Not everyone can afford a home close to where they work. If you're unfortunate enough to live in the LA area, a person making $30-50K a year cannot afford a million dollar home. Getting people to live closer can help, but its not always in the cards for a lot of people. Most people would rather live closer to work, but if it comes down to having a decent home and suffering with traffic and high gas costs people will make that decision in favor of the home. Also, financially it makes no sense to pay 2-3 times as much on a house to save a hundred bucks a month on gas.

It takes time for changes on large purchase price items, durable goods, like cars to work their way through the markets. If you go out and buy a new steam washer and high efficiency dryer for $2500 you can save yourself maybe $15 a month on electricity. Are you going to make that purchase immediately or wait until your current washer wears out? Its the same with cars. People are buying fewer large vehicles. If people were still buying large vehicles then Detroit would not be in trouble. It will take 4 or 5 years to see a significant change in the number of large vehicles on the road.