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InterCONNECTED
Fleet Routing typically takes place at
a command and control level, but a
new form of road and traffic man-
agement is now possible combining
blockchain, geolocation, social networks
with decentralised network concepts
with predictive analytics that would
eventually become an artificial intelli-
gence (AI).
This system will replace the modes of
road and motorway (highway) financ-
ing currently used, by providing an
anonymised store of value for people
so that anyone can invest in the road
system independently of banks or their
government and get a certain return
every day.
Since everyone must travel and travel
is a useful and easy to understand
commodity, assuming a country is not
destroyed, transport within that country
will always have value.
THE 'WHY'
Increasing urbanisation is posing signifi-
cant problems to many of the world's cit-
ies, especially the very largest megacities
whose infrastructure cannot cope with
the demand for transport by millions of
users daily.
RoadSpaceTime continuum
A Transit Exchange for the 21st Century with a decade of hard work
and perseverance finally destined to pay off for Eric Masaba, the creator
of TEXXI explains how the concept works and how it has its origins in the
pure mathematics of high finance
The
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As human population increases, even
more alarming is the overall increase
urbanisation rate that will place 90 per
cent all humans in cities by 2050. China
alone will move 400m people into cities
by 2030.
The need to find new road financing
options while at the same time keeping
the road open to all those who need to
use it, regardless of their income level
has collided with the dual imperatives of
using fewer barrels of oil per passenger
kilometre travelled and reducing fossil
fuel emissions.
Petrol Duty (gasoline tax) by itself, can-
not hope to cover the costs in upgrading
roads, repairing potholes, resurfacing
the routes and the bridge maintenance,
especially on the busiest routes. A new
model is needed that is socially equita-
ble, can be implemented according to
well-understood principles, such as the
congestion charge in London.
THE 'HOW':
TRANSPORTATION DEMAND
MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
The one technology that can meet these
How the Transit Exchange System, using a fusion of ideas from a plethora of sources, came
into being and why it will be the transport model of future cities.
1992 - 1993: National Grid Technology and Science Laboratories, Overhead Lines Division, Plant Technology.
A project examining the effect of weather conditions on electricity transmission infrastructure and demand management.
1993 1995: Royal Air Force, Officer Cadet Flying Programme, University of London
1995: Sponsored summer project ("The Role of Computers in Transportation Technology")
Made possible with the kind assistance of Imperial College Department of Aeronautics, The Minsitry of Defence, NASA, the
Department of Defence, the Royal Air Force, the Royal Academy of Engineering & the Royal Aeronautical Society.
1997: Project on RideSharing at Ecole Centrale De Lyon
Professeur Christian Vial, oversaw this project using groupware technologies and ideas (distributed,
encrypted databases). We dubbed it Project Lugh, after the Celtic deity for whom Lyon is named.
1998 2003: Exposure to financial operations in banks and hedge funds
Front-office, back-office and middle office computer systems at investment banks and multinational firms
2003 2004: Constructing a Capital Structure Arbitrage system for Xaraf LLC
Credit Default Swap/Convertible Bond trading and Capital Structure Arbitrage trading strategies. It
is here I came up with my credit contagion ideas that turned out to be so prescient.
2004 - Present: Texxi (Transit Exchange XXI )
Founding, Research, Presentations, Business Strategy
TEXXI, A HISTORY
"More alarming is the overall increase
urbanisation rate that will place 90 per cent all
humans in cities by 2050. China alone will
move 400m people into cities by 2030..."
INTERTRAFFIC AMSTERDAM 2018 SUPPLEMENT
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needs is energy efficiency through ride-
sharing. The wider and more difficult
issue has been how to make it efficient,
reasonable and palatable for people on
a daily basis.
To begin with, roads must be treated
as a scarce resource that is contended in
both space and time. The general public
already accepts the reality and need to
pay for parking to rent a certain amount
of roadspace for a certain amount of
time: this idea simply builds on that per-
ception.
TRANSIT EXCHANGE
A Transit Exchange is a means to ration-
alise contended access to any "transport-
space" (roadspace, waterway or airspace
system) based on the construct of a Com-
modity Futures Exchange. Most simply
it enables real-time, dynamic ridesharing
on a very large scale in any type of vehicle
that carries passengers or freight.
The Transit Exchange operates below
the level of the application layer (it is not
an "app") sending trip packages to the
end users on whichever app platforms
(e.g. Uber, Lyft or Didi). It also creates
isodapanes (demand maps) that can be
consumed by any market maker operat-
ing on the exchange.
