It seems that transportation planners everywhere are looking for ways of reducing vehicle miles of travel (VMT) by automobile, even as citizens seem determined to drive more. The trend may be especially evident here in California where everyone seems to believe that use of cars is excessive, having conspired to foul the air, congest the highways, provoke traffic accidents, and erode the quality of people's lives. In response, a lot of creative remedies have been invented - schemes to entice travelers into carpools and public transit and schemes to induce them to stay home. 

ACCESS has been reporting on several of these, including the economists' pet formula for reducing VMT by pricing travel at closer to its true cost. Congestion pricing and parking pricing have been gaining considerable attention of late. So have proposals for raising gas taxes to levels that Europeans find tolerable. So have proposals for telecommuting. So have proposals for inter- and intra-metropolitan rail lines.

Despite huge reductions of noxious emissions from factories and cars, Southern California's air is still terrible. It's so bad that the state is requiring that two percent of new cars sold in 1998 be zero polluters and ten percent by 2003. Many researchers here have become preoccupied with teh foul air, and so are searching for ways of making cars less obnoxious and hence better servants.