The Technology To Eliminate Traffic

"London’s experiment with road pricing has sparked a lot of discussion in the United States. The reason is not because lots of American cities will want to copy London. With the exceptions of Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago or Washington, D.C., traffic congestion in this sprawling country is much more a highway phenomenon than a matter for the downtown street grid. Rather, people are talking about London because Livingstone showed that voters might agree to putting a price tag on driving — so long as they get a better ride in return.

Could the same principle apply in the car-crazy United States? Conventional wisdom says no: Americans are accustomed to their freeways being free. But a dramatic shift in thinking is going on among highway planners and the politicians who give them orders. More and more, it seems, American policy makers are coming around to the idea of charging rush-hour commuters."