The Transit Exchange is akin to the
overall water system (pipes, reservoirs,
sewers, pumps). Taxi or RideHailing
apps for users are akin to the taps in the
house. They may be the only thing the
user sees, but behind the tap there is an
entire infrastructure which must man-
The exchange would get the required liquidity from investors who put into
value at risk for a small return. This can happen since the Market Makers
operating on the exchange will have a statistically certain outcome for
grouping operations and they must pay a fee to the exchange to operate.
Much in the same way as any national government issues bonds, notes and bills
to pay for operations, so would the road system via the transit exchange.
The added benefit of free-flowing traffic, cheaper transit and social
equity would be a great return even apart from the financials.
INSTRUMENTS OF CHANGE
age demand and generate income for
the whole system to be able to function.
It is intended to be an operating sys-
tem for the transport cloud in any local-
ity and provide funding to municipal
operators. Like Air Traffic Control or
an Automatic Dependent Surveillance
Broadcast (ADS-B) system but for all
vehicles at whatever altitude.
Using mathematical
optimisation
techniques (based on heuristics and
genetic algorithms) the Processing Layer
of the Transit Exchange examines and
aggregates origin-destination requests
for transport from dispersed users in
both space and time (who may or may
not know one another) and applies
operational concepts and knowhow
garnered from successful prior deploy-
ments, the Transit Exchange provides
timely relevant trip package suggestions
for ridesharing to those users and the
vehicle operators in the locality.
The Transit Exchange also generates
income for municipal road operators
from the very market making functions
on the Commodity Futures Exchange
for Transport used to fill the empty
seats in the fleet or vehicles operated in
the "transportspace". Now congestion
pricing, road pricing and vehicle pricing
charges can all be applied to users and
a negative congestion charge imple-
mented to not adversely affect the poor-
est in society.
Predictive Analytics permit the trans-
port users to choose when to travel and
the transport service providers to place
their assets in the most logical positions
to best serve demand.
If an investor was to deploy an amount
of money into the Transit Exchange, then
through the market making protocols
in solving NP-hard problems related to
Large Scale Dynamic Real-Time Ride-
sharing a set of returns with varying
yield-to-maturities can be replicated,
providing an alternative to money-mar-
ket funds and instantiated through the
mechanism of a blockchain coin offering.
Demand Backed Blockchain: Rather
than relying on the rather nebulous
promise of perpetual cryptographic
"To begin with, roads must be treated as a
scarce resource that is contended in both
space and time..."
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]
]
USER LAYER
PHYSICAL LAYER
CONGESTION
User applications
Processing
Distributing
Demand signals
Physical road
security of a blockchain ledger, the prov-
able work done has solved a pressing
and current problem in the real world
and done so in a manner that was trans-
parent. Even then, homomorphisms
could be applied to anonymise the trans-
port data.
Highly Liquid
investable security
instruments (Transit Exchange Bill or TE-
Bills) can thus be made available via the
Transit Exchange. Its original purpose is
to store value represented by demand
for travel in a locality. Hence we will
have a Computational-Crypto-Currency
backed by an inspectiable commodity
called "transport demand".
The Transit Exchange model seeks to
provide the basis for trading 'roadspa-
cetime' packets in a futures exchange
construct. The Road Pricing model itself
is built of three layers PHYSICAL, CON-
GESTION and VEHICLE.
The PHYSICAL LAYER is the actual
road itself. This is what vehicle licens-
ing and road tax pays for with the flat
licence fee per vehicle. While this num-
ber can be set at anything, in order for
the system to be fair, each road, based
on how it was constructed, could fea-
sibly have a different charge. We see
this already in many countries with toll
roads. This is the base layer the access
price or ROAD PRICING.
The CONGESTION LAYER is the vari-
able pricing layer, which is most adaptive
to real-time demand conditions. Most
cities charge one rate for parking during
the busiest hours and another rate for
overnight. Based on demand patterns
and adapting to demand, any road could
have variable congestion charging,
which could also be negatively set by
rewarding people who have scheduled
to use the road, but stay off it at the busi-
est times. They could receive payment in
tokens that can pay for other infrastruc-
ture uses like parking on the network.
The VEHICLE LAYER is where differen-
tial pricing related to fuel type, energy
efficiency and recyclability comes in.
Vehicles that are more polluting would
pay more, but if the operator fills the
vehicle with as many people as is per-
mitted, this cost is thus rational. This also
encourages larger capacity vehicles up
to a given size for most trips and would
thus promote ridesharing.
Access to the roadspace at a given
time is purchased in exactly the same
way as traders buy other commodity
futures or forwards via an exchange.
This construct has worked semi-miracles
for food production over 170 years and
it can work just as well for 21st century
transportation and mobility. l
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Eric Masaba is txxxxisitcccc