As usual, our government is being far more complex and tricky than is
neccessary or sufficient to achieve the desired goals.

If the goal is to dramatically reduce petroleum consumption, simply tax
the heck out of it. This is working with cigarettes.

CAFE, hybrid tax-credits, special car-pool lane privledges and all the
rest are the kinds on answers lawyers, accountants and politicians love
..... but they are not the kind of answers which get the job done best.

Keep It Simple, Stupid ... raise the gasoline and diesel taxes by
$.25/quarter over a three year period of time to give people time to
adapt. At the end of that time you would have $3.00/gallon of
additional tax revenue to spend on next generation transportation
infrastructure and the users would change their behavior accordingly.

Sadly, simple, effective solutions rarely get implemented!

John