BusinessWorld reports, the executive director of the Philippine Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) says motorists who enter an expressway without an electronic toll collection device will be fined starting in March. Penalties were originally scheduled to be implemented last summer, but the government postponed the effective date to “give tollway operators and concerned agencies time to fine-tune their operations.” At a later, unspecified date, the government will start imposing a penalty on motorists who use a toll road without having a sufficient toll account balance.
The country’s principal tollway operators, San Miguel Corporation Infrastructure and Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation, have been preparing for years to transition to cashless toll collection. The penalty measure is a condition precedent to the companies’ initiation of all-electronic tolling and the government’s delayed imposition of a toll interoperability mandate.
The article notes that the penalty policy is subject to criticism based on claims that the companies’ electronic collection systems are not sufficiently reliable and a belief that interoperability should proceed cashless conversion.