Trucks, buses and tempos entering Mumbai pay about 20% more at the city’s five toll plazas from October 1. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) raised the per-trip charge for mini buses and light commercial vehicles from Rs 75 to Rs 90, and for trucks and buses from Rs 150 to Rs 180, The Free Press Journal reported. FPJ put the new rate for heavy multi-axle vehicles at Rs 225. LatestLY also reported the 20% increase for commercial vehicles at all five entry points.
The plazas stand at Dahisar on the Western Express Highway, at Mulund on both LBS Road and the Eastern Express Highway, at the Airoli bridge, and at Vashi on the Sion-Panvel highway. Private cars still cross free.
Why cars ride free and trucks pay more
The state scrapped the toll for light motor vehicles from midnight on October 14, 2024. Then chief minister Eknath Shinde announced it after a cabinet meeting about five weeks before the assembly election, as The Tribune and Moneylife reported at the time. Moneylife estimated that about 2.8 lakh light vehicles and 70,000 heavy vehicles used the five plazas each day. Until then, a car paid Rs 45 per crossing.
That waiver cost the toll operator money it had a contract to collect. Mumbai Entry Points Ltd (MEPL) won the 16-year concession in 2010, and its collection period was due to close in November 2026. MSRDC instead gave MEPL nearly three more years, to September 17, 2029, to recover about Rs 900 crore in dues linked to the car waiver, Mumbaiker reported in August 2025. So the November 2026 date that once looked like the end of Mumbai’s entry tolls has moved, and trucks and buses now carry the full cost.
The concession allows a rate revision every three years. The previous one, on October 1, 2023, raised the car toll from Rs 40 to Rs 45 and the mini bus rate from Rs 65 to Rs 75, according to Maritime Gateway.
Who ends up paying
A truck operator who brings one load into the city each day now pays about Rs 900 more a month at the plaza. Transporters say they will pass that on. Bal Malkit Singh, a former president of the All India Motor Transport Congress, told FPJ that operators already face rising input costs and that consumers will bear the increase through dearer essentials. Traders quoted by the paper expect vegetables and fruit arriving from Nashik and Pune to cost more.
The size of that effect is harder to pin down. Toll is one line in a truck’s trip cost, next to diesel, driver wages and market fees, and a Rs 15 to Rs 30 rise gets spread over tonnes of produce. Mumbai’s vegetable prices tend to move far more with rain and harvests in the supply districts. Still, the increase arrives during the festival season, when retail prices are already firm.
For car owners in Mira-Bhayandar, Thane and Navi Mumbai who cross daily, nothing changes. Small businesses that run tempos or mini buses into the city do feel it, at Rs 15 extra per trip.
What to watch
On current terms, commercial vehicles keep paying at all five plazas until September 17, 2029. The government has already moved the end date once to cover the cost of one election-season waiver. Transport groups that want relief for vegetable and milk carriers will have to take it up with MSRDC; FPJ’s report does not mention any such exemption so far.
Sources: The Free Press Journal, LatestLY, The Tribune, Moneylife, Mumbaiker, Maritime Gateway
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.