Concessionaire captures 23,000 vehicles in new cashless policy

The Concessionaire of Lekki–Epe Expressway and the Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge toll plaza, Lekki Concession Company, has disclosed that about 23,000 motorists have been captured in the cashless policy recently introduced on the facility.

Managing Director of the company, Yomi Omomuwasan, who said this in Lagos, maintained that the introduction of the policy was to ease the pains of motorists and make the roads less prone to traffic congestion.

According to him, there has been growth in the number of people coming on board for the electronic-tag, as available statistics revealed that about 23,000 out of 29,000 vehicles, passing on daily basis have already keyed into the new policy.He said: “We have started the cashless policy and actually started on the second of January because Mr. Governor declared January 1st toll free. We have continued to see growth in the number of people who are coming on board through the non-cash medium. Lekki Concession Company is not so much about revenue, rather we are pained by the struggle people go through on traffic and the loss of man-hours. We want people to pass through the Bridge regularly and Hassle-free”.

Although there have been some complaints by resident associations and motorists on delay in picking up the E-card as well as inability to download the mobile app and other issues. However, Omomuwasan said those are operational issue assuring that efforts are on, to deploy more Ad-hoc staff, and increase the capacity to deal with the challenges.

“The problems would go down gradually. People are also seen on the Bridge with low balance in their cards, what we need to do about that is to increase the publicity of the mobile application to enable them to know their balance without getting to the Bridge. People are complaining that their cards are not working because sometimes people mix the old card with the new one. From the beginning of the Bridge we have put messages for E-payment side and people are there to advise. We believed that either of the measures should attract motorists’ attention.”

He further said that there are plans to completely go low on vouchers, but high on pre-loaded cards stressing that pre-loaded cards are been produced because the security features of vouchers are not that high.

“First timers on the road could just pick the pre-loaded card before the gate and move on. The idea is to make both the Bridge and the Road cashless. We need to capture 80 to 90 percent of motorists on the cashless policy. We are opening up centres on the mainland and high land for people to register because we want everybody to go on the E-tag,” he stated.