ZINARA currently operates 31 Tollgates on the major highways of Zimbabwe. The amount of traffic in recent years has increased due to the increasing number of vehicles. Every day, thousands of people use their vehicles on the country’s highways. The increasing number of vehicles on the roads, result into many problems such as long queues, delays, congestion, air pollution and fuel wastage. The payment methods that are in operation at the toll plazas depend on the network communication systems operated by the Mobile Network Operators and the Point-of-Sale machines from the banks and these payment methods have inherent delays and are not capable of coping with the increased traffic volumes. The current payment procedure can be slow, which often results in traffic jams at the toll plazas on busy highways.
The above challenges have created a huge negative implication on revenue collection and has created a nightmare for the motoring public. To curtail the challenges, ZINARA wishes to introduce an Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology at the tolling points on the Zimbabwe highways.