Roads as Enablers of Progress

Beginning from the early years of civilization, connections through roads have been recognized as enablers of progress. Up to today, to foster greater efficiency and progress in an area, roads are developed. This is because when roads are improved, people gain more freedom and access to act on ideas and activities faster hence, enabling greater productivity. Additionally, this means saving time and energy for travelling and more time on more productive tasks like enhancing creativity, profitability, or sustainability, among others. As much as other developments could do the same, the universal nature of the benefits of roads, whereas different people of different characteristics and priorities are affected, makes their impact stronger and lasting. With greater and faster productivity for the many enabled, progress is also enabled.

Change is just Now or Later

When the pandemic happened in 2020, it taught the world two important lessons among others: first, globalization and being connected worldwide have their benefits but also disadvantages—we not only share a commonality in needs and solutions but also, a vulnerability in crises. Second, that change is no longer now or never—it is now or later. Countries that were able to adapt and capacitate earlier to contactless technology were able to respond and recover more efficiently. On the other hand, those who waited for the crisis have taken a longer and harder path to adapt to enabling technologies and solutions. 

A sustainable takeaway is to keep this in mind and be able to adapt to change as soon as possible and without the need for a global crisis. The implementation of barrier-less toll gates has already begun in Canada back in 2012 and in the UK in 2017. Plans and discussions continue and are underway like in Thailand in 2021. Changes including both adversities and advancements in today’s time can happen instantaneously and exponentially; active actors of nations are then given a choice—to adapt either now or later. 

Barrierless Tollways as Gates to Progress

The projected effect of barrier-less tollways is greater speed in commuting, transporting, and logistics and subsequently, faster progress. However, its impact can only be realized if this speed is accompanied by an assurance of accuracy and consistency. The good news is that one of the most popular technologies in open road tolls, which is also used in the Philippines called RFID or Radio Frequency Identification, once optimized, can scan 10 to 40 tags per second or even up to a thousand. If configured and optimized to maximize their capacity, RFIDs can continuously and consistently offer the same accuracy of reading within less than a second. However, in the status quo, with the presence of barriers that do not offer the same speed possibilities and have the need for cars to slow down and line up, the capacity of RFID is not yet maximized; in fact, this causes further slowing down of traffic in tollways overall. Since RFID technology can facilitate fast and accurate reading, barriers are unnecessary. Once barriers are removed and RFID tools are optimized, the benefits that this technology can offer are maximized—speed, accuracy, and consistency are achieved, hence, progress is more accessible.

Hedera Hashgraph as a Tool to Remove Barriers

For this model to be successful, two main things need to be achieved first: 1) the RFID Technology needs an optimized configuration, and 2) the people need to trust the barrierless system. Hedera Hashgraph can serve as the tool to attain both of them. 

Hedera Hashgraph, a third-generation public ledger, is the latest technology operating through a “gossip of gossips” method with the use of nodes containing a timestamp, digital signature, your transaction, and hashes of two or more preceding events. Through this method, a transaction is recorded over different nodes permanently hence, verifiable and irreversible. This means that it cannot be tampered by any external intervention which can solidify its truth value. In addition, it also possesses simplicity in its framework which will facilitate the speed optimization necessary. 

Technological developments and innovations offer tools that can help us, societies and communities, to enable progress. But, at the end of the day, the decision to embrace and utilize them remains in our hands.