End rush hour traffic jams.

• Author: Glastris, Paul

During the Cold War, we Americans were forever pointing to television images of Soviet shoppers standing in interminable lines as a testament to the superiority of capitalism, which allocates goods and services through pricing rather than long waits. Then we would smugly jump into our cars, drive onto highways, and sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Marxists might call this an "internal contradiction." Give us slow service at Denny's and we demand to see the manager. Stick us with traffic jams and we're sheep.

Frustrated sheep, to be sure, and getting more frustrated every year. From 1975 to 1987, the share of interstate highways in metropolitan areas that were congested during rush hours rose from 42 percent to 63 percent, according to a study by Clifford Winston and his colleagues at the Brookings Institution. The reason is simple: More people are driving more cars longer distances. While the U.S. population grew only 15.9 percent from 1975 to 1989, the total number of cars on the road soared almost 50 percent, thanks largely to suburbanization and the rise of two-earner families. Meanwhile, the length of the average commute grew by 27 percent.

The result is that we are spending an ever-greater portion of our ever-shrinking leisure time idling in traffic. Not that we mind commuting per se. Indeed, those minutes of privacy between work and home when we can decompress, alone with our thoughts and CDs, are some of the great if unadmitted pleasures of modern life. The problem is the congestion, which turns delightful 20 minute trips over swiftmoving streets into punishing 50 minute, bumper-to-bumper ordeals. This has been good for talk radio hosts and the car phone industry. It's been awful for our nerves and terrible for the economy. A study by the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that traffic congestion costs Americans $43.2 billion annually in lost time, as measured in average wages.

Fortunately, there is a fairly straightforward way to reduce or even eliminate clogged traffic: Make drivers pay tolls during rush hours. After all, space on roads during peak periods is a valuable commodity. By giving it away for free, the government naturally creates the same chaos that would result if your favorite restaurant started handing out free meals.

The concept of using tolls to reduce traffic congestion (as opposed to financing highway construction, which is what traditional toll roads do) is hardly new. For decades the idea has been...