Tolling Pair Settlement Embodiment

Mechanism

A vehicle holds a credentialed identity admitting tolling participation. The credential carries the vehicle's signing key, its tolling-class designation (passenger, commercial, hazmat, exempt), and any rate-class qualifications (clean-air, occupancy-based, time-of-day enrollment) that the operator's rate schedule consumes. A toll gate holds a credentialed identity admitting tolling authority within a declared lane scope. The gate credential is signed by the tolling authority and bound to the gate's physical position and lane assignment through the marker-track primitive.

As a vehicle approaches the gate, the marker-track primitive establishes lane authority: the gate's marker emissions and the vehicle's marker observations produce a credentialed proximity record that names the gate, the vehicle, and the time-bounded passage event. The proximity record is the admissibility window for tolling; outside this window, no settlement may be formed between this vehicle and this gate.

Within the admissibility window, the matched-pair settlement is initiated. The gate proposes a settlement object carrying the vehicle identity, the gate identity, the proximity record reference, the substantive toll-rate claim derived from the gate's rate schedule applied to the vehicle's tolling class and any rate-class qualifications, and the gate's signature. The vehicle reviews the proposed settlement against its admissibility (the rate schedule must match the published rate, the tolling class must match the vehicle's credential, the proximity record must reference the vehicle's own marker observation), and on admission countersigns. The countersigned settlement is final.

The settlement record is held by both parties. The vehicle holds it as evidence of toll paid; the gate (and through it, the tolling authority) holds it as evidence of toll received. No third party is required to validate, clear, or transmit the record. Funds flow under whatever payment rail the parties have separately agreed; the settlement is the commitment, distinct from payment execution.

Operating Parameters

Proximity admissibility is the gating parameter. The marker-track primitive defines the time-bounded passage event; settlement may be formed only by parties named in a current proximity record. This protects against settlement formation between non-co-located parties (a remote gate cannot toll a vehicle it did not detect; a vehicle cannot be tolled by a gate it did not pass).

Rate schedule is published and credentialed. The tolling authority publishes the rate schedule as a signed, versioned object, with effective epochs and class-conditioning rules. The vehicle admits the schedule version named in the proposed settlement; settlements proposing rates not derivable from the published schedule fail vehicle admissibility and are not countersigned. Disputes about which rate governed a given passage are resolvable by inspection of the named schedule version and the vehicle's tolling-class credential.

Tolling class is governed by credentialing authority. A vehicle's tolling class (passenger, commercial weight tier, hazmat designation, exemption status) is a credentialed object issued by the registering authority and consumed by the gate's rate-application logic. Class updates take effect prospectively; in-flight passages settle under the class active at proximity admissibility.

Dispute mechanism is declared. Each rate schedule names its dispute mechanism: the tribunal or arbitration body, the deadline for filing, and the evidence standards. Because the settlement record is bilateral and signed, disputes inspect the same record both parties hold; there is no asymmetry of records to reconcile.

Offline tolerance is supported. When connectivity at the gate is degraded, both parties continue to hold their copies of the signed settlement; transmission to the tolling authority's settlement consolidation is asynchronous and does not gate finality. Finality is bilateral signature; transmission is operational housekeeping.

Alternative Embodiments

Distance-based tolling embodiments gate settlement on entry-and-exit proximity records rather than single-gate passage. Entry-gate and exit-gate produce paired marker-track records; the substantive toll-rate claim is computed from the segment travelled at the rate-schedule applicable to that segment. The matched-pair settlement is between the vehicle and the road authority, with both gate identities referenced in the proximity record.

Congestion-based embodiments parameterize the rate-schedule by current congestion observation at the gate. The published schedule names the congestion observation source and the rate-conditioning function; the vehicle admits the rate by inspection of the source and the function applied to the named observation epoch. Congestion observations are themselves credentialed objects from declared sensing authorities.

Emissions-based embodiments parameterize the rate by the vehicle's emissions class credential. The credentialing authority is the emissions-certification body; the credential carries the certified class and currency window; the rate-schedule conditions on class. Embodiments may compose emissions class with congestion or distance to produce multi-axis rate-conditioning while preserving bilateral settlement.

Occupancy-based embodiments admit a high-occupancy rate class on the vehicle's presentation of an occupancy attestation at proximity admission. Occupancy attestations may be sensor-derived or credentialed by an enrolled rider; the rate-schedule names which occupancy evidence suffices.

Mobile-tolling embodiments dispense with fixed-position gates. A mobile gate (a tolling-credentialed enforcement vehicle, a portable gantry, a temporary work-zone enforcement station) holds a gate credential bound to its current credentialed position via the marker-track primitive; settlements proceed under the same matched-pair semantics. This supports temporary tolling for work zones, special-event corridors, and emergency-management traffic-control zones.

