Journal articles on the topic 'Toll charging'

Many congestion charging projects charge traffic only within part of a day with predetermined congestion tolls. Demand peaks have been witnessed just around the time when the charge jumps up or down. Such peaks may not be desirable, in particular (a) when the resulting peaks are much higher than available capacities; (b) traffic speeding up to get into the charging zone causes more incidents just before the toll rises up to a higher level; or (c) traffic slowing down or parking on the roadside decreases road traffic throughput just before the toll falls sharply. We term these types of demand peaks ‘boundary effects’ of congestion charging. This paper investigates these effects in a bottleneck scenario and aims to design charging schemes that reduce undesired demand peaks. For this purpose, we observe and analyse the boundary effects utilising a bottleneck model under three types of toll profiles that are indicative of real charging schemes. The first type maintains a constant toll across the charging period, the second type allows the toll to increase from zero to a given maximum level and then decrease back to zero and the third type allows the toll to rise from zero to a given maximum level, remain at this level for a fixed period and then fall down to zero. This investigation shows that all three types of toll profiles can produce greater boundary peak demands than the bottleneck capacity. A significant contribution of this work is that instead of designing an optimal traffic congestion pricing scheme we analyse how existing sub-optimal congestion pricing schemes could be improved and suggest how observed problems may be overcome. Hence, we propose a set of extra requirements to supplement existing principles or requirements for design and implementation of congestion charging, which aim to reduce the adverse consequences of boundary effects. Concluding remarks are made on implications of this investigation for the improvement of existing congestion charging projects and for future research.

Freight transport of goods in European countries is most often associated with toll collection. The aim of the article is to present various systems operating in selected European countries, describe the methods of their operation, as well as to present prices that the carrier will be obliged to pay. The article discusses the idea of charging road tolls, presents countries that use road readers to collect tolls and uses non-toll systems, as well as using several different toll collection systems. When planning a trip through several countries, various fees must be taken into account, it may not only be the fee for kilometres travelled, but also, for example, a toll for a tunnel, a bridge or a ferry crossing. All these issues are presented in the article.

The article presents toll collection systems that are used on toll roads. Manual charging systems are currently characterized by insufficient throughput capacity (especially during holiday and weekend periods). Therefore, the aim is to implement automated toll collection systems. They are characterized by the use of advanced ICT solutions, thanks to which they can be classified as transport telematics systems. The article also proposes criteria and sub-criteria that can be applied in the AHP method in order to select a rational solution of the toll collection system.

This paper proposes system architecture and protocols for the deployment of a toll-free electric vehicle charging service. The architecture enables the party initiating the electric vehicle (EV) charging to have their service request authorized by the system and paid for by a third party.

In this paper, we investigate the travel pattern of the day-long commuting in a bisection bottleneck network and the efficiency of pricing schemes with elastic travel demand. We extend the Vickrey model to morning and evening commutes and allow commuters to arrive at workplace late and depart from workplace early. The parking searching time is considered in the morning commute. Next, we derive the independent morning and evening commuting travel patterns without road toll and parking fee. Then, we propose three pricing regimes: duration dependent parking fees; optimal time-varying road tolls; optimal time-varying road tolls with duration dependent parking fees. We compare the efficiency of the four schemes with elastic demand. Theoretical analysis and the numerical examples show that optimal time-varying road toll is the most efficient pricing scheme. Charging a duration dependent fee neither improves nor deteriorates the scheme of time-varying road toll, if the toll rates are appropriately set. The regime of duration dependent parking fee only is less efficient than the regime of independent morning and evening commuting travel patterns without road toll and parking fee. In the regime of duration dependent parking fee, the social surplus decreases with the increase of duration dependent parking fee rate.

The expressway occupies an important position in the highway network for its many feathers such as having large capacity, being fast and safe and so on, playing the role as the backbone of transport. With the rapid development of China's national economy and road transportation, the toll-by-weight expressway is being used in larger areas. To go further in research of the toll-by-weight model, it is essential to determine the charging standard by weight, so as to promote this toll-by-weight model as an important part of long-term mechanism curing overweight transport. This paper analyses several methods of the existing toll-by-weight expressway.

