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Randal O'Toole Wants to Abolish the DOT

Posted by: Tim Halbur

20 September 2009 - 1:00pm

Barring that, he has some eight proposals for the transportation reauthorization bill, including eliminating long-range transportation planning and clean air mandates.

O'Toole writes, "Urban mass transit is the most disappointing performer and least-productive part of the nation’s transportation system. Since 1964, when Congress first passed the Urban Mass Transportation Act, transit costs have risen far faster than either revenues or ridership. This signals a tremendous decline in productivity.

"It's uncommon to find such a rapid productivity decline in any industry," wrote University of California economist Charles Lave in 1994. "If transit productivity had merely remained constant since 1964," Lave wrote, "total operating costs would be more than 40 percent lower" in 1985, the last year for which he had data. By 2006, after adjusting for inflation, operating costs per trip were 2.3 times as much as they were in 1964, while average fares had fallen by 24 percent from 1964.43 All of this additional cost came out of taxpayers' pockets."

Full Story: Getting What You Paid For -- Paying For What You Get: Proposals for the Next Transportation Reauthorization
Source: The Cato Institute, September 18, 2009
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Submitted by cvanempel on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 10:47.

Noise and nonsense from O'Toole.

Some years back I had an opportunity to attend the Cato Institute. I was younger and wasn't aware of organizations such as Cato that masquerade as institutes of learning, but are actually places of indoctrinization into a particular political perspective. Left or right, I don't care, these places should be called what they are: propaganda machines.

I'm glad I didn't waste my time, money, and energy on the place and achieved an advanced degree at an actual university where students are required to develop their own ideas.

O'Toole of Special Interests?

Submitted by Esullivan on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 11:39.

Methinks Randal would dissolve like dew in the midday sun were anyone to challenge him with the logical extension of his arguments: FIRST, end all subsidies, tax breaks and protections to the Oil and Automotive industries, (ban slap suits and make corporate leaders criminally liable for loss of life and environmental damage); THEN proceed to the minuscule-by-comparison costs and conduct of public transit.

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