Road.alt

ABC World News had a brief report about gas prices on Sunday evening, just as they have a short piece on gas prices just about every evening, in which they reported that fuel for our cars now averages $4.09 a gallon across the nation. That's up 20 cents in the last 30 days, up about $1.40 in the last year.

Nightly News on NBC followed at the top of the hour, and reported that gas, nationwide, now averages $4.10 a gallon.

We hope that the two networks rounded off the fractions differently, and that gas didn't actually go up a penny within 30 minutes, but we're not real confident that it didn't.

Complaints about the price of gasoline are beginning to turn into action; we are driving significantly fewer miles. We are consolidating errands, eliminating discretionary trips, planning vacations that keep us much closer to home.

Cutting back on showing up a the office is a bit more problematic, and many, many residents of Fauquier County climb into cars each weekday morning to make the trek to Prince William, to Fairfax, to the District and the surrounding metropolis. Their commute is one of the worst in the nation.

Never mind about that, say the folks we send to Richmond, the lawmakers who are back in the capital this week trying to work out a transportation funding plan of some description.

Gov. Tim Kaine called the special session and is championing a three-pronged approach based on maintenance of existing roads, development and new roads and new lanes, and, last and least, it seems, developing some alternatives to roads.

The ordering of priorities is upside down.

We can no longer afford our cars. Even if we could afford to fuel them — and gasoline here, most analysts now predict, will reach European levels sooner rather than later, driving up the price of every item we purchase and consume — the planet cannot.

From Richmond, from Washington, even from the Warren Green meeting room, we need a little bit more in the way of vision.

Given all the hype about the special session dealing with transportation, it's a bit outlandish to suggest that what we don't need is more roads and more lanes.

But we don't.

We need high-speed rail, we need a bus system that blankets Northern Virginia with clean, fast, reliable service, we need high-speed Internet connectivity so many more of us can work remotely.

We need a new mindset. More's the shame, that's not on the agenda in Richmond.

Getting a new mindset on the table someday — sooner rather than later — is likely to present a much greater challenge than raising a little tax here, a little fee there to pay for a system that has so clearly outlived its usefulness.