IBM Patents Pricing Motorists Off Highways 805
theodp writes "Self-professed patent reformer IBM snagged a patent Tuesday for the Variable Rate Toll System, which covers the rather anti-egalitarian scheme of pricing motorists off of the roads by raising tolls as congestion increases. 'Congestion pricing of traffic is emerging as a completely new services market for IBM,' boasted Jamie Houghton, IBM's Global Leader for Road Charging."
Genius! (Score:5, Insightful)
anti-egalitarian? (Score:4, Insightful)
And this seems to be as much the rage amongst liberal urban planners as evil corporatists.
anti-egalitarian? (Score:5, Insightful)
Charging people more for things in higher demand is called "capitalism". Perhaps that is anti-egalitarian, but this particular instance is no more anti-egalitarian then, say, charging people more for higher quality health care, or charging people more for better quality food.
Isn't that the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tone of the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
When demand outstrips supply, you have 3 choices:
Anti-egalitarian scheme? (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, please save the commerce-needs-transport retort, it costs four times as much to ship something by truck compared to rail.
There's an essential flaw in this plan. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:1, Insightful)
Consider sacred jihand against slashdot's editors [anti-slash.org]
Jennifer Government (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:1, Insightful)
1. reliable
2. reasonably quick
3. reasonably accessible
I am not saying that it is not. but those conditions must be met before attempting to reduce number of individually driven vehicles. i.e. provide an alternative before taking away the predominant means of transportation.
Re:*Lanes* (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you have a deal.
Of course you realize that
But go ahead and place toll booths at every major road. Traffic would come to a dead standstill.
-nB
2 things (Score:3, Insightful)
2. That being said, we don't live in an ideal world. Congestion charges work very well from a welfare standpoint when there are easily accessible alternatives to dirivng on the highway. I can't afford to live in a city, but I have to work there. I can't make a light rail system appear tomorrow, but now I have the economic incentive to ride light rail. We can see the impact of congestion charges at work in a place like london, where public transport is a viable alternative for ANYONE. It is much harder to see it at work in wisconsin.
Bad Ideas all around (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the PA turnpike as an example, almost all of the tolls go to pay for the state employees and their benefits, heated booths, etc, and very little if any goes back into the road. The toll system is in place to pay for itself and not the road. It's a sham. If they got rid of all the zombies in the toll booths and put up those buckets that you toss change into they could charge a fraction and have more money to put toward the road, but still... that's what taxes are for.
As a result the PA turnpike is the worst highway in PA to drive on, full of potholes, poorly maintained, half finished construction sitting empty and idle most of the time.
The other huge reason toll roads are a BAD IDEA is that there is no competition, no other option. There's almost never a parallel highway going the same place, and who would really want that anyway. So you have to pay the toll or not go at all, or spend hours and gas $$ going around. It's taking a critical public resource and using it for legal extortion. Imagine if you had to pay a sidewalk toll to walk to lunch every day.
This idea of congestion tolls seems to have yet another bad idea behind it... Most people aren't on the roads for fun. They're on the roads because they need to get somewhere.
If skyrocketing gas prices aren't thinning out the traffic why would congestion tolls thin it out?
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's an essential flaw in this plan. (Score:4, Insightful)
Brilliant - Market Your Way to a Solution, NOT! (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me another reason not to drive downtown from the suburbs, and watch the Urban Blight of the 70's come back with a vengeance as the infrastructure crumbles.
Since this is a new way of taxing people and raising revenue, I am sure it will be adopted in all the 50 state's largest cities by the end of the year if not sooner. When that happens again as in the 70's, I will politely take my business to the local strip mall 5 minutes away from to avoid such none since. This kind of thinking is what ultimately lead to the Rust Belt Effect in the Midwestern States. So I guess it's coming back by popular demand thanks to IBM who wants to sell "The People" their newest master plan software. Ugh, not again...
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I would love to take public transportation to work. I mean really love it. The hour I spend in my car driving to and from work every day would suddenly be converted from "chore time" to "me time". I could read a book. I could watch a movie on my iPod. I could even do some work on my laptop, if I was feeling generous to my employer.