In this paper, the intelligent weight charging system of heavy loaded highway was developed using piezoelectric quartz sensors, combined with the improved ETC system, in order to solve the congestion problem in highway toll station caused by heavy load vehicles. By study of the effects of different layout and spacing of sensors on the dynamic weighing accuracy and speed, then the optimal layout system of sensors was raised. Real vehicle test was carried out in Changwu charging station of highway from Fuzhou to Yinchuan. Experimental results show that: the optimized sensors enable heavy load vehicles passing through the toll stations in speed of 30km/h,and the accuracy of weighing was maintained within ± 2.5%. And the optimized sensors are able to overcome the errors caused by illegal operations, reaching the purpose of highway congestion management.

In August 1998 the Midpoint and Cape Coral Bridges in Lee County, Florida, began charging variable tolls based on the time of day. Traffic data collected at these two bridges are examined, including the number of vehicles, by transaction payment type and by time of day. These data were analyzed to determine if variable pricing toll discounts have changed traffic patterns at the toll bridges. Data collected from January through July 1998 (before the implementation of variable pricing) were compared to data collected from August through December 1998 (during variable pricing). The data were examined in both aggregate and half-hour time increments throughout the day. This allowed for initial analysis of ways that traffic volumes have shifted by time of day due to discounted tolls. Data were also collected on the payment methods of all bridge users. This information is critical, since only those users paying their toll electronically (approximately 23 percent of transactions) are eligible for the variable pricing toll discounts. Therefore, two groups were examined separately—eligible users (the test group) and ineligible users (the control group). Variable pricing was found to have caused significant changes in the travel behavior of eligible users. On the Cape Coral and Midpoint Bridges, the number of eligible users increased significantly during the discount periods and decreased significantly during the peak periods. In contrast, changes in the traffic patterns of ineligible users were found to be statistically insignificant.

The paper deals with the definition of time savings as a factor in deciding on route choice of a carrier whether to use toll road network. The first part of the paper describes a history of road infrastructure charging in the EU Member States and the USA. Next part analyses the factors affecting decision-making process of a carrier when considering which road infrastructure to use – toll or non-tolled roads. The paper also identifies the value of time savings as a significant factor in route choice.

Vehicle automatic identification is a key technology in the road toll system, which mainly uses vehicle radio frequency identification technology or license plate recognition technology based on video at presently. While Independent RFID technology and video recognition technology all have their advantages and disadvantages, this paper presents that fusion recognition technology of RFID and video can be used in road toll system, and D-S evidence theory was selected as the basis for the fusion of RFID and video, the model of RFID and video integration based on D-S was introduced. The fusion recognition technology will help improve the accuracy of vehicle identification.

Autonomous vehicle platoon is a promising paradigm towards traffic congestion problems in the intelligent transportation system. However, under certain circumstances, the advantage of the platoon cannot be fully developed. In this paper, we focus on the highway Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) charging problem. We try to let the opportunistic platoon pass the ETC as a whole. There are three main issues in this scenario. Firstly, the opportunistic platoon is temporarily composed; vehicles do not trust each other. Secondly, single vehicle may try to escape from the ETC charging by following the platoon. Finally, platoon members may collude with each other and try to underreport the number of vehicles in the platoon so as to evade payment. To solve these challenges, we propose a blockchain-based efficient highway toll paradigm for the opportunistic platoon. The driving history, credential information of every registered vehicle, is recorded and verified from the blockchain. A roadside unit (RSU) is adopted to distinguish the single vehicle from the platoon and in charge of lane allocation. Additionally, an aggregate signature is introduced to accelerate the authentication procedure in the RSU. We analyse the potential security threats in this scenario. The experimental result indicates that our scheme is efficient and practical.

User acceptability has become a critical issue for the successful implementation of transport pricing measures and policies. Although several studies have addressed the public acceptability of road pricing, little evidence can be found of the effects of pricing strategies. The acceptability of alternative schemes for a toll network already in operation is an issue to be tackled. This paper contributes to the limited literature in this field by exploring perceptions toward road-pricing schemes among toll road users. On the basis of a nationwide survey of toll road users in Spain, the study developed several binomial logit models to analyze user acceptability of three approaches: express toll lanes, a time-based pricing approach, and a flat fee (vignette) system. The results show notable differences in user acceptability by the type of charging scheme proposed. Express toll lanes were more acceptable by travelers who perceived greater benefits from saving travel time. The acceptability of time-based approaches (peak versus off-peak) decreased for users who felt forced to use the toll road, whereas this was not an aspect that significantly influenced users’ support for flat fee schemes. In addition, a flat fee strategy was more acceptable for long-distance trips and truck drivers who regularly used the toll facilities. The results from this analysis can inform policy makers and planners for the promotion of more efficient, socially inclusive, and publicly acceptable road-pricing schemes.

