Re: [conex] An interesting video

[Mikael Abrahamsson <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2012, Matt Mathis wrote:

> An interesting video, relevant to this group:  "Jonas Eliasson: How to
> solve traffic jams" http://youtu.be/CX_Krxq5eUI [TED Talks]

I have some input. The system he's talking about (Stockholm congestion 
charging system) costs around 100MUSD per year to operate. How much roads 
could we get for the same amount of money, and would that be a better 
investment? The answer seems to have been "no". (I live in Stockholm, I'm 
one of the people he's referring to who disliked the system initially and 
who now likes it).

So let's take the analogy to this group. How much would it cost to bring 
in an infrastructure to create the incentives to make people adapt to move 
some of their traffic to another part of the day, or not run the traffic 
at all (which is what a traffic congestion system tries to achieve).

I don't believe I have seen a system that actually reduces cost by trying 
to intelligently manage congestion or moving traffic spatially, compared 
to the cost of building out the network. A lot of the success of the 
Internet has been flat-rate billing so one basically doesn't have to have 
a lot of system and staff to handle usage-based billing. I don't really 
see how a congestion management system would fare any better. It adds 
complexity to the Network and I don't see how it would really help. 
Basically I don't see the incentives for the user to change.

But I'd gladly be proven wrong, that's why I follow this mailing list.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: [e-mail]