Taking On O'Toole

"A recent post at Cato’s @ Liberty blog provides a nice example. In it, he quotes George Will’s description of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as 'Secretary of Behavior Modification' en route to calling LaHood a 'central planner in waiting.' This is one thing I’ve never understood about the libertarian love affair with highways; they seem utterly blind to the fact that it has required and continues to require massive government action to build and maintain the road network. The interstate highway system is perhaps the single largest government intervention in the economy in the 20th century. Reading O’Toole you’d think it was a wonder of the free market.

The source of his blindness on the issue seems to be due to his belief that roads pay for themselves, and that congestion exists only because governments shift gas tax revenue to pay for transit and other smart growth projects. Nothing could be farther from the truth."