One of the protests most frequently offered for not wanting to use positioning satellites to toll our roads is the assumption that cars will be tracked and the perception of considerable loss of privacy that would entail. Any journalist will tell you this. While it is technically possible to build such a repugnant system, few would tolerate it.
It can be argued that it is neither useful nor sensible to build such systems that way. But there are two perfect reasons this will not happen. First, in most countries, such a system would be so unacceptable to drivers that it would be boycotted or vandalized to an extent that it would become unreliable and perhaps even inoperable as a financial system. Second, most of these same countries are in the process of adopting policies that will not permit tracking of private vehicles, using road pricing data for any purpose other than intended, or retaining such data once payment is settled, which in the case of a prepaid account would be instantaneous.
The International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications (IWGDPT) has been addressing this for some time. Founded in 1983 in the framework of the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, the IWGDPT formulates recommendations to improve the protection of privacy in telecommunications. The Sofia Memorandum, issued at the 45th meeting of the WG in March 2009 directs its guidance toward road pricing.
The WG made the following
"recommendations designed to protect the privacy of drivers and owners of vehicles:
- The anonymity of the driver can and should be preserved by using the so-called smart client or anonymous proxy approaches that keep personal data of the drivers under their sole control and do not require off-board location record-keeping.
- Road pricing systems can and should be designed so that the detailed trip data are fully and permanently deleted from the system after the charges have been settled in order to prevent the creation of movement profiles or the potential for function-creep.
- Processing of personal data for other purposes (e.g. pay-as you drive insurance or behavioral-based marketing), should only be possible with clear and unambiguous consent from the individual.
- In terms of enforcement, the system should not ascertain the identity of the driver or owner of a vehicle unless there is evidence that the driver has committed something which is defined as a violation of the road pricing system."
Miroslav Marc, member of ISO/CEN standardization committees dealing with road use charging, explains: “IWGDPT opinions are not legally binding nor is that intended. They are formal recommendations. The Sofia Memorandum, however, is not just a European document, but an international one, since IWGDPT members come from around the world. The weight of these recommendations is reflected in the respect for the institutions that adopted them.”
Privacy Commissioners in several countries have indicated that they will promote these recommendations. Natasa Pirc Musar, the Slovene Information Commissioner, issued a similar opinion, prior to the IWGDPT guidance, stressing that data can only be used for the purposes stated and must be managed according to the criticality of the need (“principle of proportionality”). Her opinion: Personal data (including location data) is to remain exclusively under the surveillance of the user.
Marc also pointed out that “Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), issued his opinion on the European Commission's proposed plan to accelerate and coordinate the deployment of ITS in road transportation in Europe based on guidance of the Sofia Memorandum.”
In paragraph 45 under Safeguards for the use of location tools for the provision of ITS location-based services, The EDPS states:
"The use of location technologies is particularly intrusive from a privacy viewpoint… As was stressed by the Article 29 Working Party, the processing of location data is a particularly sensitive matter involving the key issue of the freedom to move anonymously, and which requires the implementation of specific safeguards in order to prevent surveillance of individuals and misuse of the data."
It is doubtful that any country will permit GNSS telematics that do not provide extreme privacy protection, even anonymity – i.e., likely disallowing methods to permit location data to leave the vehicle without driver/owner control. Brazil’s Federal Government (Seventh Circuit Federal CIVIL ACTION PUBLIC Autos) recently made it illegal to mandate tracking-enabled telematics.
All of this means that thin-class telematics (that forward location information to a data centre for processing) for road-user charging will likely have little market excepting possibly for commercial vehicles. The task, now, for road-use telematics designers is to make fat devices (that determine a bill on-board) cheaper.
In a Globe article 2009.11.17, Jennifer Pritchett offered a neutral-to-positive story on the technology to address the pending shift from fuel taxes to road-use-charges. The 20 comments were 60% pro road-pricing, 40% against.
Analyst Dennis DesRosiers of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. offered what other readers thought was a negative, almost calloused comment. It was so badly received that he managed to have it removed, leaving only copies in other’s comments.
"These kinds of [road tolling] technologies make [transportation] more efficient, I don't deny that, but if governments collectively want to protect the 900,000 to one million jobs in the automotive industry, they also have to accept that we need more vehicles, not less ... I'm against road pricing… We need consumers to drive more, not less."
I read his full original, it was brutally honest. His comment was lambasted by a couple of others. But DesRosiers is in every way correct. He has a right to an opinion that it should not be done (in fact he agrees it would be effective). His critical point, however, was “if governments collectively want to protect the 900,000 to one million jobs in the automotive industry…”
DesRosiers is on to something. He's uncovered the REAL problem. It is not “privacy”. It is not “equity for the poor”. It is not “because we already pay fuel tax”. It is not even that about a third of readers don’t understand market economics, which DesRosiers clearly does. The problem DesRosiers points to is that the government is tripping over itself. The Ministry of Energy is promising that Ontario Power Generation will be ready with the electricity for the presumably-pending electric vehicle. The Ministry of Industry is promising (and investing) in saving automotive jobs. The Ministry of Revenue refuses to raise gas tax. The Ministry of Transportation is refusing to toll roads, while insisting that Metrolinx figure out the missing $38B to fix our egregious transportation (cars, transit and bikes) system.
