IBM Patents Pricing Motorists Off Highways

theodp writes "Self-professed patent reformer IBM snagged a patent Tuesday for the Variable Rate Toll System, which covers the rather anti-egalitarian scheme of pricing motorists off of the roads by raising tolls as congestion increases. 'Congestion pricing of traffic is emerging as a completely new services market for IBM,' boasted Jamie Houghton, IBM's Global Leader for Road Charging."

Comments

Peak Oil will fix this

[Ralph Spoilsport]

GW is on his knees fellating the house of Saud to open the spigot. Well, the spigot is wide open, and they aren't getting any more out of the ground. Why? They peaked. They're done. And in the next few years, it will become clear that the world, as a whole, has also peaked. And that means less oil than the year before, forever. Now, if the economy completely tanks, we might keep it flat for a while, but then it will also drift down.

At that point, the price accelerates, (say, US$6 gal) and people stop driving.

Thtis drives demand destruction, and the price levels off, higher than before.(say, US$4 gal)

People adjust, and the amount pumped out reduces, and can't be lifted up, and then the price bumps up again to $8 then drifts down to $6. It will do that, essentially, forever or until people stop using petroleum as fuel.

so, there is no need to charge for congestion. It will simply disappear of its own accord in the next 10 years.

RS

Re:Screw carpools

[geminidomino]

And your testicles are on the shelf next to your 360, amirite?

I kid, I kid. I'd cook for my girlfriend, but as I understand it, the penalties for poisoning someone are rather harsh...

Re:Screw carpools

[Lodragandraoidh]

how exactly do we car-pool to work at 3am when a server crashes and we need to get it up and running before the next day's business?

1. At 3AM you can drive in because there won't be any traffic on the roads.
2. Why isn't your server configured as a pair (or a pool of primary/secondary pairs depending upon the application) with fail-over capability? This would help you avoid those trips, as well as provide better service for your customers.
3. There are remote power controls and terminal servers you can add to your system that even let you remotely power cycle a system and monitor the console as it boots up.