Yesterday (Sun, 1st Jan 2017) , at about 7.30pm, we drove on to the NICE Road (now it’s the NECE Road) at the Mysore Road junction, and there were long queues of cars waiting to pay the tolls.
We found two men standing in front of the toll gates, collecting tolls. Thinking that they had devised a good way to speed up the process, we decided to pay the toll to them. Our toll from Mysore Road to Bannerghatta Road was Rs.58.
To our surprise, they asked us to pay Rs.60. When we challenged them as we knew the exact amount, andqueiried why, they said, “We don’t have change, so we are asking you to pay Rs.60”.
Very annoyed at this, we found the exact change and gave it to them, and they retaliated by harassing us, asking us to hurry up.
I just calculated that at the time we crossed the toll booth, there must easily have been about 300 cars on that section. So, just for that 15 to 30-minute stretch, that would mean about Rs.600 in the pockets of those men. Some cars would not know the amount and pay; others, facing the crowded traffic, would not think it worth bothering to ask for Rs.2 back and would let it go. I wonder just how much money is being made every day at peak times in this illegal fashion.
Why do we have this kind of unscrupulous cheating on the part of private toll operators, and why is there no accountablitiy either?
There was a time when, for the taxes we paid, we could drive on good highways without charge. Now we pay road and highway taxes and yet more and more tolls. Many stretches of NH 48 were in bad shape, after all that we pay.
Road and highway users seem to be fleeced, and worse, cheated, with no hope of such pernicious practices being stopped.
Could anyone tell me how I can complain about what we saw happening yesterday?