Story here. More discussion here.

I've been over this topic before:

The government is keen to treat the symptoms of an illness rather than treat the cause of the illness. After all, to fix the problem is to eliminate their purpose of existence. Bureaucracies need problems to continue festering so they can keep fixing them. The biggest case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy ever documented, although largely ignored.

The government will never be able to fix the traffic problem. The traffic and emmissions problem will be solved on the day society refuses to waste their valuable time sitting in traffic, and not a second sooner.

Instead of reducing liberty and privacy, increasing bureaucracy, wasting money, and ultimately solving nothing, how about instead of attacking the unsolvable problems of traffic congestion and pollution we attack the root cause?

The vast majority of people are on the roadways during business hours, especially during the commute. Compulsory driving, if you will. How come we can't have public policy to encourage the large-scale use of telephony technology to allow for more workers to telecommute, thus reducing the number of those who are required to commute?

Why can't large corporations be enticed to disperse their workforce by opening office hubs around a city instead of a single concentration in dense urban areas? Dense urban office concentrations are an old model from a time when many people utilized mass transportation and a single destination was convenient. Its time however has passed.

Why isn't the public encouraged more to shop and purchase as many goods and services on-line as possible?

How come the solution to a problem always has to be an inconvenience or cost to the public and must not impose undue burdens on business or government?

Reducing by half the number of people who must commute more than 20 miles is achievable over the next decade and would probably do more to solve more social problems than almost anything I can think of the government has ever implemented. Of course, that is probably exactly what rules out such a solution.

When people talk of the massive changes coming due to technology and globalization, shifts in when and why people travel and how they purchase goods and services will ultimately be what causes the monumental changes in our culture and societies that fulfill these predictions.

Yes, because they would have to re-tool their operations, the big corporations stand to suffer in the short-term as a result of such policies, especially those who resist change. But with more free time and less expenses associated with one's job, the individual would be the ultimate winner.

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