A few days back, we wrote about the Toll Regulatory Board’s revised guidelines to allow fines for motorists without RFID tags or insufficient credits in their electronic toll collection (ETC) accounts like SMC’s Autosweep or MPTC’s EasyTrip.

This was supposed to take effect on August 31, but the Department of Transportation has deferred this implementation to October 1. The reason?

“We hope the concerned agencies and tollway operators would use the 30-day deferment to fine-tune expressway operations and further intensify the public information campaign to enable tollway users to comply with the new guidelines,” said Secretary Jaime Bautista.

For the motorists out there, please use this additional period to have the respective tags installed, and to keep said accounts topped up. This is not only to avoid fines, but to help ease up traffic when passing through tollbooths.