Open-loop road design hampers MLFF rollout on Mysuru-Bengaluru Highway

Mysore/Mysuru: The ambitious plan to convert the 117-km Mysuru-Bengaluru Access-Controlled Highway (NH-275) into a barrier-less, high-speed tolling corridor has been officially shelved.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had planned to introduce the Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF) tolling system from June 2026 to ensure seamless vehicular movement on the Highway.

However, following a technical review, the NHAI and the Indian Highways Management Company Limited (IHMCL) have decided to drop the project, citing incompatibility between the Highway’s existing design and the requirements of the  MLFF system.

Confirming the development to Star of Mysore, Sachin Pandey, Senior Manager at IHMCL, said that the project ran into a fundamental conflict between the Highway’s architecture and the technology needed for MLFF implementation.

Open and closed loop systems

He explained that the MLFF system works best in a “closed-loop” environment, where a vehicle enters at one point and exits at another, enabling the system to track the entire journey accurately. However, the Mysuru-Bengaluru Highway currently functions as an “open-loop” system.

Under the present arrangement, toll is collected at fixed plazas, but the system cannot fully track where vehicles enter or exit the Highway because of the multiple access points along the route. The Highway has around 14 entry and exit points, with many motorists joining or leaving the road between the toll plazas at Kaniminike, Seshagirihalli and Gananguru.

Officials said that to implement accurate distance-based tolling in such an open-loop system, the NHAI would have had to install advanced camera gantries and RFID readers at all the entry and exit points. Since this additional infrastructure was not included in the original project estimates, the proposal was found to be financially unviable.

Technical audit findings

A technical audit also revealed that without stricter access control, the system could not ensure a fully accurate toll calculation. In the absence of cameras at every exit point, the system would not be able to reliably determine where a vehicle left the Highway, making automatic fare deduction difficult.

Under the proposed MLFF system, conventional toll booths would have been replaced with overhead gantries equipped with satellite-based GPS technology, RFID FASTag readers and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras. The technology would have enabled automatic toll deduction without requiring vehicles to stop at plazas.

“MLFF requires every entry and exit ramp to be digitally mapped with ANPR cameras and RFID readers. The current Highway design, with multiple interchanges, made implementation difficult under the existing contract,” officials said.

With the project now shelved, motorists using the Highway will continue to pass through the existing toll plazas at Seshagirihalli, Kaniminike and Gananguru, where physical barriers will remain in operation.

For now, the focus has shifted to improving the efficiency of the existing toll plazas. Officials said minor structural modifications are also being planned at service roads and entry points to ease local traffic congestion.