The phantom tollbooth charging for road use

For 2000 years, road travellers have been charged to use roads, bridges and tunnels and they have been required to pay to enter some cities. Originally this was to raise money for building and maintaining roads and for profit. Nowadays there are other reasons, such as the control of congestion and pollution. Charging for road use includes onroad parking, transit along roads and, potentially charging for creating congestion. These are increasingly interrelated. For instance, work has started on an invehicle instrument that will permit a driver to pay a toll without stopping, book a parking space ahead and pay for it on arrival. Some developments use the same card, containing an integrated circuit - either memory chips or a true smart card - to carry out all such payments on being inserted in the instrument. The authors describes how governments all over the world are searching for cheap, invisible ways to charge motorists for road use, and how these development efforts are costing them over $500 million a year.<
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