Road traffic is increasing world-wide; Bangaloreans experience
it severely every day.  While a better transportation infrastructure
and road usage are essential to mitigate the problem, they may not
be sufficient.  This has led cities to impose congestion charges.

We take the view that "the right to congest" can be made into a
tradable commodity: those who use the roads at congested times
pay those who stay away during  such times.  This direct transfer
of money from the congestor to the decongestor is incentive 
compatible: the congestor encounters less traffic and the 
decongestor is adequately compensated.

We describe an experimental program, called INSTANT (for the
Infosys-Stanford Traffic program), which has been under way
from Oct 6, 2008, at Infosys Technologies.  The aim of the project
is to incent Infosys commuters to arrive early, leading to: commute
times that are shorter by at least 30 mins, reduced fuel consumption,
pollution and overall congestion.  The program has been successful
so far, with over 7000 participants incentivized through weekly monetary 
rewards.

The talk describes the background, the incentive mechanism and
the status of the INSTANT project.