There are all sorts of relatively simple ways to remedy a problem such as the one described here. Congestion taxes or commuter tolls, similar to what London has implemented, is one approach. Tax credits for businesses that offer carpools to their employees is another, though some additional costs to government are accrued to monitor and/or enforce such policies.
As an alternative, our wise leaders in Washington could take the most direct approach and simply raise the federal fuel tax. Yes, it's highly regressive, but as this graph suggests, it's perhaps the most powerful incentive---or, more properly, disincentive---to get individual drivers out of their cars and into multi-passenger carpools, vanpools, buses, etc. Plus, it would provide billions of additional dollars in the short term for government to spend on things like road maintenance and light-rail expansion, and the construction of bike lanes and green lanes and other socially beneficial stuff. Too bad we are now ruled by people who are convinced that raising taxes on anyone for any reason is a form of Marxist tyranny that's worse than the Holocaust. It didn't always used to be that way.
Granted, raising taxes on fuel will exert an upward pressure on the costs of goods and services, which may not seem wise in a recession, but those added costs can be ameliorated somewhat by gains in GDP that ensue when people spend more time in their workplace doing something productive instead of sitting on the Interstate for a hour and half each day doing nothing except belching billions of pounds of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. There are also secondary cost savings to be taken into account, e.g., fewer cars on the road each day equals reduced wear and tear on infrastructure and hence lower maintenance costs. It's all a matter of trade-offs.
---Vitelius
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