When Toronto-based inventor Bern Grush misread a street sign and was given a parking ticket in the city's busy downtown core back in 2002, he fumed over both the complexities and inefficiencies of the system.
"There has to be a better way," he recalls thinking at the time.
There wasn't, so he set out to invent one, and in the process he created wide-ranging applications for the transportation sector including pay-as-you-drive road pricing, which is garnering attention from cities around the world.
His idea has become the driving force behind Skymeter Corp., an upstart technology firm that has developed smart meter devices that use global positioning system technology to pinpoint the exact location of vehicles.
Roughly the size of an eyeglasses case, the little black box sits on the dashboard and records the vehicle's movements and can be tracked by a monitoring system.
The emerging technology has been tested by several jurisdictions, including the Department of Transportation in California and the City of Seoul to meter road travel and charge fees to motorists as a way to reduce traffic gridlock and cut pollution.
Kamal Hassan, Skymeter's chief executive officer, said that while the now-eight-person company started out by trying to come up with a way to avoid parking tickets, the technology has other applications, including pay-as-you-drive insurance.
"We're in the metering business," he said simply.
Just as meters are used to measure electricity and water as a means of charging users, Mr. Hassan said the Skymeter device provides the pricing mechanism to treat road usage and parking as utilities. The pay-as-you-drive system allows governments to charge motorists for individual use of roads instead of paying for infrastructure through taxes, which largely hides the actual cost to the taxpayer, he maintains.
Mr. Hassan adds that drivers shouldn't put up with parking shortages and traffic delays when they typically don't line up for other commodities. If people had to pay for using specific roads they rely upon, he said, fewer cars would be on the road. People would car-pool more often, opt for public transit, walk, ride bicycles or even relocate closer to their workplaces.
So far, the Skymeter technology is available only in Winnipeg, where the municipality's parking authority is testing it. The new system is expected to be implemented citywide by the fall of 2010, making it the first jurisdiction in the world to use the park-and-walk-away Skymeter.
Dave Hill, the Winnipeg parking authority's chief operating officer, was keen to try Skymeter. "I just think it's so cool," he said. "We're always trying to make this easier for people. I'm excited about the concept."
Here's how it will work: motorists will buy a Skymeter device for an as-yet-undetermined price; then they will establish an online profile so they can be billed remotely. Once they activate the device, it will read signals from a satellite. When a vehicle stops in a parking spot, it will register the location and begin to meter the parking time. The customer will then receive a bill at the end of the month.
The city is testing four devices and is planning a more complex pilot project with 100 vehicles. "We want to try it in different weather so that we can test them in a cold car," Mr. Hill said. (The pilot project will include on-street meters. Longer-stay parking for more than two hours will be allowed in those areas where municipal bylaws permit.)
Prior to the Winnipeg pilot project, Skymeter joined in 2008 with Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group, a strategy-consulting branch of Cisco Korea, to create a transportation project in Seoul.
The pay-as-you-drive plan was born out of Cisco's commitment to former U.S. president Bill Clinton's global initiative to reduce carbon emissions. But it was put on hold after the Seoul metropolitan government changed and politicians grew concerned about the possibility of drivers' complaints.