But the it seems to me that the truth is that "they" (the public transportation authority) really don't want me to ride the bus. Why do I say this? Let me tell you.
The nearest bus stop to my house is 2 miles away. The nearest bus stop to my work is 1 mile away. That's 3 miles in the morning and 3 miles in the afternoon. I just happen to walk at about 3 miles per hour, so now my 60 minutes of daily commuting time has now turned into 2 hours of commuting time just to walk to the bus stops and back.
But it gets better. According to the online "plan your trip" schedule, they pick me up at the bus stop, then there is a layover (oops, transfer) as I wait for another bus to take me to work. Total rode-and-wait one-way time to work: 3 hours! Coming home at night is a bit better, at only 1.5 hours.
So my 60 minutes of daily commute is now a whopping total of 5.5 hours! As if that wasn't enough, due to the times the buses run I can only work a 6 hour day. On top of all this, I have to pay!
So, yes, I'd love to take public transoprtation. Too bad there's no such thing, practically speaking, where I live.
Screw carpools (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:1, Insightful)
$4 a day = $20 a week
$20 a week = $1000 a year
That's $1000 a year less than you would have to spend normally.
A lot of little things add up to one big thing.
So kindly have a cup of shut the fuck up, unless you enjoy watching the middle-class driven to extinction.
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on where you live. There are large cities in the USA that have very poor public transportation. At a former job one of my co-workers was a "flower child" from the 60s and although she had a car, she usually took public transportation to our office. I'd say she could have driven to work in 30-40 minutes most days and driven home in roughly the same time frame. Riding the bus took between 90 minutes and 2 hours each way. While it's certainly cheaper to ride the bus, most rational people would conclude that saving 50-90 minutes each way by driving instead of riding the bus made a lot more sense.
Don't we do this already, all over? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's weird about this debate is that you have libertarian types complaining, "I paid my taxes dammit, you liberals keep your hands off my free roads," while liberals are saying, "let's let the market take care of this." A role reversal. I know that's an inaccurate generalization, but the sides taken in the above posts have sometimes been rather strange.
Re:anti-egalitarian? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll put it this way. My time is valuable. It is not sensible for me to spend five times as much of it each day using public transportation to commute. You are punishing those of us who simply cannot afford to move closer to their workplaces.
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:1, Insightful)
Incorrect. The people with access to public transportation may start using it. The vast majority without an available public transportation system will have to pay the tolls, use the surface streets, change their work arrangements where possible, or get a new job.
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:5, Insightful)
promises, promises (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? And how exactly will more people do business in the city if less people are travelling in by car?
London implemented a large congestion zone five years ago and the city has pretty much the same levels of conegstion as ever. Before the scheme there were already plenty of excess commuters who would have wanted to drive their car in but were deterred by the congestion levels. Once the charge was implemented the folk who could afford the charge started driving in! There are more busses and taxi's buzzing around than ever before and the all important *average commute time* does not appear to have been reduced by much if at all.
It seems to be a big cash cow for the local authorities with little real benefits for the majority of city goers.
How about by size of vehicle? (Score:2, Insightful)
Profit!
Now how do I patent this idea?
Re:There's an essential flaw in this plan. (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all that is not really true. People dont like it becuase they wouldn;t want to be caught dead as an adult riding the bus. In many areas there is good public transportation that only takes slightly longer to get where you are going. People still wont do it and its a cultural thing. In plenty of other countries public transportation doesn;t ahve the same stigma. In America if you ride the bus people assume you got a DUI, or are a loser, or are a hippie.
It is precisly becuase of the perception that public transportation is no good that it is held back from being truly good. I know someone is going to chime in here about how they live in an area with no bus service but please don't. Im not talking abnout where there really are no other options. I am talking about where there is perfectly good service and very few people use it.