After the BOT road operation contract expires, generally, the road will be transferred to the government, and then the government operates the road independently without charging costs from its users. Facing the huge amount of the operation cost, Chinese government tends to continue to charge the road users to guarantee the high quality of road operation. Then, the government will have to decide whether a private firm or government itself would be suitable to operate the road. A model is presented for decision-making through balancing interests between the government and the private firm with an introduction of an intermediate variable, i.e., bidding price. Three scenarios are investigated in the model, including the optimization of government operation, the optimization of private firm operation, and government operation with an improper decision of the intermediate variable. Improper intermediate variable will result in a higher toll charged by the government than by a private firm. The method of avoiding an improper decision is investigated. The result shows that the intermediate variable should be determined to be the government operation cost, based on which the private operator could be chosen, if available. With consideration of the private operator’s profit to be guaranteed by the government, the maximum subsidy should be equal to the minimum private operator’s profit to be disclosed when the contract is signed.

Much of the debate on Plan S seems to concentrate on how to make toll-access journals open access, taking for granted that existing open access journals are Plan S-compliant. We suspected this was not so and set out to explore this using Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) metadata. We conclude that a large majority of open access journals are not Plan S-compliant, and that it is small publishers in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) not charging article processing charges (APC) that will face the largest challenge with becoming compliant. Plan S needs to give special considerations to smaller publishers and/or non-APC based journals.

With a perfectly elastic supply of immigrants and no domestic distortions, the pure Pareto gains to residents from immigration are maximized by an open door immigration policy. The only role then for entry charges is cost recovery. With inelastic supply, charges may be levied for optimal tariff reasons although there are practical difficulties in estimating appropriate supply elasticities. Priceable externalities provide a rationale for charging if, and only if, there are difficulties in making discriminatory reimbursements of optimal toll revenues to residents. Otherwise, relevant externalities should be internalized via appropriate Pigovian taxes and discriminatory reimbursements paid to residents. Then, an open door policy without entry charges should be pursued. Transaction costs and unpriceable externalities provide a weak case for charging. Where quotas are imposed for political reasons or to ease potentially unfavorable distributional implications, there are convincing second-best arguments for fees and, equivalently, quota auctions. The latter policies are generally preferable to unpriced quotas and to asset tests, even if coupled with a fee, whatever the degree of international capital mobility. Independently of humanitarian concerns, liberal immigration policies can be based on the self-interest of residents provided immigrants pay all costs they impose on a resident population.

This paper analyses both the cordon and area pricings from the perspective of travel demand management. Sensitivity analysis of various performance measures with respect to the toll rate and demand elastic parameter is performed on a virtual grid network. The analysis shows that cordon pricing mainly affects those trips with origins outside of the Central Business District and destinations inside, while area pricing imposes additional cost on the trips with either origins or destinations in the Central Business District. Though both pricing strategies are able to alleviate traffic congestion in the charging area, area pricing seems more effective, however, area pricing owns the risk to detour too much traffic and thus cause severe congestion to the network outside of the Central Business District. Following the sensitivity analysis, a unified framework is proposed to optimize the designs of the both pricing strategies, which is flexible to account for various practical concerns. The optimization models are formulated as mixed-integer nonlinear programs with complementarity constraints, and the solution procedure is composed of solving a series of nonlinear programs and mixed-integer linear programs. Results from the numerical examples are in line with the findings in the sensitivity analysis. Under the specific network settings, cordon pricing achieves the best system performance when the toll rate reaches the maximum allowed, while area pricing finds the optimal design scheme when the toll rate equals half of the maximum allowed.

