Every day, we in Hawai'i become more aware of the cost of gasoline, our dependence on imported oil and the effect of vehicle emissions on global warming. Yet, every day there seem to be more and more vehicles on our roads.

Every day, our local media talk about deaths and injuries from car accidents, traffic jams and congestion, road rage, drunk and impaired drivers, speeding and reckless drivers, distracted and negligent drivers, the shortcomings of young and elderly drivers, and numerous mass-transit issues.

Sadly, the politics associated with the current O'ahu fixed-rail melodrama has echoes of the classic book "Land and Power in Hawai'i." The difference this time is a focus on a glorified 19th century railroad initially designed to travel a mere 20 miles at what is certain to be the underestimated cost of $3.54 billion (excluding operating costs), and financed through a regressive tax.

Based on 2005 state data for O'ahu, the $3.54 billion cost amounts to $10,866 per household, or $4,954 per registered vehicle, or $2,319,790 per mile of paved road.

Further, it is widely acknowledged that building this railroad will create additional traffic problems for years, when finished will have limited riders and will do little, if anything, to offset the expected vehicle growth and congestion. More important, this expensive railroad does not fix any of our real traffic problems.

What Hawai'i needs are viable alternative visions that systemically, effectively and economically encompass our traffic problems with innovative 21st-century solutions.

The automobile industry is the biggest consumer of computer chips, which are used in everything from brakes and steering to engine operation and diagnostics. Everyone knows about global positioning systems used in vehicle map-navigation systems. Many know that some new cars can do parallel parking without driver assistance and that other cars have collision-avoidance radar systems.

Few know that in 2001 a computer-controlled vehicle was driven from Washington, D.C., to San Diego with almost no human intervention. Few know that in 2006 half of the driverless vehicles in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency race finished the 100-mile course successfully.

In other words, technologically new cars are fast becoming wireless Internet computers on wheels, able to follow our instructions and drive themselves to our desired destinations. Imagine how great it will be to be driven and chauffeured virtually everywhere every day.

Hawai'i can accelerate this development by changing a 20th century mindset that accepts dog-eat-dog traffic and antiquated mass-transit ideas. Such a change starts by recognizing that all the different roads and highways on each island are really a single road network like the Internet, and that each vehicle is a piece of information traveling on this network to its programmed destination.

Such a "network traffic system" benefits everyone because diverse driver skill levels and individual driving errors that cause accidents can be virtually eliminated, which can reduce insurance costs. Like bits of information moving on the Internet, all vehicles can be coordinated to optimize road usage, capacity and traffic flows, thereby reducing traffic congestion, bottlenecks, and energy consumption and pollution. Pedestrians of all ages can be safe again.

This IS our state's future because everything discussed here reflects proven technology. This is not to suggest that there are not technical and practical problems to be worked out. Rather, that such problems are small, manageable and cheap when compared with outrageous cost in blood and treasure paid now and in the future by failing to change our mindset.

As an island state, where cross-border traffic is a non-issue but congestion and imported oil are problems, Hawai'i is the perfect global leader. Auto manufacturers would love it, and the tourist buzz would be priceless. But more important, creating such a network traffic system to solve our traffic problems is a true righteous revolution benefiting everyone and everything in our 'aina. One worth pursuing now, and one that cries out for leadership.

Jan Huston is strategic planner and futurist and teaches at the college level. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.