FREIGHT FUELS INDIA'S TOLL BOOM

According to a survey by ICRA, toll revenue surged 16% to Rs 49,193 cr in Jan-Sept 2025

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Owing to robust growth in traffic on India’s highway network, toll revenue grew by nearly 16 per cent to touch Rs 49,193 crore during the first nine months (January-September) of calendar year 2025, as compared to Rs 42,474 crore in January-September 2024, a recent survey said. This jump clearly underlines how highways continue to remain the backbone of India’s rapidly expanding mobility ecosystem, not just for passenger travel but increasingly for logistics and freight-led movement as well.

According to a report by ICRA, India’s highway network has experienced robust growth in toll traffic and revenue in the last two years on the back of increased vehicle throughput and periodic toll rate revisions. The data shows that the strong uptick is not a one-off post-pandemic recovery phenomenon, but a structural trend linked to rising consumption, booming e-commerce, inter-state movement of goods, stronger industrial output, increased sales of commercial vehicles, and infrastructure improvements that have made long-distance road travel faster and more reliable.

In the same period, toll-paying traffic volumes rose by 12 per cent to 26,864 lakhs as against 23,920 lakhs in the same period last year. Analysts say the increase in traffic is also a direct reflection of higher road capacity, more six-lane and eight-lane corridors coming online — along with the fact that several major freight-intensive projects like the Delhi–Mumbai Expressway and the Amritsar–Bhatinda–Jamnagar corridor have now reached partial commission stages, thereby shifting more freight on to tolled national routes.

GROWTH IN ELECTRONIC TOLL COLLECTION