Congestion (or variable) pricing can be described as the charging of more for goods or services during periods of peak demand. In theory, this practice would prove beneficial as a travel demand management tool when setting fares on toll roads and bridges. However, in practice, it has proven extremely difficult to implement in the United States. Many of the planning issues and solutions found during the early phases of a variablepricing pilot study currently being conducted in Lee County, Florida, are examined. Also examined is the electronic toll collection system being implemented in conjunction with variable pricing. The planned variablepricing scheme is detailed, along with how this publicly and politically palatable pricing scheme was derived. Data collection efforts, which include origin-destination surveys, focus groups, mail-back surveys, videotaping of traffic, and detailed traffic counts are described to emphasize the substantial effort undertaken to obtain accurate and meaningful variable-pricing traffic behavioral data that can be applied across the country. A summary of work to date and an overview of the next steps toward implementation of the variable-pricing program in Lee County are presented.

Nowadays almost all the park toll management system in use is based on charging by operators, up and down the barrier gate manually or the motorman get through barrier gates by swiping card. This paper try to solve the problem by designed a intelligent park system based on image processing. The system capture video frames through camera, recognizing the vehicle license by pattern recognition, sending command throng CAN bus to control the barrier gate, what is more, the states of control system is shown on LCM.The system has realized automatic control of barrier gates without parking, which, of course, slows down the vehicle wear and tear, greatly improves the efficiency, reaching the goal of green, energy saving and environmental protecting.

Motorcycles in Iran, especially in metropolises such as Tehran, are used extensively for various reasons such as low maintenance costs, high maneuverability, and the possibility of entering congestion priced zones without paying a toll. Nevertheless, motorcycles are involved in 25% of accidents and produce almost 30% of air and 50% of noise pollution in Tehran. Current research aims to investigate possible scenarios for reducing the use of motorcycles in Tehran’s traffic and transportation master plan strategies. After designing the scenarios, a stated preference method is used for gathering the required data from various groups of motorcycle riders in Tehran. More than 2,000 questionnaires were completed of which 1,766 were deemed acceptable for data entering and further analysis. Increasing the price of motorcycle maintenance and charging motorcycles to enter the congestion priced zone of Tehran (CPZT) were two main scenarios which were considered in this research. Multinomial and nested logit models were applied to analyze the trip choice behavior of motorcycle riders who had participated in the survey. Results indicated that strategies such as increasing motorcycle maintenance costs could be effective in reducing the use of motorcycles. For instance, increasing motorcycle maintenance costs by 4.7 times and imposing a 70,000 IRR toll price to enter the CP zone resulted in a 66% reduction in motorcycle mode choice by motorcycle riders.

Technology appears to be making fine-scale charging (as in tolls on roads that depend on time of day or even on current and anticipated levels of congestion) increasingly feasible. Such charging also appears to be increasingly desirable, as traffic on roads continues to grow and costs and public opposition limit new construction. Similar incentives towards fine-scale charging also appear to be operating in communications and other areas, such as electricity usage. Standard economic theory supports such measures and technology is being developed and deployed to implement them. But their spread is not very rapid and their prospects for the future are uncertain. This paper presents a collection of sketches, ranging from ancient history to very recent developments, that illustrate the costs that charging imposes. Some of those costs are explicit (in terms of the monetary costs to users and the costs of implementing the charging mechanisms). Others are implicit, such as the time or the mental processing costs of users. These argue that the case for fine-scale charging is not unambiguous and that in many cases such charging may lead to undesirable outcomes.

Congestion relief tolling refers to charging drivers a fee that varies with level of traffic (or demand) on a congested tollway. The recent implementation and study of congestion relief tolls in this country are described. Findings are based on focus groups, telephone and personal interviews, a Citizens Jury, and three regional conferences held in conjunction with the Federal Highway Administration. The economic rationale for congestion relief tolls and the key reasons why they are being considered by transportation planners and policy makers are outlined. Seven recommendations that address the political and institutional issues associated with building support for implementation are made.

In 2007, after years of unresolved debate, the Swedish parliament approved a congestion charge for Stockholm applied to cars crossing the city’s inner boundary. Since its introduction, congestion charging has led to an even more lasting reduction of car trips to the city center, in part because the policy generates revenues for financing new subway extensions and uses these same resources as the basis for negotiating new transit oriented housing in subway extension areas. As such, congestion charging is arguably as much a sustainable housing solution as it is a narrowly defined transit policy for reducing automobile congestion or pollution. This article investigates how and why Stockholm, despite considerable political conflict, technical complexity and negative public opinion, was able to turn a long-standing and controversial debate over moderating automobile traffic via tolls into widespread support for a national congestion tax, which itself laid the groundwork for a more expansive sustainability agenda. It further suggests that only when congestion charging was strategically reframed and widely recognized as addressing the concerns of multiple and competing constituencies, did efforts for its adoption translate into larger sustainability gains.

