Smart Industry 1/2018

Smart Business Toll Systems
$ 15. 20
Toll Systems
What Price the Road?
Toll systems in use around the world are hopelessly stuck in the analog age.
By using intelligent IoT-based metering governments might be able to keep pace
with rising numbers of vehicles as ride-sharing and electric cars take off.
■ By Tim Cole*
Toll roads go back a long way
and have existed for at least
the last 2,700 years. Records
show that tolls had to be paid
by travelers using the Susa–Babylon
highway under the Assyrian regime
of King Ashurbanipal, who reigned in
the 7th century BC.
In 14th-century England, some of
the most heavily used roads were
repaired with money raised from
pavage grants, a toll for maintenance
or improvement of a road.
In early US history, many individual
citizens would maintain nearby
stretches of road and collect fees
from travelers. Eventually, the toll
leviers formed companies to build,
improve, and maintain a particular
section of roadway, and tolls were
collected to finance the enterprise.
Road pricing is
more efficient
than the typical
indirect ways
drivers pay for
imposing costs
on others, such
as through
taxes on fuel
and on car
ownership
These private “turnpikes” were soon
owned by business corporations
that built and maintained new
roads for the right to collect fees
from travelers. Turnpikes often left
an important social and political
imprint on the communities that
created and supported them, but
they seldom turned a profit.
There were three important phases
of toll road construction in the US:
the turnpike era of the eastern
states from 1792 to 1845, the plank
road boom of 1847 to 1853, and the
Far West toll roads between 1850
and 1902.
Political sentiment eventually turned
against them, and the Federal Road
Act of 1916 prevented the use of
tolls on highways from receiving
government money.
The prominence of the tollway model
increased further with the rise of the
automobile, and many modern toll
roads all over the world charge fees
for motor vehicles exclusively.
Money for jam
In recent years, tolls have been used
as a way to ease traffic jams in inner
cities. In 2003 Ken Livingstone, then
London’s mayor, introduced a system
called the Congestion Charge Zone
(CCZ). Motorists pay at least £11.50 a
day ($15.56) to drive into the center
of town. At first, the system seemed
to work wonderfully: the number of
cars entering Central London fell by
almost a quarter but, since about
2012, the numbers started to creep
up again. One reason is that delivery
trucks and taxis are clocking up more
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*Tim Cole is the editor of Smart Industry.