TABLE OF CONTENTS This section consists of a series of reviews of various programs at different levels of economic/social/functional/institutional/political feasibility that could be adopted by communities to reform the current state of affairs of almost unbridled and somewhat irrational use of the automobile. In effect, it is a menu from which choices can be made. Each program has some features that would change prevailing habits and upset some cohort of the population. Yet, most of them can be found in one place or another (Europe, mostly), and, as the situation tightens up more in North America, some may have to become mandatory.
The fundamental fact of automobile use in the United States is an average vehicle occupancy rate of 1.6 persons (1.1 for work trips, 2.1 for social-recreational). [54] Since almost all cars have five or more seats, this means that two-thirds of the actual operating transportation supply remains empty. Large vehicles consume space and resources carrying very little. To put it another way, each year 1.4 trillion household vehicle-miles are generated nationally, resulting in at least 7 trillion [55] seat-miles, of which only one-third is actually used. These are numbers beyond the comprehension of anybody except federal budget experts, but, since the average vehicle trip is 9 miles long and the total population is 281 million, each U.S. resident could take 2000 trips per year (or 6 each day) without affecting the existing loads on the roadways at all...
