When California charged motorists ten cents more a gallon for cleaner gas, the complaints were few. If that ten cents went to mass transit, it would do more good. "The principle is simple: an increase in the gas tax is not an increase in taxes but in the fee for using the highways," writes John E. Hirten, executive director of RIDES for Bay Area commuters in San Francisco, put it aptly. "Freeways are not free."


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. 346-47