Eventually, of course, we'll have to move entirely off a gasoline-based infrastructure, but in the interim there are valid uses of personal automobiles in rural areas (whereas I am having an increasingly hard time seeing the valid uses for personal automobiles at all in areas where three-story and taller buildings predominate).
You need some form of road-pricing in the urban areas. Congestion charges á la London and Stockholm are one way. Parking fees are another (used in Copenhagen). Simply restricting the available parking space is a third (used in Paris).
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
I'm not suggesting increased fuel taxes solve all problems, but it is the most efficient way of rebalancing the transportation system as a whole. Frank's Home Page and Diary Index
The noise can be solved by intelligent city planning, the pollution can be solved with gas taxes, death-by-auto can be solved by speed limits (albeit rather more draconian ones than we have at present), but the congestion can really only be adequately resolved if you make people pay either for roads or for parking (or for both).
