Senator Raffy Tulfo urged the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) to address the longstanding problem of faulty RFID systems, which had been causing traffic jams in several expressways.

Tulfo, who chairs the Senate Committee on Public Services, expressed concern following complaints that the scanners were not reading many RFID tags due to reader malfunction or poor tag placement. In effect, the barriers in tollway entry points do not lift and lead to car congestion.

The senator said he called lawyer Alvin Carullo, Executive Director of Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) and proposed that once the RFID reader starts to malfunction with a three vehicles queuing up, the toll expressway operators must lift up barriers in tollway entry points and make tolls free of charge until the issue is fixed.

Tulfo also urged TRB to start implementing a "barrier-less" system in the country’s expressways, which Carullo promised to discuss with the TRB board for immediate action.

Adding to the burden of the riding public, Tulfo told Carullo, were instances wherein motorists cannot enter tollway barriers due to zero balance despite loading up their account with enough credit. To pass through, they will be forced to reload their RFIDs for a second time but would have to wait 48 hours or more for operators to refund the balance that did not reflect in their account.

As such, he urged TRB to impose hefty fines and penalties against toll operators every time they commit a violation and inconvenience like this to motorists. He added that operators must be required to refund them within 24 hours. 

Tulfo said that TRB must solve the recurring RFID issues by the October 2024 deadline as promised by Carullo to him via call. This, as he stressed that motorists had been paying expensive fees to save time and avoid any hassle and not the other way around.

Tulfo filed Senate Resolution (SR) No. 1060 last July 2 to investigate the lapses of TRB and toll expressway operators, and to hold them accountable. Tulfo is set to conduct a hearing about this after the Senate recess.