The U.S. House today will take up its big bill reauthorizing the nation's transportation programs, and word from the White House is that George W. Bush is just itching to make this his very first presidential veto. No, it doesn't have much to do with Bush's philosophy of transportation -- such as it is -- but the bill offers a rare chance for the president to simultaneously posture against the runaway federal spending that has accompanied his and his party's iron control of Washington, and thunder against any talk of a gas tax increase (forgetting that his alleged role model, Ronald Reagan, signed into law the largest gas tax increase in U.S. history, in the middle of a recession).

But there's more at stake in the transportation bill than giving Bush an opportunity to placate conservatives unhappy with the rapidly deteriorating fiscal condition of the country. We have a rapidly deteriorating surface transportation system as well.

Traffic congestion has reached crisis proportions in many of the nation's metropolitan areas. As drivers sit in traffic, they are losing patience and demanding solutions.

In 2000, commuters spent an average of 25.5 minutes to get to work, more than two and a half minutes longer than in 1990, and more than triple the 40-second rise of the 1980s. While this may not sound like a lot, the increase alone adds up to an additional 10 hours a year stuck in traffic. The problem is even worse in large and mid-sized metropolitan areas where, according to Texas A&M's Texas Transportation Institute, the average commute time during rush hour is almost 40 percent longer than during non-rush periods. Drivers waste an average of 62 hours per year stuck in traffic, costing our economy over $67 billion per year, and eroding our living standards.

But we're not doing much to deal with this problem. Between 1987 and 1998, while vehicle miles traveled on freeways or principal arterial roads in urban areas increased 42 percent, lane miles increased just 9 percent. And despite their large price tags, the House and Senate highways bills won't even begin to address the growing gap. Indeed, reducing traffic congestion isn't even a significant focus in the current debate.

But there is one source of relief that's on the table in Congress right now: relaxing the rules that now virtually prohibit states from using federal funds to build toll lanes and toll roads to reduce the really terrible traffic bottlenecks.

Expansion of toll systems, including high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, "value" express lanes, and truck-only lanes could not only reduce congestion, but could also provide an important source of revenue to pay for new construction. Other countries, from Canada to The Netherlands to Singapore, are far ahead in the intelligent deployment of such systems. Moreover, new technologies allow tolls to be collected "on the fly" by electronically debiting drivers' pre-paid accounts, making the contributions of toll lanes and roads to faster traffic that much more significant.

The bipartisan Senate highway bill moves in the right direction by relaxing the rules against state experimentation with toll roads and lanes. In the House, freestanding legislation on this subject has been offered by House New Democrat Coalition co-chair Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, and Republican Rep. Mark Kennedy of Minnesota.

But the main House highway bill continues the blind opposition to state flexibility on tolls. Some Democrats reflexively oppose even toll lanes accompanying free lanes in high congestion areas, arguing that they will create a two-tier highway system based on ability to pay. They often forget that everybody benefits from reducing congestion in the "free" lanes, and that dollars collected from toll lanes can be (and in some places, already have been) used for public transportation and carpool subsidies, as well as "free" lane construction.

And despite the GOP's increasingly hollow federalist rhetoric, some Republican committee barons in the House oppose relaxing the rules against tolls because they don't want to give states more control of "their" (i.e., Congress's) highway programs.

Whatever happens with the surface transportation bill as a whole, we urge Members of Congress to keep the daily agony of commuters in mind and do something tangible to give them relief. If they need a reminder of the problem, they need travel no further than, say, the I-95 corridor south of Washington, where Friday travel is an all-day nightmare, and where you can see rush-hour conditions on Sunday nights.

Give the states a break and let them experiment with tolls. Help get America -- its economy, and its people -- moving again.