solutions need to look like “40% fewer cars on the road” sorts of things if we want to actually accomplish anything at all.

I think the worst part with this is that this can be achieved overnight be mandating remote work for office workers. We already know exactly what the impacts of remote work are because the entire white collar workforce went remote 5 years ago. Let's do that ASAP because the only people who don't benefit from remote work are commercial real estate investors

My imagined legislation would impose a new commute tax on businesses with office workers working in office. This tax would be proportional to the number of office workers, and would be introduced alongside a new tax incentive for remote office workers. If the office worker is permitted to work remotely 4 workdays a week the tax break effectively zeros out the commute tax cost for that worker. 3 days a week reduces the commute tax break by 3/4 for that worker, etc. Force shitty bosses to pay for their anti-worker RTO plans. The tax income would be directly applied to road and public transit infrastructure since the significantly reduced rush hour traffic would change traffic patterns and we all know how road maintenance has been struggling for funding on recent decades