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ing people to live in high densities will not lead them to

give up their cars.  Indeed, throughout the nation high

density is always accompanied by increased congestion.  But

that fact does not make New Urbanism any less popular among

people who wish they could "uninvent" the automobile.

In fact, New Urbanists view increases in congestion as

a good because they think of mobility as a vice.  When asked

what he would do to change suburbs, one New Urban planner

told Washington Post writer Joel Garreau that he "would

increase dramatically the real residential population. . . .

I'd raise the gasoline tax by 300 percent.  I'd raise the

price of automobiles enormously. . . . I'd limit movement

completely. . . . And then I would put enormous costs on

parking."  In short, comments Garreau, that planner would

"force Americans to live in a world that few now seem to

value."7

Overview of ISTEA

Congress passed ISTEA in 1991 to develop

a National Intermodal Transportation System that

is economically efficient and environmentally

sound, provides the foundation for the Nation to

compete in the global economy, and will move peo-

ple and goods in an energy efficient manner.8

Behind those lofty goals was a more basic political

motivation: money--up to $155 billion over six years.  The

so-called federal highway trust fund piles up tens of bil-

lions of dollars in revenues each year, mainly from the 18.4

cent per gallon federal gasoline tax.  The federal gas tax

was originally instituted to pay for the interstate system,

but by 1991 that system was nearly complete.  As a result,

Congress was not spending all the receipts on highways.

Major funding has been provided for alternatives to auto and

highway transportation.

Advocates of mass transit found their justification for

spending gasoline taxes on nonhighway projects in the prob-

lem of air pollution.  Although autos emit less pollutants

now than in the past and air in American cities thus is

cleaner, a few cities--notably Los Angeles, San Francisco,

and some on the east coast--still fail to meet rising Envi-

ronmental Protection Agency pollution standards.  An impor-

tant thrust of ISTEA is to use clean air as a wedge to

divert more and more gasoline taxes from highways to tran-

sit.