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Living in a city where bringing down carbon emissions from motor vehicles has been a goal, I have seen a few ways this has been done. All these efforts to reduce carbon emissions are results of government intervention. None are results of the market mechanisms, and the reason is obviously that the market created the problem.

One of the measures used here has been to make it more expensive to drive, especially making the inefficient cars far more expensive than the efficient. Another is to make public transportation more available and keeping the prices low, as well as giving favorable alternatives to cars polluting less. A third alternative is to make it harder for people to drive.

The first two alternatives - making it more expensive to drive and making public transportation more available - are obvious alternatives. The first could be done by adding taxes for driving in the city at specific times, creating zones where you have to pay to drive or by increasing general taxes every car owner has to pay. These costs could of course also be differentiated, and lower taxes could (or perhaps should?) be given to those who drive less polluting cars. Another alternative is of course increasing gasoline taxes, which would make it more expensive to drive a less efficient car.

Some of these taxes could be directed to public transportation, with the intention of keeping the prices for using public transportation lower than they would normally be. This would give citizens incentives for choosing this service. What appears to be most important, however, is the availability of such services. If public transportation passes often, it also increases the number of people using the service. Obviously such transportation must also be reliable.

Making it harder for people to drive is an alternative I've seen that is probably working far better than one might expect. While people often argue that building more lanes (or double-decking roadways) would reduce traffic problems, and increase the average speeds, this has been proven to be untrue. A study by Southern California Association of Governments showed that building roads would have little more than a cosmetic effect on the traffic problems in Los Angeles. A similar study in Britain showed that building more roads would make people drive a lot more, and thus the problem would only be postponed. In addition, increased traffic would also increase the carbon emissions.

If it is true that an increase in the number of lanes and roads would increase traffic, a decrease in the number of lanes and roads should decrease traffic. I believe I have seen this happen in a street closeby, and although my observations hardly constitutes a study, I believe it has positive effects for everyone but those who used to drive there. Another alternative is to make streets one way only or giving preferable alternatives to public transportation - often by giving them separate lanes - which has been very successful in making people in the suburbs use public transportation here.

Obviously one thing that could be tried is to ban driving on specific dates. I believe it has been tried, although it definitely must be annoying for people. It might also increase traffic other days, which would reduce the impact of this ban.

Learn more about this author, J. Hoff.
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