For those of us who travel on the Southern California freeways, one has to wonder what the future will bring, considering the region's population is expected to increase by 6 million people over the next two decades.

I always admired Temecula Councilman Sam Pratt for being a visionary, and constantly thinking of mass transportation -- but what many don't know is Councilman Ron Roberts has been actively dealing with this problem for the last nine years.

He's currently president of the Southern California Association of Governments, which is the largest regional planning agency in the nation, having the responsibility for long-range planning of housing, transportation of goods and people, economic, environmental and other quality-of-life issues. This involves six counties and 17 million people. Their 20-year transportation plan takes into account the massive increase in population and conforms with federal standards, ensuring federal funding for the region's transportation needs.

Three objectives are particularly interesting.

The first is a dedicated truck way. The Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors are two of the largest ports in the world. Goods are taken from ships by trucks and containers throughout the nation, but all of these trucks have to first travel through Southern California to get to their destination, helping to clog our freeways and wasting time and money by being stuck in traffic.

Daily truck trips are forecast to increase 70 percent in the next two decades. What is planned is a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors to get trucks off the freeways, basically a toll road for trucks only, and the trucking industry has embraced this idea.

The second component deals with the fact that as the population increases, so will the movement of goods through our region. Rail trips are expected to increase by 150 percent. The Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile rail cargo expressway linking the San Pedro Bay ports to the downtown L.A. rail yards. It was opened in 2002 and is a shining example of what happens when many jurisdictions cooperate. Unlike traditional rail lines, there are no traffic crossings. What is planned is an underground extension heading east to the rail yards in San Bernardino.

Mass transportation, known as maglev because the propulsion will be by magnetic levitation, is probably the most exciting of these objectives. It will be pollution- and noise-free. Maglev is a monorail, similar to that at Disneyland, which will move people at 200 mph. The first segment is planned to connect West L.A. (Union Station) to Ontario Airport, and later segments will connect LAX to other regional airports. LAX is already at capacity; the plan is for international passengers to arrive at LAX, then connect to regional flights via Ontario, Orange County and Palmdale. A connection between Union Station and Orange County is also in the planning stages. The system, as planned, could accommodate 500,000 passengers a day. A Maglev system currently is in place in Shanghai, China.

The Southern California Association of Governments has already achieved some major accomplishments, such as the Alameda Corridor idea, conception of the Metrolink system, and water quality studies that led to the creation of Heal the Bay.

These developments are exciting. Hopefully one day a maglev system will parallel Interstate 15, and perhaps a tunnel from Lake Elsinore to Orange County might also be built. Who knows, but thanks to SCAG, we're off to a good start.

Greg Scharf of Temecula is a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: Gscharf7@cs.com.