I was driving from the East bay into San Francisco the other day, minding my own business listening to Bill Nye talk about GMO’s … when I hit the behemoth that is the toll station on 80.
By this time I could not get off and go a different route. I did not have a FasTrak, since I usually take Bart into the city. Also I haven’t carried cash on me since 1999 when I was trying to get into this weird comedy club that only seemed to have lite beer and owls on the walls.
I was stuck.
After about 20 minutes of move 2 inches, wait, move 2 inches, wait, I finally got to the agent and proceeded to try and ask them if they could let me pay some other way or what should I do since I did not have cash. As you can imagine they gave absolutely none shits about my situation. They just handed me a paper that said I would be getting fined and told me I could contest it if I wanted to but to “please move forward”.
Here’s the thing, I feel like I shouldn’t have to even worry about whether I have “this payment thingy” or “that payment thingy”, it should just work. In fact I would pay more for the toll if you could get rid of the “Red Line” of traffic and optimize my commute.
Solve this problem
Google, here’s what I’m thinking.
You’ve already got the data, map and movement patterns. You are basically in the best position to allow me to get in my car and deal with all road blocks and distractions between me getting from point A-R and back again.
You’ve got the aptitude and muscle to pave a new road, so to speak, and help cities and governments cut costs while also monetizing their roads cheaper and faster (hopefully only for upkeep but yeah there is room for abuse here).
You talk about “Moonshots” a lot but here is where one will actually touch back down to earth for us humans.
Could you think about attaching Google Pay with Maps and when I go through a toll you just deduct the amount needed and I don’t have to do anything. This would please me something fierce.
I made a little prototype using Atomic.io
I see this drastically improving commutes everywhere while gaining adoption of Google Pay and engagement of Google Maps.
You’ve got all the pieces, let’s put them together and make a sweet ass bridge to your lego castle people will be happy to use.
Highfive
Josh
