Put a conservative in the driver's seat, and he can sound like a utopian Marxist. If you ask him about food, housing, or health care, he'll explain how buying it and selling it in the marketplace creates the best of all possible worlds. But his car has an inalienable right to free parking and open roads. "To each automobile according to its needs" is a truth so self-evident that it need not be uttered.

As a right-wing economist might have warned if she had not specialized in transportation, what is distributed without charge has been consumed to excess. Lavish federal and state subsidies for highway building have stimulated suburbs to spread ever farther, and driving has ballooned. The mileage that the average American drives in a year has risen steadily, growing 11% in the nine years from 1993 to 2002. Roads fill up with cars and trucks faster than new ones can be built. Major metropolitan areas suffer ever-more-severe highway congestion, with traffic in suburbs ofte...

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