Richmond borough council in southwest London will next year test an
electronic system for charging drivers according to the time they spend
at the wheel. If the pilot project is successful, Richmond hopes that it
will be able to persuade other boroughs in the capital to join forces and
set up a London-wide scheme of road pricing.
With this in mind, GEC-Marconi of Stanmore in Middlesex last week demonstrated
its road pricing technology, known as ‘Timezone’, in London to representatives
of government departments, local authorities and transport bodies.
The aim of the scheme is to relieve congestion by making it cheaper
for motorists either to drive into town at off-peak times or to travel in
on public transport. This should reduce the volume of traffic at peak times.
The potential benefits are large, especially if city authorities direct
the fees they collect from drivers into improving public transport and local
infrastructure. The motorists who remain on the road will suffer fewer delays
and encounter less congestion. Buses will be able to run more punctually,
encouraging still more motorists to use them.
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For the test in Richmond, GEC-Marconi is to fit about 100 vehicles belonging
to council staff with small meters. These meters will communicate by radio
with beacons to be erected at strategic points within a defined central
area in the borough.
Drivers participating in the trial will slot ‘smart cards’ worth a certain
number of credit units into the meters; the credits are gradually deducted
during journeys. Smart cards are electronic devices, the size of credit
cards, that contain processing and memory chips so that they can store information.
GEC-Marconi will issue the selected drivers with smart cards which are
pre-charged with credits; these credits will be consumed by the drivers
as they motor through the Timezone test area at predefined rates depending
on the times and length of the journey. For example, the highest rate might
be charged for the time they spend driving through congested areas at peak
times. Weekend driving or off-peak driving on weekdays may be free.
Paul Kimber, manager of the Micro Systems and Sensors Division at GEC-Marconi,
explained that the beacons transmit radio signals to the meters in passing
cars. The signals indicate which zone the driver is passing through, and
credits are deducted accordingly. The meter displays how much longer the
driver has in the zone at the current charging rate and what zone the car
is in. A readout of credit level is also available.
Drivers using the system are notified by the meter when the credits
on the smart card are about to run out. They can then top them up at a variety
of outlets, including shops and garages. If the credits run out during a
journey, the meter itself sends out radio signals to special beacons equipped
with TV cameras to indicate that the driver is in default. The beacons photograph
the offending car as it passes so that fines can be charged.
The cameras will also photograph cars without meters. Signs placed around
the perimeter of a metered zone will warn visiting motorists to purchase
daily permits that will place them temporarily within the scheme.
Kimber said that one of the most important requirements in developing
the system was to avoid infringing civil liberties. Other trial schemes
with electronic metering have encountered resistance because drivers would
be charged after passing through the metered area. Readouts with their bills
would indicate where they had driven and when.
This raised fears that an individual’s movements could be traced without
their knowledge. Timezone gets round this by charging drivers in advance.
‘It would remain anonymous with no central account for individual driver
and no tracing of individual vehicle movements,’ says Kimber.
Cambridgeshire County Council approved a road-pricing scheme last autumn
and plans to initiate a full trial in 18 months’ time. It has picked a consortium
of companies to develop technology originating from the University of Newcastle
(see ‘Pricing cars off city streets’, New Scientist, 2 March 1991).
![Astronomers have long known that understanding how star clusters come to be is key to unlocking other secrets of galactic evolution. Stars form in clusters, created when clouds of gas collapse under gravity. As more and more stars are born in a collapsing cloud, strong stellar winds, harsh ultraviolet radiation and the supernova explosions of massive stars eventually disperse the cloud, and their light can bear down on other star-forming regions in the galaxy. This process is called stellar feedback, and it means that most of the gas in a galaxy never gets used for star formation. Researching how star clusters develop can answer questions about star formation at a galactic scale. Now, the state of the art has been further developed with both Hubble and Webb working together to provide a broad-spectrum view of thousands of young star clusters. An international team of astronomers has pored over images of four nearby galaxies from the FEAST observing programme (#1783), trying to solve this mystery. Their results show that it is the most massive star clusters that clear away their gaseous shroud the fastest, and begin lighting their galaxy the earliest. The team identified nearly 9000 star clusters in the four galaxies in different evolutionary stages: young clusters just starting to emerge from their natal clouds of gas, clusters that had partially dispersed the gas (both from Webb images), and fully unobstructed clusters visible in optical light (found in Hubble images). With Webb???s ability to peer inside the gas clouds, they were able to then estimate the mass and age of each cluster from its light spectrum. This image shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), one of the four galaxies studied in this work, as seen by Webb???s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The thick clumps of star-forming gas are shown here in red and orange, representing infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Within these gas complexes, each tens or hundreds of light years across, Webb reveals the dense, extremely bright clusters of massive stars that have just recently formed. The countless stars strewn across the arm of the galaxy, many of which would be invisible to our eyes behind layers of dust, are also laid bare in infrared light. [Image description: A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colours the otherwise dark background.]](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/13114322/SEI_296271016.jpg)
