k wrote:

Very interesting article, and probably a vision of the future in this country... I think congestion pricing is one of the only potentially viable ways to get people to recognize something closer to the true cost of driving their cars.

This strikes me as a non-optimal solution ...

I'd be curious to find out if these issues have been addressed anywhere ...

In January, I recommended a short piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg that touches on this:

Every now and then I meet someone in Manhattan who has never driven a car. Some confess it sheepishly, and some announce it proudly. For some it is just a practical matter of fact, the equivalent of not keeping a horse on West 87th Street or Avenue A. Still, I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.

Driving is the cultural anomaly of our moment. Someone from the past, I think, would marvel at how much time we spend in cars and how our geographic consciousness is defined by how far we can get in a few hours’ drive and still feel as if we’re close to home. Someone from the future, I’m sure, will marvel at our blindness and at the hole we have driven ourselves into, for we are completely committed to an unsustainable technology.

RE: America’s Traffic Congestion Problem: Toward a Framework for Nationwide Reform