not moved from their present location.”

Explaining further, a banker and resident of Tuba, Mr Koku Worlanyo, described the tollbooth at the Tuba Junction as a “nuisance” and said it did not make sense to be operating a tollbooth in a community in the 21st century.

He said the delay to pay just GH¢1 caused so much pollution of the environment and fatigue to drivers, while it led to the burning of fuel.

He also called for the relocation of the tollbooths or for them to be operated electronically.

2 Comments
  1. ADDO KWAKU says

    THE AUTOMATED TOLLBOOTH
    Automated toll booth payment systems allow drivers to insert payment into a machine that prints a receipt and raises a barrier automatically upon receipt of required payment. Some automated systems have open roads without barriers and involve wireless transponders where drivers have prepaid accounts or payments are billed and collected. Cameras on toll roads capture images of vehicles and license plate information as they pass toll areas. Bills are automatically sent to drivers based on address information from the Department of Motor Vehicles if payment is not provided. Since toll roads are located in outdoor locations with varying temperatures and humidity levels, industrial grade equipment is necessary for Automated Toll Road Systems.
    The requirements of the system for a category of people.
    The system is design for motor vehicle or motor bike traffic users or owners for using the highway .All the system requires is a tag the size of a sticker, which could be affixed on the windshield .In this system, the tag used is capable of withstanding all kinds of weather, and is much more durable. The system uses RFID technology which enable data to be transmitted by a mobile device, called a tag, which is read by an RFID reader and processed according to the needs of a particular application.
    How the system meets the activity or purpose it was designed for
    RFID system enable data to be transmitted by a mobile device, called a tag, which is read by an RFID reader and processed according to the needs of a particular application. The data transmitted by the tag may provide identification or location information, or specifics about the product tagged, such as price, color, date of purchase, etc. The tag contains a transponder with a digital memory chip that is given a unique electronic product code. The interrogator, an antenna packaged with a transceiver and decoder, emits a signal activating the RFID tag so it can read and write data to it. When an RFID tag passes through the electromagnetic zone, it detects the reader’s activation signal. The reader decodes the data encoded in the tag’s integrated circuit (silicon chip) and the data is passed to the host computer. RFID Clamshell cards are water proof and provide best reading range with 125 KHz RFID readers. Clamshell cards are very popular in Access control applications but can be used in wide range of RFID applications. They are lowest cost RFID cards available currently in the market. They have 26bit factory written ID that cannot be changed, though selected number sequences can be supplied for volume orders. These are Read only tags.

    Does it fit into the purpose it was designed for?
    Electronic toll collection (ETC) is a technology enabling the electronic collection of toll payments.
    It has been studied by researchers and applied in various highways, bridges, and tunnels requiring such a process. This system is capable of determining if the car is registered or not, and then informing the authorities of toll payment violations, debits, and participating accounts [2]. The most obvious advantage of this technology is the opportunity to eliminate congestion in tollbooths, especially during festive seasons when traffic tends to be heavier than normal. It is also a method by which to curb complaints from motorists regarding the inconveniences involved in manually making payments at the tollbooths. Other than this obvious advantage, applying ETC could also benefit the toll operators. The benefits for the motorists include:
    1. Fewer or shorter queues at toll plazas by increasing toll booth service turnaround rates;
    2. Faster and more efficient service (no exchanging toll fees by hand);
    3. The ability to make payments by keeping a balance on the card itself or by loading a registered credit card; and
    4. The use of postpaid toll statements (no need to request for receipts).
    5. Lowered toll collection costs;
    6. Better audit control by centralized user accounts; and
    7. Expanded capacity without building more infrastructures.
    Technology involved – input and output features
    Wireless Automated Toll Booth Collection Systems:
    Technology used
    RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is a small object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person. RFID tags contain silicon chips and antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. Passive tags require no internal power source, whereas active tags require a power source.
    In wireless tollbooth systems, ZT-2052 ZigBee wireless Modbus based digital input type data acquisition modules are used with motion sensors, cameras, ZT-2570 and Indusoft SCADA software on a PC. When vehicles are detected by motion detectors, ZT-2052 zigbee wireless digital input data acquisition modules trigger pictures to get taken of vehicles as they pass. Vision Analysis Software is used to extract the vehicles license plate information and the numbers are put in a database along with the date, time and picture of the vehicle. The ZT-2570 ZigBee host allows the ZT-2052 to communicate back to a computer running Indusoft SCADA software over Ethernet cabling. An NS-205 Industrial Ethernet switch that operates in extended operating temperatures is used to network together the computer to the ZT-2570 zigbee wireless host. Lanes on a highway are marked for toll collection for drivers that are set up with wireless transponders and accounts for payment collection by credit card or debit payments.
    Deficiency
    The slight problem with this system would be failure of the antenna to detect a tag there by not able to trigger the system for transaction. To curb this a backup is needed so that if main one fails the backup takes over.

  2. ADDO KWAKU says

    This is what we need

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