  A new optical reddening model for the Solar neighborhood is presented. The
model makes use of the large-scale properties of the dust layer in the Galaxy,
and of the observed clumpiness in its distribution, and it is used to compute
starcounts in the plane of the Galaxy, which are compared to the observed
counts from the Guide Star Catalogue (GSC) for a few representative regions
having a range of reddening values. These comparisons provide a good test case
in a wide variety of conditions with regards to both the amount and
distribution of the reddening material along the line-of-sight.
  This is the first systematic study of low-Galactic latitude starcounts from
the perspective of a Galactic structure and reddening model, and it is
demonstrated that the model can be used to obtain meaningful starcount
estimates in the plane of the Milky-Way.
  Our best-fit model to three (out of six) selected regions yields a distance
of the Sun from the symmetry plane of the Galaxy of Z_Sun=27 +/- 3 (3 sigma)
pc, while the disk's scale-length is found to be H_Disk= 6 +/- 2 (3 sigma) kpc.
While the derived value for Z_Sun is quite sensitive to the adopted
scale-height of disk stars, no big dependency of H_Disk on this parameter is
found.
  The accuracy of the reddening and starcounts model opens the possibility of
using it to estimate and compare observations of diffuse starlight to constrain
the major structural parameters of the Galaxy, and to compute the distance
distribution of stars self-consistently with the starcounts, in order to derive
corrections to absolute parallax.
