That's true to a certain extent: many of the costs are indeed incurred by people other than the driver. By no means all of the costs, though. I'm sitting in Sta

That's true to a certain extent: many of the costs are indeed incurred by people other than the driver. By no means all of the costs, though. I'm sitting in Starbucks in central London right now (heading to the London Clojure Dojo in a few minutes :-). I got here by train and on the tube and I wouldn't dream of driving here. Looking out of the window, most of the vehicles that I see are buses and taxis, with very few private cars in evidence. It looks like a lot of people agree with me and wouldn't dream of driving here. In my experience, many of the world's big cities have already driven private cars away (at least from the centre) and replaced them with an efficient public transportation system. Cities such as New York to Melbourne to Hong Kong are similar. The reason is that the driver really does pay a cost, being stuck in a traffic jam. If the public transportation system is good enough then it's an easy choice not to drive. Of course, London already changes motorists to drive in the centre of the city so maybe that tips the balance even further away from car drivers.