Four-dollar-a-gallon gas, the latest manifestation of Republican prosperity, struck Santa Fe during the past weekend — and with it, yearnings for ways to use less of the stuff.

Echoing Richard Nixon's 1970s, people are jumping on bicycles, scooters and motorcycles, avoiding this or that trip across town or down the road, and buying gimcracks "money-back guaranteed" to squeeze more miles per gallon.

Politicians are, no surprise, playing politics with fuel taxes, proposing to roll them back or suspend them so folks can suddenly afford a summer vacation. Anybody who believes that will surely send their hard-earned money to mail-order outfits for one of those miracle gadgets, long suppressed by powerful conspirators, allowing their cars to run on — water!

Meanwhile, urban-assault vehicles are looking less and less nifty to all but the most affluent owners. Can they be sold, used, to Venezuela and Arabia?

And it isn't just big-engined SUVs getting glared at by the motoring public. Millions of Americans have made do for years with compact versions of American cars, or vehicles from countries where gas always commands exorbitant prices. Even some of those budget-wise folks are feeling a bit of betrayal from their four-cylinder putt-putts now that the price of gas has doubled so quickly.

Northern New Mexico commuters for several years have had the option of Park and Ride buses between Española, Los Alamos and Santa Fe. The bus line is looking better and better to more and more people in recent months. For information, call 866-551-RIDE, or check the Web at www.nmparkandride.com.

And maybe next year, Rail Runner service from Belén and Albuquerque will reach Santa Fe.

The American West is hardly the place for experiments in mass transportation; ideally, we'd be following models of monorail or magnetic-levitation trains which by now should be serving cities east of the Mississippi.

But they aren't — to the shame of national and state leaders.

So when the passenger trains roll into our town, Gov. Bill Richardson should come off looking like a genius for that high-cost investment of state and federal money.

His choice of 19th-Century trains on 19th-Century tracks still mystifies many of his constituents, and the mess their grade crossings will make with traffic south of downtown is sure to set lots of drivers stewing. But the Rail Runner is arriving en buena hora — as a freeway-traffic reliever, as an alternative to the soaring cost of driving and as a message our nation no longer can ignore:

The days of one-to-a-car commuting and pleasure cruising are about to be put on hold — at least until our country, or foreign competition, can come up with alternative energy sources.

The money for such a project could be raised through the opposite of proposed gas-tax cuts: Raise them — even now, when pump prices are choking us — and devote the revenue to development of hydrogen or other alternative fuels.

Anyone in Congress up to issuing such a proposal?