NKVE RFID toll payments work even when you enter the highway using SmartTAG thanks to ANPR?

In Feature Stories / By Paul Tan / 27 August 2023 5:56 pm / 19 comments

Did you know that you can mix and match certain payment methods on entry and exit in closed toll highways? To be specific, you can enter using the SmartTAG lane and exit through the RFID lane. The RFID system is able to match your SmartTAG entry to the RFID exit. We tried this out twice and found that we were charged the correct toll amount instead of a penalty maximum toll charge.

We kinda discovered this by accident one morning by entering the NKVE via Shah Alam through SmartTAG and exiting at Bukit Raja through RFID. We thought we were going to be charged the maximum penalty toll charge but surprisingly, the system recorded our journey as a RFID journey and charged the appropriate toll cost from Shah Alam to Bukit Raja.

We tested to see if this was a fluke by trying it out again with a different car, thus with a different SmartTAG and RFID tag combo. We entered NKVE at Damansara toll plaza, and left the highway at Shah Alam toll plaza. Once again, the system was able to identify our SmartTAG entry and charge us the correct amount.

So how exactly does this work? Actually this should be of no surprise to us as when we checked back our previous stories covering how the RFID system works, PLUS highway has already said that this was possible. You can click here to read our previous story and scroll down to the question “What happens if I enter using TnG or SmartTAG and exit using RFID, and vice versa?”

Basically when you exit at a RFID lane, the system detects your RFID tag. It then checks to see if the RFID tag has entered the highway using the RFID lane.

If there is no RFID entry record, it falls back onto ANPR, which uses the cameras at the entry toll plaza to read your car’s number plate. If the system detects that the car plate registered to the RFID tag has entered the highway at a certain entry toll plaza, it then matches the journey and calculates the toll rate appropriately. This is why it’s important to register the correct number plate to your RFID tag.

The maximum penalty charge issues that you see on social media usually involve mixing the payment methods the other way around – entering via RFID and exiting via SmartTAG. Because all the more advanced background work only works on the RFID system, you end up with a penalty charge if you use the SmartTAG system to exit.

The PLUS ANPR system is powered by Malaysian company Tapway’s VehicleTrack system. It can read a number plate and detect a car’s class, make and colour in just 50 milliseconds – even when it’s travelling at up to 40 km/h.

Tapway trained and ran its AI models using Nvidia A100 and V100 Tensor Core GPUs. Each GPU can manage up to 50 video streams at once thanks to an Nvidia Triton Interference Server, enabling the ANPR system to process up to 28,800 images a minute on edge servers using Nvidia A10, A30 and T4 GPUs.

Disclaimer – just to recap, we tried this successfully on two particular NKVE toll plaza combos, which is Damansara entry Shah Alam exit, and Shah Alam entry Bukit Raja exit. No guarantees it will work for you, or if ANPR is installed/active at all entry points. The official stance by the highways are to always use the same payment method to enter and exit the highway to avoid penalty charges.

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