I saw this on Engaget shortly after posting my tollway story and it immediately appealed San Francisco rolls out new smart parking meters with 'demand-responsive pricing' -- Engadget.
This is exactly what I was talking about, albeit in parking meter form. The main component that I like, the pricing based on demand. This should be introduced on the tollways! Even if it is not automatically calculated like the Parking Meters appear to do, big charges during peak hours but then at other times, greatly reduced charges.
Taking the Cross City Tunnel as my continuing example encouraging people to use it outside of peak should be a priority of the Roads and Traffic Authority. When I lived in Sydney I avoided it as much as possible, only catching it when I was in a hurry and knew that the other routes would be congested and slow. However at night, I would always avoid it, $4.56 to save 5 minutes at 1 AM never really appealed to me.
Obviously, the Tollway owners would only ever be convinced of the benefits in purely economic terms, and to be honest if I was a share holder that is exactly how I would want them to think, what perhaps needs to be done is a subsidy from the RTA or in this particular case the City of Sydney Council, it seems to me that as Clover Moore is hell bent on reducing traffic in the city encouraging use of the CCT would assist with it. Subsidizing cross city traffic on Friday and Saturday nights might even reduce incidences in the city, I have had near misses numerous times where a drunken reveller has stepped out in front of my car, or cars around me. Reducing the cars would cut down on that.
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