Once the price gets high enough change will begin, but not before. You can't get people to change just by telling them to do it. They'll respond to price and price alone. It's going to be painful, no doubt about it.
As Dru likes to point out, too bad we canned the monorail. That was one of the dumbest decisions the Seattle voters ever made. If that vote were held now, the results would have been different, but gas prices were still cheap at the time.