Congestion Pricing, Privacy, and Mesh Wireless Networking

One of the top innovators in the field of wireless networking is also one of the top innovators in sustainable transportation. And now, Zipcar founder Robin Chase brings both together to address the two biggest problems in the implementation of congestion pricing: cost and privacy.

Transportation is definitely a big producer of economically unnecessary GHGs, by which I mean the type that takes away our money without increasing our standard of living. Our use of vehicles could be cut down significantly without making us any poorer, but the right economic signals are required so that people not only don't lose money but actually make money by cutting down their emissions. One way to do this is through road pricing and congestion pricing. These are ways to encourage environmentally sensible behaviours and investments by making the use of roads, particularly at peak times, pay for the transportation infrastructure in general, but particularly to make transit investments pay off.

Congestion pricing has worked for years in Singapore, and London's experience has been positive. Those that drive finally get the benefit of less congestion and those that don't will get improvements in transit infrastructure. The downsides are that two-thirds of the money collected goes to paying the cost of the fee collection itself, and that it requires that the government keep track of who is where.

One of the reasons for the cost is that congestion pricing and toll collection tends to be based on proprietary technology. Someone has to set up separate frequencies, closed networks, proprietary protocols, and then distribute the equipment on hundreds of thousands if not millions of vehicles. In addition to that, the man must have cameras recording your whereabouts so that those without the equipment or not cooperating can be nabbed. All of this equipment is single-purpose, unless you count the benefits to the people that have other reasons for wanting to know who is where.

Instead, Chase proposes a system where the communication equipment is low-cost, standard-part hardware with open software. The users themselves would finance the major part of the hardware investment in exchange for a break on tolls. Most of the communication would be mesh networks, which is to say ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks. Since these wireless devices have relatively low power and work over low distances, like the wireless network in your house, your wireless device relays its information to my wireless device, and so on until we reach a device which is close enough to a "base station" that it can transmit it to the fixed network, and vice-versa. The bandwidth is free; I don't charge you and you don't charge me for the use of our tiny bit of the network. Oh, and everyone gets free internet access as a bonus.

The location of cars would be based on GPS and triangulation from fixed nodes. The pricing system could have more flexibility that other systems, because changing the location of cordons, or basing pricing on actual congestion, or even complex cordons with buffer zones.

Chase also proposes a locational privacy method that prevents unauthorized snoopers from tracking where you are. Essentially it works like those who pay cash rather than using credit cards. People can pre-pay the tolls and deposit untraceable (nearly) electronic tokens at the toll booth. What will be known is how much you paid for tolls, but where and when is more difficult.

The details have been revealed in individual blog posts on her Network Musings blog over the past month. It's definitely worthwhile reading.

Tags: Transportation Transportation Planning Congestion Pricing Wireless Network Privacy

[] permanent link Comments: 0