Microsoft predicts ‘pay as you-go’ solution to congestion

Congestion pricing is the solution to inner city traffic gridlock, according to Microsoft’s chief economist, Michael Schwarz. Speaking at the IBTTA’s Annual Technology Summit in Orlando, Florida last week, Schwarz said “traffic will be a thing of the past”, citing the difference between the traffic volumes in the free use and managed lanes as evidence. He also highlighted Singapore’s plans to have satellite tolling on all cars in 2020 and noted that almost all new cars are already fitted with SIM car
April 9, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

Congestion pricing is the solution to inner city traffic gridlock, according to 2214 Microsoft’s chief economist, Michael Schwarz.

Speaking at the 63 IBTTA’s Annual Technology Summit in Orlando, Florida last week, Schwarz said “traffic will be a thing of the past”, citing the difference between the traffic volumes in the free use and managed lanes as evidence.

He also highlighted Singapore’s plans to have satellite tolling on all cars in 2020 and noted that almost all new cars are already fitted with SIM cards and GPS adding: “The cost of the technology is nothing.”

Furthermore, as satellite technology allows tolling and congestion pricing to be levied on any and all roads, he predicted that instead of paying one large charge when entering a city or corridor, “we will be paying a lot of congestion charges for each journey”.

He said that without congestion pricing, self-driving cars would cause gridlock and predicted that the introduction of such charging will be made more palatable by a new generation of car-pooling platforms.

“Technology is getting better at finding the ideal [car-pooling] partner,” he said. “Splitting the congestion charge three ways makes it more affordable.”

There will be a full report from the IBTTA conference in the May-June edition of ITS International

Charging, Tolling & RUC

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Tolling is the 21st century’s road funding solution
    June 5, 2015
    HNTB’s Rick Herrington and Brad Guilmino put the case for tolling. Tolling is becoming the 21st century solution of choice for generating additional user-based transportation revenue. The proven funding source is being seriously considered for expanded use by cities, states and even the federal government with support from elected officials across the political spectrum. In fact, with each federal transportation reauthorisation, tolling restrictions have been relaxed.
    Read More
  • Economic crisis needs non-partisan perspectives to stimulate growth
    February 2, 2012
    Kary Witt, President of the IBTTA and Pat Jones, Executive Director and CEO, talk about the need to put aside partisan perspectives in order to deal with the current economic crisis
    Read More
  • Dutch strike public/private balance to introduce C-ITS services
    November 15, 2017
    Connected-ITS applications are due to appear on a nation-wide scale this summer, through the Netherlands’ Talking Traffic Partnership – if all goes to plan. Jon Masters reports. The Netherlands’ Talking Traffic Partnership (TTP) looks almost too good to be true: an artificial market set up and supported by national, regional and local government to accelerate deployment of Connected ITS (C-ITS) applications. If it does have any serious flaws, these are going to become apparent quite soon, because the first
    Read More
  • Getting more for less from traffic data
    August 15, 2012
    Collection of traffic and transit data has grown significantly, combining with advances in connectivity and computational modelling to good effect. Desire to do more with less – to make budgets go further – has helped create a boom in the collection and study of traffic and transport data. Studies are becoming longer, greater in number and further in-depth as more intelligence is sought, plus, transportation agencies are looking to make processes of data collection less costly, or more efficient.
    Read More

Highlighted Content