Practical congestion pricing
I am attending an OECD meeting on ‘Implementing Congestion Pricing’. There are some excellent papers here – the one by K-K. Chin on the Singapore experience was particularly good but presentations on the Stockholm, Oslo and proposed Dutch schemes also useful. Generally, the International Transport Forum website is useful for transport planners.
A few of my well-worn prejudices have been shocked by the imperatives of practicality. Lots of design compromise and my love affair with telematics * is experiencing a rocky patch. The world will watch the Dutch attempts to regulate national traffic flows by satellite with interest. I’ll write up a more complete report once my opportunities to appreciate French cuisine cease.
* Need to be hard-nosed about pricing technologies. Plenty of mature options and the most economic should be chosen – not necessarily the most sexy.
“I’ll write up a more complete report once my opportunities to appreciate French cuisine cease.”
I guess that means when you are back in Melbourne!
Harry, did any of the proposals try to address privacy issues in any manner other than assuming that the government could be trusted with the data, stored for indefinite periods of time?
Robert, Privacy is a major concern in all actual current and proposed road pricing systems. In all that I am aware of the data concerning where and when you travelled is never stored by a government agency. If you are using an in-vehicle transponder then the data is stored there and it is your property. All the government observes is a debit when you travel and there are high standards of privacy even here – in the Singaporean case banking transfer information is destroyed within usually 24 hours. The only way you may wish to reveal your travel data is if you wish to challenge a charge or penalty for non-payment. In most cases you don’t need to provide information regarding a challenge for non-compliance since the authority must provide photographic evidence of that.
Privacy is a major concern and in my view it is satisfactorily dealt with. But is it so important to citizens? If you use a mobile phone a private or public firm has a record of your travel. Privacy regulation generally protects people from having this information abused.