Breaking free | csmonitor.com

The best thing the government could do to encourage development of alternate modes of transportation would be to increase the gas tax. Right now the current gas tax does not even cover the cost of building and maintaining roads. A tax increase would force the market to find more efficient ways to travel, which is far better than letting Congress try and guess what the future will be like through legislative grants. To keep the shock to the economy to a minimum the tax could be phased in over time and accompanied by a comparable across the board income tax cut.