The things you own begin to own you. Try riding a bike sometime. The more you rely on the car the more of your life is dedicated to maintaining that car. Its a vicious cycle that leads to lots and lots of time wasted in traffic.
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:2, Insightful)
*COUGH COUGH buses trains cycling walking COUGH*
Yeah, I know, none of those are available* and/or practical alternatives where you live. Did it ever occur to you that your choice to live somewhere where driving was a necessity for commuting or even everyday chores might in fact entail some cost on your part?
Particularly in 21st century America, just about everyone -- particularly anyone with a job -- has at least some degree of choice about where they live. It's true that in many ways the suburbs and exurbs are a more pleasant choice -- safer, better schools, bigger houses, cheaper land, etc. But the continual build-out of new suburbs and exurbs come at costs, particulary when it comes to the infrastructure needed to get people into and out of and around those suburbs and exurbs. And just as the people who moved to suburbia long ago began to question why they should pay for the problems of the inner cities they left behind, those of us who chose to live in those cities, taking advantage of pre-existing, bought-and-paid-for transportation and transit infrastructure, are starting to question why we ought to pay for your eight-lane suburb-to-suburb beltway highways.
I'm not saying everyone should make the same choices I do. I'm just wondering why people seem to believe they have a God-given right to cheap gas and door-to-door taxpayer-subsidized traffic-free one-person-per-car commuting.
*Actually, public transportation might be more accessible to you than you think. How many people who bitch about toll lanes have ever seriously looked into what sort of express buses and other non-driving options their region provides? I'm not saying you haven't, but I'll bet a lot of people never even think of it.
Re:Screw carpools (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Screw carpools (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tone of the summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it ought to be. For many people in the US no car = no living.
I have lived in a handful of major US cities, and from what I've experienced it is not possible to have a reasonable quality of life without a car unless you live in NYC or San Francisco. Other than those two cities public transit in the US is virtually nonexistent, so price those motorists off the roads and you are looking at one gigantic economic crisis.
Maybe building useable public transit before we price Joe Average off the roads would be wise? You know, cart before horse and all...
Re:How to beat IBM here... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the vast majority of trips on interstates are trips within a metro region, from suburb to city or suburb to suburb. Their primary effect has been to make the modern car-centered suburb and exurb possible. This may or may not be a good thing, but it certainly wasn't Zombie Eisenhower's intention when the plans for the system were first drawn up.
I do actually think that roads are a perfectly legitimate thing for governments to spend money on; I just question whether they're the most legitimate thing. Why is it that, for instance, so many people think that whether someone gets the health care that determines whether they live or die (or live comfortable or live with constant, chronic illness) is something best left to the free market, but that getting from one outer-ring suburb to another in twenty minutes instead of forty is a pressing reason to spend billions of dollars on asphalt? I'd argue that most people see daily annoyances as things that must be fixed and are willing to ignore real necessities that are needed by other people, or that they don't need right now.
Re:Screw carpools (Score:3, Insightful)
want to go, EXACTLY when I want to go there and then also come
back at EXACTLY the same time, then more likely than not there
would be a mass transit option available for the same route.
More mass transit would certainly be nice. It would make this whole
IBM thing moot. Often it takes very little to get a lot of benefit
out of this too.
On some potential routes you have commuters clamoring for new routes
but the beaurocrats aren't interested.
This is one of the many ways in which the government tends
to be the least effective and least efficient path towards
solving a problem.
This is just another "cart before the horse" shenanigan.
Re:There's an essential flaw in this plan. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell one of the parent posts even suggests that the 20 minutes he drives to work is important to him as it provides solitude, something that he feels he does not have enough of, personally, I'd rather save the petrol money (petrol prices being what they are) and take a walk in the evening/morning.
Re:Tone of the summary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's an essential flaw in this plan. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:5, Insightful)
I could take public transit to work. I wouldn't even have to walk that far (a few hundred feet at each point). But I'd need to make two transfers, for a total of 57 minutes of my time, and pay $3.10 in fares. (I checked their trip-planner site to get that accurate.) Which isn't that bad.