This paper presents a dynamic version of Braesss paradox in transportation networks. This time-varying paradox considers queue spillback in dynamic traffic assignment. Five independent considerations in relation to the traffic-flow component are discussed. The queue spillback in respect to the spatial queue assumptions has been investigated in detail. Finally, some solutions based on the view of planners, decision-makers and managers are demonstrated to resolve the potential paradoxes, such as lane partitioning, road reconfiguration, congestion charging, time-varying tolls, ramp metering and dynamic traffic control and management etc.

On February 15, 1886, in a New York City courtroom, Bridget Grady placed her mark on an affidavit charging Bernard Reilly with rape. The twenty-six-year-old servant told the magistrate that in July of the previous year, while her employer was in the country, Reilly had called on her at the east 38th Street home where she worked. he had been Bridget's “steady company” for about three years and had “several times told her that if he married at all, he would marry her.” During the visit he made what Bridget described as unexpected, unprecedented “advances” to her. When she resisted, Reilly seized her, and they fell to the floor. Bridget, being, as she put it, a “proper and virtuous woman,” became so frightened at Reilly's conduct that she immediately lost consciousness. While Bridget was in that state, Reilly had sexual intercourse with her, as a result of which Bridget became pregnant. once she regained consciousness, Bridget “began to cry, and declared she would kill herself; he took her upon his lap and tried to pacify her, telling her at that time that if anything came of it he would marry her.” As a result of that promise, Bridget took no action against Reilly. Seven months later, however, still unmarried, and due to give birth to a child in two months, Bridget had come to the court to make a complaint.

Day by day as the volume of data is being generated massively, storing of data and processing of data becomes a ever growing challenge in intelligent transport system (ITS). In intelligent transport system there are different areas to concentrate like smart parking systems, dynamic toll charging, smart traffic management etc. This paper is mainly focused on big data architecture for intelligent transport system for dynamic toll charging, traffic management and traffic analysis related data collection from various sources. The data collected from various sources can be in the form of structured data, semi structured data and unstructured data. Because of verity of data collected, this paper gives an idea about which data model is appropriate depending on data collected for transportation system.

With continuing economic growth, the demand of traffic rises continuously, especially in modern cities like Bangalore. However, the space available in cities is strictly limited. In order to cope with the challenge of serving a rising traffic demand on these limited capacities, traffic management becomes mandatory. One aspect is managing the traffic by charging dynamic toll depends on conditions like occupancy of cab services, previous data. The focus of this project is a dynamic toll pricing scheme that alleviates congestion and maintains an optimized traffic density during peak hour traffic.

This introductory article to the special issue discusses briefly both the practice and theory of road pricing. Actual methods of charging for road use are discussed, and the current trend towards greater use of time-of-day congestion tolls is noted. The basic model of traffic congestion and road pricing is presented next, and this is followed by a summary of the extensions to the basic model represented in this issue of the Review of Network Economics. Researchers are now developing models that come very close to presenting realistic congestion toll systems that are reasonably efficient.

<p><strong>Resumo: </strong>Este trabalho tem por objetivo avaliar o impacto da composição do tráfego e das condições de cobrança na capacidade de praças de pedágio. As variações das condições de cobrança de pedágio avaliadas neste estudo incluem reduções nos tempos de atendimento nas cabines manuais, bem como os impactos decorrentes da adoção, e crescente adesão, dos usuários à cobrança eletrônica de pedágio. As informações sobre tempos de atendimento utilizados no estudo correspondem a dados reais coletados em praças de pedágio do estado do Rio Grande do Sul. As análises foram realizadas a partir da simulação de uma praça de pedágio através do software de microssimulação VISSIM. Os resultados evidenciaram e quantificaram o aumento de capacidade das praças associado ao treinamento de arrecadadores e à adoção de tarifas que facilitam o troco. Neste estudo melhorias associadas a estas medidas corresponderam a um aumento de até 19% na capacidade da praça. Melhorias bem mais significativas de desempenho, entretanto, podem ser atingidas com o aumento da adesão dos usuários ao sistema de cobrança eletrônica de pedágio.</p><p><strong>Abstract: </strong>This study aims to assess the impact of the composition of traffic and charging conditions on the capacity of toll plazas. The toll charging conditions evaluated in this study include the reductions in service times at manual toll booths, the introduction of electronic toll collection and the increase in electronic collection compliance rates. Service times adopted in this study correspond to data collected at toll plazas of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Analyses presented in this paper are based on toll plaza simulations through the microsimulation software VISSIM. The simulation outcomes evidenced and quantified the capacity increase associated with collectors training and the adoption of fares that simplified the change. In this study, improvements associated with these measures corresponded to an increase of up to 19% of the plaza capacity. More significant improvements in performance, however, can be achieved by increasing the compliance of the electronic toll collection system.</p>

