Fines for motorists with no RFID, insufficient load at toll gates postponed to October

The order penalizing motorists who will enter expressways without radio frequency identification (RFID) devices or who do not have enough RFID load with fines has been postponed to October.

In case you missed it, the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) recently signed a joint memorandum circular with the Land Transportation Office and Department of Transportation that will impose fines on motorists using tollways without an electronic toll collection (ETC) device starting on Aug. 31.

However, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista announced that the implementation of fines will be deferred to Oct. 1 to give time to inform motorists of the provisions of the circular properly.

"We hope the concerned agencies and tollway operators would use the 30-day deferment to finetune expressway operations and further intensify the public information campaign to enable tollway users to comply with the new guidelines," Bautista explained.

In the provisions, violators will be fined P1,000 for the initial offense, P2,000 for the second offense, and P5,000 for subsequent offenses.

For those who will exit a toll gate with lacking load balance for the required fee, a penalty of P500 will be imposed for the first offense, P1,000 for the second offense, and P2,500 for the ensuing offenses.

The move was done in an effort to help lessen the issue of traffic around toll plazas.

The TRB explained that they initiated the order to penalize motorists without an ETC device and insufficient load balance to be fair to those who have been dutifully using the tollways.

"A vast majority of toll expressway users at 91% are compliant and responsible ETC users and are often greatly inconvenienced by the erring motorists," the agency said.

With this, the agency aims to urge motorists to fix their ETC devices and load up properly for their trips with the penalty so that long queues at tollway booths will be reduced.