CLEVER ideas abound in the quest to beat congestion. In the future, “smart-dust” sensors could be used to help to create “smart markets” in road pricing, delegates at the EU Road User Charging Conference were told.
Developed by the US military to give blanket coverage to areas under surveillance, smart-dust sensors could eventually be the size of a pinhead and be liberally sprinkled over roadside objects such as street lamps and bus stops. These magical monitors would communicate wirelessly with each other to track the movements of vehicles as they pass along the smart-dust network.
Professor Phil Blythe, the head of the Transport Operations Research Group at Newcastle University, told delegates that the challenge was to make road pricing fair by using “more pervasive” monitoring techniques.
As part of his research, Blythe created a smart-market simulator with information on commuter journeys, drivers’ socio-economic groups and road-use trends.
Transport Times reports that Blythe’s radical scenarios include roads scattered with sensors to help councils to decide when they were in danger of congestion. Councils would then cap travel for the following day and auction off road space to the highest bidder.