Fleet electrification plus government money artificially pumping out more and more cars will accelerate the pressure on our roads -- both lack of funding due to the withering gas-tax and congestion as a consequence of the government's DesRosierian Economics. And on my car radio this morning, as I waited for three light changes to get through one intersection, I listened to a report that Canada has its greatest debt ever and another story about global warming.
Who are the biggest losers in all this? You are. You are stuck in filth and traffic whether on bus, bike or car because government Ministries are uncoordinated and isolated from each other, each with their own bacon to save. And which Ministry loses for lack of coordination? They all do.
If you want to use your car ten years from now, you should ask for road pricing to reduce congestion. If you want to use transit 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing to double your service. If you want to use a bike 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing to open up room for bikeways. If you want to telework 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing so your employer can better justify your not spending time and money to drive to the office (your employer respects your money, but discounts your time). If you want a greener city 10 years from now you should ask for road pricing that varies by engine type.
And, if you really hate government so much, you should ask for road pricing, and then never drive again. If you really think it is all a big tax grab, why not just starve them out?
Sometimes a short film is better that a blog. Jane Jacobs talked about removing road space making traffic disappear back in the 60s. That's 50 years ago.
At a recent road-pricing conference here in Toronto, after hearing some eight presentations about congestion-pricing and road-pricing, a woman stood up to express a concern that we were overly focused on only one small issue. That we ought to look at broader issues of planning and sprawl - the really big contextual issues that threaten us.
I followed her comment by asserting that road pricing was in fact the keystone to most of these things and that solving this will open up enormous possibilities throughout her list of broader concerns. In fact, I assert that many of these things she was concerned with are symptoms of the wrong economic model for paying for roads.
I spoke with her afterward - Professor Judith Nagata, with the Anthropology Department at York University. She introduced me to David Owen's book, Green Metropolis. It looks promising.
Changing the we pay for using cars will be one of the most important shifts of the 21st century. At least as important as Henry Ford's assembly line. It has engineering, transportation, urban planning, economic, public health, livability, safety, social equity, sociological, employment, commercial, transit, military, geo-political, climate change, and many other implications. It is not surprising that an anthropologist would take an interest.
This morning, the Globe and Mail printed a story about Skymeter that left out a critical detail.
Road-use metering technology (such as Skymeter's) is constrained to be "Location Anonymous", by compliance with the Sofia Memorandum from the International Working Group for Data Protection in Telecommunications (IWGDPT). Location data are not permitted to exit the vehicle. All charges owed are calculated on-board and only the billing data may be forwarded from the device. It is in fact more private than E-ZPass or 407 transponders and cameras. We are forced by law to NOT provide or permit a method to "see" where a vehicle is. To do this reliably while blocking fraud and tampering forms the bulk of our innovation over the past seven years. Unfortunately, this fact is never passed on by journalists. We are not sure why. Perhaps because such privacy protection is good news. There is no Big Brother. There is only paying for what you use.
The recent OECD report about Toronto, that only a few of us can read since it is unavailable to non-accredited journalists until 2010, has generated a mini-furor among Toronto's free-road driverazzi, who think their gas-tax pays for Toronto's potholes (I mean roads) and are all sure the gummint will take their money but not fix anything.
To the OECD's credit, they defended Road Pricing awhile back in January 2002.
Contrary to some sceptical voices in the car lobby, road pricing is not an attack on car use, but rather a way of enhancing it. If there is an enemy of the car industry, it is inefficient congestion.
2009.11.10 Today, the Globe’s Brian Fenlon and Post’s Natalie Alcoba reports some sharp criticism for Toronto from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (from a report commissioned by the City). Bravo! Someone to tell us like it is!
But why do we need to pay an external body to tell us we have “one of the highest rates of car use among cities in the organization's 30 member countries” and that “the Toronto region should consider measures such as toll lanes, local fuel and parking taxes, and a Singapore-style congestion charge in which roads in the city centre and major routes such as the 400-series highways would be subject to fees that vary according to peak hours”? We know this, don’t we? Or perhaps like a case of a person in the next cubicle with a body odor problem, we need someone else to deliver the message.
The Globe article reports one of the OECD’s findings as “our region lags on innovation indicators such as patents, citations, high-tech employment and entrepreneurship… Governments should invest in more initiatives like Toronto's MaRS Discovery District.”
Now that cuts a bit close. A firm called Skymeter is in MaRS. They have developed several patents there. In fact those patents permit Ontario to solve the aforementioned “congestion charge” that would allow road-use fees to vary according to peak hours and well as cleaning up our parking problem. They have entrepreneurs and hire high-tech staff. I am one of them. And some 15 countries and cities are studying this Canadian-innovated and Canadian-made technology. Only innovations like Skymeter’s can prove the OECD wrong.
A CBC report.
And another.
OCED review.
Another OECD review.