Abstract The number of electric vehicles (EVs) is steadily growing. This provides a promising opportunity for balancing the smart grid of the future, because vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems can utilize the batteries of plugged-in EVs as much needed distributed energy storage: In times of high production and low demand the excess energy in the grid is stored in the EVs’ batteries, while peaks in demand are mitigated by EVs feeding electricity back to the grid. But the data needed for managing individual V2G charging sessions as well as for billing and rewards is of a highly personal and therefore sensitive nature. This causes V2G systems to pose a significant threat to the privacy of their users. Existing cryptographic protocols for this scenario either do not offer adequate privacy protection or fail to provide key features necessary to obtain a practical system. Based on the recent cryptographic toll collection framework P4TC, this work introduces a privacy-preserving but efficient V2G payment and reward system called P6V2G. Our system facilitates two-way transactions in a semi online and post-payment setting. It provides double-spending detection, an integrated reputation system, contingency traceability and blacklisting features, and is portable between EVs. The aforementioned properties are holistically captured within an established cryptographic security framework. In contrast to existing protocols, this formal model of a V2G payment and reward system allows us to assert all properties through a comprehensive formal proof.

My thesis is that new media, starting with analog broadcast and going through digital convergence, blur the line between work time and free time. The technology that we are adopting has transformed free time into potential and actual labour time. At the dawn of the modern age, work shifted from tasked time to measured time. Previously, tasked time intermingled work and leisure according to the vagaries of nature. All this was banished when industrial capitalism instituted the work clock (Mumford 12-8). But now, many have noticed how post-industrial capitalism features a new intermingling captured in such expressions as "24/7" and "multi-tasking." Yet, we are only beginning to understand that media are driving a return to the pre-modern where the hour and the space are both ambiguous, available for either work or leisure. This may be the unfortunate side effect of the much vaunted "interactivity." Do you remember the old American TV show Dobie Gillis (1959-63) which featured the character Maynard G. Krebs? He always shuddered at the mention of the four-letter word "work." Now, American television shows makes it a point that everyone works (even if just barely). Seinfeld was a bold exception in featuring the work-free Kramer; a deliberate homage to the 1940s team of Abbott and Costello. Today, as welfare is turned into workfare, The New York Times scolds even the idle rich to adopt the work ethic (Yazigi). The Forms of Broadcast and Digital Media Are Driving the Merger of Work and Leisure More than the Content It is not just the content of television and other media that is undermining the leisured life; it is the social structure within which we use the media. Broadcast advertisements were the first mode/media combinations that began to recolonise free time for the new consumer economy. There had been a previous buildup in the volume and the ubiquity of advertising particularly in billboards and print. However, the attention of the reader to the printed commercial message could not be controlled and measured. Radio was the first to appropriate and measure its audience's time for the purposes of advertising. Nineteenth century media had promoted a middle class lifestyle based on spending money on home to create a refuge from work. Twentieth century broadcasting was now planting commercial messages within that refuge in the sacred moments of repose. Subsequent to broadcast, home video and cable facilitated flexible work by offering entertainment on a 24 hour basis. Finally, the computer, which juxtaposes image/sound/text within a single machine, offers the user the same proto-interactive blend of entertainment and commercial messages that broadcasting pioneered. It also fulfills the earlier promise of interactive TV by allowing us to work and to shop, in all parts of the day and night. We need to theorise this movement. The theory of media as work needs an institutional perspective. Therefore, I begin with Dallas Smythe's blindspot argument, which gave scholarly gravitas to the structural relationship of work and media (263-299). Horkheimer and Adorno had already noticed that capitalism was extending work into free time (137). Dallas Smythe went on to dissect the precise means by which late capitalism was extending work. Smythe restates the Marxist definition of capitalist labour as that human activity which creates exchange value. Then he considered the advertising industry, which currently approaches200 billion in the USA and realised that a great deal of exchange value has been created. The audience is one element of the labour that creates this exchange value. The appropriation of people's time creates advertising value. The time we spend listening to commercials on radio or viewing them on TV can be measured and is the unit of production for the value of advertising. Our viewing time ipso facto has been changed into work time. We may not experience it subjectively as work time although