But if I drive? 8 minutes and 55 cents in gas.
Seven times more costly; there's no comparison.
Public transit is a joke in this country.
Re:2 things (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Screw carpools (Score:5, Insightful)
want to go, EXACTLY when I want to go there and then also come
back at EXACTLY the same time, then more likely than not there
would be a mass transit option available for the same route.
Self-centered thought will lead nowhere.
1) You won't carpool because you want an absolute minimum commute time.
2) Property developers spread out industry and residence because they want the absolute maximum profit.
#1 leads to no demand for more cooperative arrangements (high density development with good mass transit) which encourages #2.
We will perpetuate this cycle until we start thinking about the overall best way to do things, instead of the individual best way to do things.
Re:Great, another way to screw the tax payers... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would define that time as wasted. Why would I spend 4 hours roundtrip commuting, thus essentially minimizing any time I might have with my wife and kids?
Re:Screw carpools (Score:3, Insightful)
Clueless parent-basement dwelling moron.
I have responsibilities beyond work. I also have a job
that is not entirely predictable. If my town had a mass
transit system like Amsterdam, I might be able to manage
using it.
Something that's "more American" just isn't going to cut it.
It won't go where I need to go.
It won't go there when I need to go there (or leave).
That's not even getting into how inefficient it will be.
Re:motorists being forced off the road and into bu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Screw carpools (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody's asking you to give it up. They are asking you to pay your share, though. Is that so bad?
Right now, when you drive during a peak time, you impose costs on all the other drivers. They pay in wasteful delays. With congestion pricing, you pay for your own use, and you pay in cash. Don't want to carpool? Insist on going at peak times? Fab! Just pay for the privilege.
Re:Screw carpools (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance I have a friend who owns a plumbing company with a fleet of trucks used by his employees. Exactly how do you "car-pool" a truck full of tools and supplies?
For those of us who work in IT with some semblance of responsibility, how exactly do we car-pool to work at 3am when a server crashes and we need to get it up and running before the next day's business?
What about those of us who leave work somewhere in a fuzzy 2 hour window depending on what needs to get done at the end of the day? Carpool in the morning and sleep on the server room floor in the evening when the rest of your carpool buddies leave without you? Not to mention, unless you live in and work in a major city, most areas are completely devoid of useful public transportation.
Maybe not true of all people but I think at least the
Re:How about by size of vehicle? (Score:3, Insightful)
False Dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, I find it fascinating that in the discussion of an article on a technology that applies a variable solution to a variable problem, the naysayers all waffle between two points; all or nothing.
You're absolutely right, sometimes carpooling is inefficient. Sometimes it will only work if you go it alone. But you fail to ask the question, "How often can I get away with it?" Are you and your buddies so inflexible that you can't communicate about what would be a good compromise time for leaving? Surely they have end-of-the-day tasks, too? And maybe, just maybe you can put in the extra effort to not have to stay late?
My point is that generally speaking you could, if you put an ounce of effort into it, find a workable carpool solution. Lots of people do, who recognize that resources aren't infinite - their's or the world's. And if everyone carpooled even 20% of the time that they commute, that's a big difference - a 10% decrease in cars on the road. So why is it that it's such an impossible thing? Is it really that un-doable, or does it just necessitate a change and the acceptance that to-date you haven't been doing it the optimal way?
eighteenth century technology (Score:2, Insightful)
Force is force even behind "unassailable" markets. (Score:3, Insightful)
The only concept that comes out of this is it being a new form of Revenue Enhancement. While it may be pushed as some form of environmental "benefit", it is just the same kind of force, just with an "unassailable target".
Instead of a cop hiding behind a speed trap, it's now a congestion charge that hides lawmakers and environmentalists behind an "unassailable target". The difference is that I can avoid a known speed trap, a congestion zone is (by design) unavoidable by all practicality.
