Parking October 2010 - 35

GPS, Internet, and onboard computing, the “Connected Vehicle” concept has enabled governments to develop road pricing strategies, such as “TDP” (Time, Distance, Place), independent of new tolling infrastructure. A device placed in a vehicle can either transmit key location data or store it for later retrieval and either hold a pre-paid value or transmit permission to the tolling agency to tap the user’s account. “[A]s with cell phone parking, it puts the technology in the vehicle in the hands of the customer,” says David Hill, “so the customer directly bears the infrastructure costs, rather than the service provider providing parking meters. Pay by GPS is to parking as cell phones are to public telephone

calls—this effectively replaces the Bell pay phone in that illustration.” However, even in the liberal democracies of Western Europe, these efforts have met with resistance. Plans to introduce road tolling in the Netherlands cratered early in 2010, contributing to the ruling government’s fall. Coerced conversion to a new form of taxation coupled with privacy concerns have slowed development.

your car, you’re going to love it! It’s going to take $450 a year from you at $1.50 a day for using the road.’” Instead, Grush suggests that the GPS meter is merely a platform, of which toll payment is but a piece. “[I]f I give you [the customer] a meter that does 12 things for you and 11 of them are things you wanted and, unfortunately, the twelfth is road pricing and tolling as well, you would find that far more acceptable,” he says. “That is especially true if the 11 things provide you with more financial value than the road tolling. So, for example, one of the 11 things is pay-as-you-drive insurance. Imagine saving as much on insurance as you pay in road tolls, which is very possible.”

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down
The solution, Grush says, is not forcing participation, but encouraging it. “I say to governments, you can’t stick a tax collection device in people’s cars and say, ‘Here take this meter, put it in

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Parking October 2010

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