THE PRICE OF OIL is, it seems, of great concern in these United States. People regularly travel, not just from one part of a city to another part, but to a different city. The cost of transportation is an important item.

Thus we hear all sorts of proposals to avoid spending so much every day. Hybrid vehicles have large batteries which can accelerate the vehicle from a standstill. Instead of gasoline, we might use ethanol or even hydrogen for fuel.

However, these solutions are not obviously useful. The hybrid vehicle is both heavier and more expensive. Ethanol does not occur naturally: one has to grow corn, harvest it, and convert it into ethanol, all of which steps consume energy. Hydrogen is desperately unsuited to drive a vehicle: it occupies an enormous volume for a given amount of energy, and is shockingly dangerous - it burns with an invisible flame which cannot be extinguished with water. All these new departures would demand investment of capital to provide new and different vehicles and the infra-structure for fuel distribution - whereas you can count on finding gasoline anywhere and at almost any time.

Why not save gas, and time, by improving the highways? Why not remove the STOP signs and substitute YIELD signs? Why not make the traffic signals mean go-on-green, instead of stop-on-red - and show yellow in all directions at once - so that the vehicles waste less time idling? Why not make sure that the traffic can spread itself out over the several traffic lanes, instead of some lanes being stalled when others are running fast?

Why do we not? The answer is obvious: because motor vehicle fuel is taxed, both U. S. and State governments are determined to burn as much as they possibly can. Hence you encounter wasteful emissions limits that are the same in all States, or at least in all counties, instead of being imposed only in places where pollution has actually been observed.

But how can highways be built, or kept in repair, without the fuel tax? By the classical method of charging what the traffic will bear! The fuel tax does nothing to match supply and demand: neither do vehicle registration fees. But supply and demand could be matched. First, easy, obvious step: vary the tolls from hour to hour, so that it never happens that vehicles are stacked up, waiting for the opportunity to get to the toll booth. (Today, you may find that at quiet times only the automatic, electronic E-Z Pass system is working - the management acts to exaggerate the delays at the peak hours of the traffic!) Second, sell license plates that give access to the highways of only one county, or one State: then one would not see local traffic clogging the State or Interstate highways. No-one would be prevented from using hir vehicle as se does now - but se would find it expensive to use highways that were in heavy demand.

Putting a stop to the tax on motor vehicle fuel would have a dramatic effect. It would allow the vehicle operators to bid the fuel oil away from the house-holders, who could convert to natural gas or liquefied gas with no particular trouble.

Is there any defense for a tax on vehicle fuel? At present, the problem of pollution is in the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. is a part of the U.S. government, and thus it is required and expected to act in, and for, all of the States equally. However, its faith in equality extends so far that it believes that all vehicles burn equal amounts of fuel; this seems implausible - one would have expected that heavy, expensive trucks would have to run more hours in the day to earn their keep than do small, mass-produced cars. Suppose, then, that the problem of pollution were left to the States. Then no doubt some of them would adopt misguided policies: one of the States, despite extending from below sea level to over 14,000 ft., and from the latitude of Louisiana to that of Michigan, does indeed have the same exhaust emission limits in every county. But some States, we may be sure, would adopt plausible policies: perhaps, to charge higher fuel taxes to vehicles with high-emission engines, and vice versa for low­­-emission ones. Presumably, people would gradually migrate away from States where they had little choice of vehicles to those where they had a wide choice.

And allow me to offer an observation. Two years ago, the price of a barrel of oil touched $70 ­- one-sixth of an ounce of gold. Today, one-sixth of an ounce of gold - $100 - would buy more oil than one barrel. It is the Federal Reserve Bank, not the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is driving up the price of oil. If you don't like it, you can address your grievances to people who live in this country and speak English.