pundits such as Marie Winn and Jerry Mander suggest that TV viewing contributes to the same physical stresses as actual work. Nonetheless, Smythe sees commercial broadcasting as expanding the realm of capitalism into time that was otherwise set aside for private uses. Smythe's essay created a certain degree of excitement among political economists of media. Sut Jhally used Smythe to explain aspects of US broadcast history such as the innovations of William Paley in creating the CBS network (Jhally 70-9). In 1927, as Paley contemplated winning market share from his rival NBC, he realised that selling audience time was far more profitable than selling programs. Therefore, he paid affiliated stations to air his network's programs while NBC was still charging them for the privilege. It was more lucrative to Paley to turn around and sell the stations' guaranteed time to advertisers, than to collect direct payments for supplying programs. NBC switched to his business model within a year. Smythe/Jhally's model explains the superiority of Paley's model and is a historical proof of Smythe's thesis. Nonetheless, many economists and media theorists have responded with a "so what?" to Smythe's thesis that watching TV as work. Everyone knows that the basis of network television is the sale of "eyeballs" to the advertisers. However, Smythe's thesis remains suggestive. Perhaps he arrived at it after working at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from 1943 to 1948 (Smythe 2). He was part of a team that made one last futile attempt to force radio to embrace public interest programming. This effort failed because the tide of consumerism was too strong. Radio and television were the leading edge of recapturing the home for work, setting the stage for the Internet and a postmodern replication of the cottage industries of pre and proto-industrial worlds. The consequences have been immense. The Depression and the crisis of over-production Cultural studies recognises that social values have shifted from production to consumption (Lash and Urry). The shift has a crystallising moment in the Great Depression of 1929 through 1940. One proposal at the time was to reduce individual work hours in order to create more jobs (see Hunnicut). This proposal of "share the work" was not adopted. From the point of view of the producer, sharing the work would make little difference to productivity. However, from the retailer's perspective each individual worker would accumulate less money to buy products. Overall sales would stagnate or decline. Prominent American economists at the time argued that sharing the work would mean sharing the unemployment. They warned the US government this was a fundamental threat to an economy based on consumption. Only a fully employed laborer could have enough money to buy down the national inventory. In 1932, N. A. Weston told the American Economic Association that: " ...[the labourers'] function in society as a consumer is of equal importance as the part he plays as a producer." (Weston 11). If the defeat of the share the work movement is the negative manifestation of consumerism, then the invasion by broadcast of our leisure time is its positive materialisation. We can trace this understanding by looking at Herbert Hoover. When he was the Secretary of Commerce in 1924 he warned station executives that: "I have never believed that it was possible to advertise through broadcasting without ruining the [radio] industry" (Radio's Big Issue). He had not recognised that broadcast advertising would be qualitatively more powerful for the economy than print advertising. By 1929, Hoover, now President Hoover, approved an economics committee recommendation in the traumatic year of 1929 that leisure time be made "consumable " (Committee on Recent Economic Changes xvi). His administration supported the growth of commercial radio because broadcasting was a new efficient answer to the economists' question of how to motivate consumption. Not so coincidentally network radio became a profitable industry during the great Depression. The economic power that pre-war radio hinted at flourished in the proliferation of post-war television. Advertisers switched their dollars from magazines to TV, causing the demise of such general interest magazines as Life, The Saturday Evening Postet al. Western Europe quickly followed the American broadcasting model. Great Britain was the first, allowing television to advertise the consumer revolution in 1955. Japan and many others started to permit advertising on television. During the era of television, the nature of work changed from manufacturing to servicing (Preston 148-9). Two working parents also became the norm as a greater percentage of the population took salaried employment, mostly women (International Labour Office). Many of the service jobs are to monitor the new global division of labour that allows industrialised nations to consume while emerging nations produce. (Chapter seven of Preston is the most current discussion of the shift of jobs within information economies and between industrialised and emerging nations.) Flexible Time/ Flexible Media Film and television has responded by depicting these shifts. The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted in September of 1970 (see http://www.transparencynow.com/mary.htm). In this show nurturing and emotional attachments were centered in the work place, not in an actual biological family. It started a trend that continues to this day. However, media