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SUMMARY:An Incentive Mechanism to Decongest Road Traffic - Balaji Prabhaka
 r\, Stanford University\, Departments of Electrical Engineering and Comput
 er Science.
DTSTART:20090318T160000Z
DTEND:20090318T170000Z
UID:TALK17389@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Neil Walton
DESCRIPTION:Road traffic is increasing world-wide\; Bangaloreans experienc
 e\nit severely every day.  While a better transportation infrastructure\na
 nd road usage are essential to mitigate the problem\, they have\nproved in
 sufficient.  This has led cities to impose congestion charges.\n\nWe take 
 the view that "the right to congest" can be made into a\ntradable commodit
 y: those who use the roads at congested times\npay those who stay away dur
 ing  such times.  This direct transfer\nof money from the congestor to the
  decongestor could lead to an\nequilibrium where congestion is reduced\, a
 nd those helping to\nreduce it are adequately compensated.\n\nWe describe 
 an experimental program\, called INSTANT (for the\nInfosys-Stanford Traffi
 c program)\, which has been under way\nfrom Oct 6\, 2008\, at Infosys Tech
 nologies.  The aim of the project\nis to incent Infosys commuters to arriv
 e early\, leading to: commute\ntimes that are shorter by at least 30 mins\
 , reduced fuel consumption\,\npollution and overall congestion on Hosur Ro
 ad.  The program has\nbeen successful so far\, with over 6000 participants
  incentivized\nthrough weekly monetary rewards.\n\nThe talk describes the 
 background\, the incentive mechanism and the status of the INSTANT project
 .\n\nJoint work with:\n\nDeepak Merugu and Gajanana Krishna\, Stanford Uni
 versity\n\nN.S. Rama and many\, many other Infoscions\n\n
LOCATION:MR15\, CMS\, Wilberforce Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 0WB
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