Clean Company Alert: Skymeter
Skymeter Corp. of Toronto is “clean” in the sense that it has developed vehicle-location billing applications that make it easy to charge people for parking, insurance and access to congested areas according to the efficiency or CO2-emission profile of their vehicle. The applications are really limitless, and of course don’t apply exclusively to emission-reduction schemes. But so-called congestion charging using GPS technology and advanced billing techniques has huge potential as a way for municipalities to reduce the number of cars, and smog, in downtown cores:
“Congestion Charging means pricing road use according to the amount, time and place of use. It is used as an economic control lever and works best in cities or regions where there are alternate transport modalities – in particular, good public transit,” according to Skymeter’s Web site. “When the cost of road use fluctuates with congestion and degree of use, it sends ‘pricing signals’ to motorists who, when they can, will alter travel times, change modalities, double-up trip purposes, carpool, etc. This behavioral change has been seen over and over and is easy to understand.”
And price signals for motorists are exactly what we need, similar to the way smart meters in the home will inform and influence energy use in households.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 am
All this stuff is great, especially since Skymeter Corporation has won the title of Best Angel Company on CVF but I cannot help thinking that this problem should be handled by the government
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Donate car for charity