By paying a truthful $5 a gallon, plus three to five times what the United States pays in visible car-based fees, the Japanese and Europeans have an awareness of costs. That consciousness makes them decrease their driving and curbs cars in cities. It encourages a more compact land use policy and hence promotes four to eight times as much public transport. The reverse obviously holds: Americans pay less for gas and little for tolls and user fees – and this freewheeling policy encourages them to use almost five times as much gas per capita as residents of European cities and ten times as much as those in typical Asian ones; to drive infinitely more, undercut mass transit, build more roads, buy more costly cars, pay more in personal and social fees, and spend more for maintenance.


Jane Holtz Kay, an author, journalist and architecture critic for The Nation, has written widely on the built and natural environment. Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back. New York: Crown, 1997. p. 129