representations of the changing nature of work are merely symptomatic of the relationship between media and work. Broadcast advertising has a more causal relationship. As people worked more to buy more, they found that they wanted time-saving media. It is in this time period that the Internet started (1968), that the video cassette recorder was introduced (1975) and that the cable industry grew. Each of these ultimately enhanced the flexibility of work time. The VCR allowed time shifting programs. This is the media answer to the work concept of flexible time. The tired worker can now see her/his favourite TV show according to his/her own flex schedule (Wasser 2001). Cable programming, with its repeats and staggered starting times, also accommodates the new 24/7 work day. These machines, offering greater choice of programming and scheduling, are the first prototypes of interactivity. The Internet goes further in expanding flexible time by adding actual shopping to the vicarious enjoyment of consumerist products on television. The Internet user continues to perform the labour of watching advertising and, in addition, now has the opportunity to do actual work tasks at any time of the day or night. The computer enters the home as an all-purpose machine. Its purchase is motivated by several simultaneous factors. The rhetoric often stresses the recreational and work aspects of the computer in the same breath (Reed 173, Friedrich 16-7). Games drove the early computer programmers to find more "user-friendly" interfaces in order to entice young consumers. Entertainment continues to be the main driving force behind visual and audio improvements. This has been true ever since the introduction of the Apple II, Radio Shack's TRS 80 and Atari 400 personal computers in the 1977-1978 time frame (see http://www.atari-history.com/computers/8bits/400.html). The current ubiquity of colour monitors, and the standard package of speakers with PC computers are strong indications that entertainment and leisure pursuits continue to drive the marketing of computers. However, once the computer is in place in the study or bedroom, its uses fully integrates the user with world of work in both the sense of consuming and creating value. This is a specific instance of what Philip Graham calls the analytical convergence of production, consumption and circulation in hypercapitalism. The streaming video and audio not only captures the action of the game, they lend sensual appeal to the banner advertising and the power point downloads from work. In one regard, the advent of Internet advertising is a regression to the pre-broadcast era. The passive web site ad runs the same risk of being ignored as does print advertising. The measure of a successful web ad is interactivity that most often necessitates a click through on the part of the viewer. Ads often show up on separate windows that necessitate a click from the viewer if only to close down the program. In the words of Bolter and Grusin, click-through advertising is a hypermediation of television. In other words, it makes apparent the transparent relationship television forged between work and leisure. We do not sit passively through Internet advertising, we click to either eliminate them or to go on and buy the advertised products. Just as broadcasting facilitated consumable leisure, new media combines consumable leisure with flexible portable work. The new media landscape has had consequences, although the price of consumable leisure took awhile to become visible. The average work week declined from 1945 to 1982. After that point in the US, it has been edging up, continuously (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics). There is some question whether the computer has improved productivity (Kim), there is little question that the computer is colonising leisure time for multi-tasking. In a population that goes online from home almost twice as much as those who go online from work, almost half use their online time for work based activities other than email. Undoubtedly, email activity would account for even more work time (Horrigan). On the other side of the blur between work and leisure, the Pew Institute estimates that fifty percent use work Internet time for personal pleasure ("Wired Workers"). Media theory has to reengage the problem that Horkheimer/Adorno/Smythe raised. The contemporary problem of leisure is not so much the lack of leisure, but its fractured, non-contemplative, unfulfilling nature. 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Links http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=20 http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=22 http://www.atari-history.com/computers/8bits/400.html http://www.transparencynow.com/mary.htm http://www.digitaleconomy.gov/powerpoint/triplett/index.htm http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28193203%2922%3C8%3ASWTAU%3 E2.0.CO%3B2-3 Citation reference for this article MLA Style Wasser, Frederick. "Media Is Driving Work" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4.5 (2001). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Wasser.xml >. Chicago Style Wasser, Frederick, "Media Is Driving Work" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4, no. 5 (2001), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Wasser.xml > ([your date of access]). APA Style Wasser, Frederick. (2001) Media Is Driving Work. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Wasser.xml > ([your date of access]).