Traffic Congestion Demonstration by Doug McDonald, Secretary of Washington DOT

This is a very good explanation of traffic congestion and possible solutions.
This ties very well into agent-based modeing of traffic flow. The solutions are easy.
The ultimate solution is to elimnate automobile trips entirely. This is by designing communities where people can walk or bicycle to their destinations. For those trips that are too length, public transport can accomodate the great majority.

The issue of controlling traffic demand by appying tolls, as discused in this video, is a well researched and documented method to control the time of occurance of trip making. The best known case is cordon tolling by time of day in Central London. The unfortunate thing is that our elected officials are reluctant to pursue such alternatives, as mentioned by Secretary McDonald. I think that most citizens do not understand that they elected their represetatives and must take responsibilty if the politicians are not bringing innovative ideas for consideration to their legislative body. Citizens must take it upon themselves to bring up the issues and possibe solutions for them. Most citizens have the ability to research and develop alternatives on their own. If you wait to be empowered by the politicians, you will have a long wait. But, citizens can empower themselves and bring about change. Unfortunately, many politicians do not want direct citizen involvement in decision-making, because that would limit their abiity to havd out favors to special interest groups and wealthy individuals that helped them to get elected.