Interesting to think about the UI which would communicate the policy to travellers > Still, for all of its sophistication, Komanoff’s plan remains imperfect. Komanoff himself admits that an ideal system would track drivers wherever they went, charging by the mile and the minute, with rates determined by location. He calls this “the holy grail of congestion pricing.”

Someday, technology will probably help fulfill this promise. Skymeter, a Toronto-based company, has developed a GPS-based metering system that can track and bill cars in even the densest urban areas. With such a system, Komanoff says, he could adjust congestion prices on a block-by-block basis. Cities could do away with parking meters and simply track how long cars sat at a curb. Insurance premiums could reflect the habits of individual drivers instead of relying on crude proxies like age. Drivers could be rewarded for taking the roads less traveled—not having to pay, and sometimes even getting paid, if they chose to commute on less congested routes on particularly busy days. “It’s going to happen,” Komanoff says. “Cities will charge per mile or per minute according to your exact location and the type of vehicle you’re driving.”

The Man Who Could Unsnarl Manhattan Traffic http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_komanoff_traffic/all/1