Traffic congestion plagues urban cities today as more and more people prefer and rely on
private motor vehicles. Perhaps, what may be needed are policies that encourage commuters to leave
their automobiles at home and use instead the public transport system. This paper explores one such
policy, specifically whether an expansion in bus routing will significantly reduce travel time to work
for commuters. Using data from 204 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States, the results
show that for an increase of 1 bus line per 100 km2
, average work commute time decreases by 4.47
minutes for drivers and 0.04 minutes for bus riders. Hence, the empirical evidence supports the
hypothesis. The second part of this paper asks whether there is an optimal congestion tax that can be
placed on drivers to close the divergence between private and social marginal costs of vehicle trips. It
is this inability to reconcile these trip costs which causes congestion. Through computational work,
the paper finds that the optimal congestion tax for the United States is equivalent to $1.30 per driver
per day