Multi-modal embodiments compose with parking and ferry settlement. A vehicle's tolling credential admits passage settlement against gate credentials of any of these classes; the tolling-class taxonomy distinguishes road-tolling, parking, and ferry-passage settlement classes.

Cross-jurisdictional embodiments contemplate vehicles transiting multiple tolling authorities under a single trip. Each authority operates its own gate credentials, rate schedules, and dispute mechanisms; the vehicle's tolling-class credential is recognized across authorities by declared meta-credentialing, by reciprocity agreements between authorities, or by enrollment of the vehicle directly with each authority. Settlements remain bilateral within each authority's scope; no cross-authority clearing layer is required, though authorities may exchange aggregated reconciliation data through declared inter-authority channels independent of the user-facing settlement flow. This produces interstate and international tolling interoperability without the structural dependence on aggregator clearing that contemporary inter-operator tolling protocols impose.

Composition

The tolling embodiment composes the matched-pair settlement primitive with the marker-track primitive. The marker-track primitive supplies lane authority at the gate by producing a credentialed proximity record naming the gate, the vehicle, and the passage event; the matched-pair primitive supplies the bilateral, signed settlement that consumes the proximity record as its admissibility window. Without marker-track, the matched-pair has no proximity admissibility; without matched-pair, marker-track has no settlement semantics.

Composition with capability gating supplies the credential ecology. Vehicle tolling-class credentials, gate authority credentials, rate-schedule credentialing, and dispute-mechanism credentialing all enter through the same gating framework that governs other settlement classes. This produces a uniform credential surface across road tolling, parking, ferry, and mobile enforcement.

Composition with the architecture's dispute primitives supplies recourse. Disputes about toll-rate, vehicle class, proximity validity, or rate-schedule version are resolved by inspection of the bilateral settlement record and the named credentialed objects (rate schedule, tolling-class credential, proximity record), under the dispute mechanism named in the rate schedule active at passage.

Prior-Art Distinction

Conventional electronic tolling architectures (transponder-based systems, license-plate-recognition systems, cellular-billing systems) depend on aggregator clearing. A transponder issuer holds the user account, captures the passage event, applies the rate, and settles with the road operator through inter-operator clearing protocols. The user's settlement is with the issuer, not with the road operator; the road operator's settlement is with the issuer, not with the user. The aggregator captures the settlement record, charges the user a service fee, charges the road operator a clearing fee, and bears regulatory liability for the data it holds.

License-plate-recognition tolling captures vehicle identity by image processing, looks up an account or invoices the registered owner, and clears settlement through the issuer's billing relationship with the owner. The vehicle is not a credentialed party to a bilateral settlement; it is the subject of an asymmetric capture-and-bill cycle.

Blockchain-based tolling proposals record toll events on a global ledger but retain aggregator-style economics: a token issuer mediates the value transfer, a global validator set clears the record, and the bilateral relationship between vehicle and gate is dissolved into a global settlement layer. The disclosed primitive is structurally distinct: the settlement is bilateral, the record is held by the parties (not by a global ledger), and no aggregator or validator set mediates.

The disclosed embodiment thus distinguishes itself by the bilateral, signed, party-held settlement record gated by credentialed proximity, with the rate schedule, tolling class, and dispute mechanism as named credentialed objects rather than as aggregator-internal state. No prior tolling architecture is known that delivers proximity-gated, bilateral, party-held settlement with composed credential classes for vehicle, gate, rate schedule, and dispute mechanism while remaining offline-tolerant and intermediary-optional.

Disclosure Scope

Provisional 64/049,409 records the tolling embodiment as a first-class application of matched-pair settlement composed with marker-track lane authority. The disclosure encompasses fixed-gate, distance-based, congestion-based, emissions-based, occupancy-based, mobile, and multi-modal embodiments; vehicle tolling-class credentialing across passenger, commercial, hazmat, and exempt classes; rate-schedule publication, versioning, and dispute mechanism declaration; offline-tolerant, asynchronously-consolidated settlement transmission.

Adoption is incremental. Existing physical toll infrastructure (gates, gantries, sensors, vehicle transponders, plate-recognition cameras) integrates through declared interfaces: the gate credential maps onto the existing gate, the vehicle credential maps onto the existing transponder or onto a vehicle-resident agent on a mobile device, the marker-track proximity record maps onto the existing detection pipeline. The tolling pair primitive becomes the settlement layer above this infrastructure; aggregator clearing becomes optional service rather than architectural requirement, allowing road operators to retire intermediary contracts as bilateral settlement matures.

Audit posture is improved by construction. Each settlement is signed by both parties to the toll, references named credentialed objects with versioned signatures, and is held by both parties. Regulators inspecting tolling operations review the bilateral record set rather than aggregator-internal databases; vehicle owners challenging a toll inspect the same signed record the road operator holds; the road operator demonstrates compliance by producing the same record set the vehicle owner produces. Symmetry of evidence is the structural property the embodiment delivers.