If you're a proponent of this kind of stuff, just drive through a state such as Ohio. City-set speed limits for small towns, speed traps the size of large suburbs, and unsafe speed changes (45-25 in unbelievably short distances). That is what your congestion pricing will end up being (on a larger scale) - revenue enhancement. The difference is that if they can't get enough revenue to do transit, they'll end up expanding the zone (even if that still does no good, and they won't remove the increase).
This is only a (regressive) money grab with the feel-good environmentalism touch to it. If only IBM would have used this to deep-six the entire concept, they'd have done a ton of good.
No thanks, but keep the business out of my government.
Re:Screw carpools (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how it is a problem. Either he keeps the trucks at some depot, and the workers have to commute there to start their day and could just as easily carpool like anyone else. Or they could let the workers keep the company vehicle and tools at home, in which case they could just drive directly to their first job instead of having to commute to the office, then drive the company vehicle straight home in the evening.
Re:False Dichotomy (Score:3, Insightful)
Well you certainly get points for setting the tone for the rest of your message. An insult disguised as praise.
I'd challenge you to actually record the times that you leave work, and measure the variance by day of week to see if your claims are actually all that you claim
I don't need to record it, I have a detailed roster that goes back a few years.
Where I work there are 5 people covering four shifts in summer (starting 7:15am, 9am, 11:15am, 1:15pm) with the 4th of those dropped in winter. 1 of us must be here at all times. We do rotating shifts making room for people to take rostered days, annual leave etc. If we want to change our shift we must swap with someone else. Last week I was on the 11:15am shift. Week before it was the 1:15pm shift. This week I'm on 7:15am (but public transport is bad so I get in at 6:30 in case a train is cancelled when I'm on that shift. It means I get up at 4:30). Tomorrow I have an appointment so I've swapped with the guy on late shift. Sometimes our boss has to go to great effort to cover shifts while allowing people the leave they want. If she can't make it work we simply don't get the leave.
My variation by weekday for the last few weeks has been pretty wild.
however, you seem intent on deciding that you can't possibly make it convenient to you.
See above. By the way I use to know a couple of people who worked where I do and live in my area. Arrangements have changed. They're working closer to where I live. I am not.
I base this primarily on your loose argument; for instance, the 20% carpool time example I provided assumed that any one given person carpooled with one and only one other person one day a week.
That doesn't make any of what I've said over the last 2 messages any less applicable. Carpooling isn't always easy. It only really works in situations where you and your carpooling buddies have the same schedules (primary/high school, identical shifts) AND live and work in the same area and even then it's still hard.
You proceed to then suggest that 'errands' happen every single day - and stop right there, because I might suggest that if you're spending extra fuel every day for errands you might group into one night, well then you have a whole separate layer of waste.
Perhaps you don't know what it's like to be responsible for a family. Errands can and do happen every single day. Also as the group of carpoolers gets larger, so does the chance that anyone wishes to take on an errand. Another example of your mentality "It works for me so it must work for everyone and if it doesn't it is because they are lazy and/or stupid". Bad assumption. I'd love to save money I spend on transport and I don't want to turn this green earth into a wasteland. However feeling guilty or making bone headed lifestyle choices isn't going to fix the problem.
But lets return to the main point; obviously in a carpool situation there would have to be some compromises. You'd have to, you know, at lunch or whenever call your carpool partner (or, if you're really gung ho, partners) and let them know whats up with you.
You might also have to cancel on occasion because something came up. However, this is no different than working out a schedule with a spouse, other family or a friend you have a regular arrangement with. It's entirely within your skill set - or should be.
Oh how I adore the delicious arrogance on slashdot. Now you're telling me what my skillset should be. Buddy your solution was a blanket statement that covered more than just me - there are people out there who struggle to read let alone schedule their carpool and find time to make phonecalls at work.
Not that my circumstances above pr
Re:Tone of the summary (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why you need to villainize me, but I suspect it is because you don't want to take what I'm saying seriously. You are very hung-up on this ghetto thing, but you still haven't described what mechanism would cause new ghettos to form. On the other hand, I have described how the fleeing of the middle class to the suburbs created ghettos in the cities, which isn't really controversial at all.