“Randal O’Toole is a hypocrite and a liar. There may be good arguments against HSR [high-speed rail], but his are not among them. Anyone who references O’Toole cannot be taken seriously.”
-??? BeyondDC
Is it my imagination, or do I detect a subtle anti-O’Toole undercurrent in this reader response to a past post of mine?
Few figures polarize the planning profession like Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. As far as I know, O’Toole has never attempted to steal Christmas and was nowhere near the grassy knoll, but nevertheless if you’re going to bring up his name at a gathering of transportation planners you’d better have a defibrillator handy. In part, the outrage O’Toole provokes is due to his sometimes colorful mode of self-expression, but basically it comes from the fact that he is one of a handful of planners (or, as he calls them, “antiplanners”) who take issue with the prevailing orthodoxy in the field.
For example, O’Toole is in favor of making it easier to drive, while many (probably most) transportation planners feel that the auto is the enemy. O’Toole opposes transit agencies, and the planners who work for them, on the grounds that they are self-serving monopolies which stifle innovation and competition. He much prefers humble bus transit to flashier (and more expensive) rail and decries land use solutions to transportation problems, an article of faith for most planners, on the grounds that an intense densification of American cities would be impractical, unpopular, economically ruinous, and probably ineffective at fixing traffic problems even if implemented.
I bring up O’Toole because I just read his book Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It. I’ll discuss some of his more controversial positions another time, but I’ll also add that there is much in the book that I think we can all agree is sensible: for example, he is a big driverless car supporter, and, as I’ve been writing, the enormous potential benefits of robocars should be obvious enough that support for them should cross ideological lines.
I thought the most interesting part of the book covered HSR and not just because, like O’Toole, this policy gets my spider-sense tingling. What really fascinated me was this, coming from perhaps America’s most outspoken and vehement rail detractor:
As it happens, I have been a rail fan at least since I was five years old and rode the Western Star from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Portland, Oregon. Many people love trains, but I’ve carried my obsession with passenger trains far beyond most. I helped restore the nation’s second-most-powerful operating steam locomotive and once owned five full-sized passenger cars to run with that locomotive. I have taken dozens of coast-to-coast trips on American and Canadian passenger trains. Trains are always my preferred method of travel when I’m in other countries. My home and office are decorated with old rail memorabilia, including posters, china, paperweights, linens, and blankets. Yes, I also have a model railroad.
This passage struck a chord with me because, writ small, I’m the same way. As I’ve written, my addiction to the computer game Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon was a major reason I got into the transportation planning field. Not only did I spend countless hours building elaborate rail networks, but high speeds were my particular obsession: I scoured the nation from San Antonio to Seattle for the flattest stretches of land, which I then festooned with thousand mile straight-aways.
So why would rail lovers at home be rail detractors at work? O’Toole’s reasoning: “I don’t expect taxpayers to subsidize these preferences any more than if I liked hot-air balloons or midget submarines.” Amusingly enough (or ominously enough, I can’t decide which), I’ve been using the balloon bon mot myself for years. (I hadn’t thought of tossing in the submarine.)
Is supporting policies that go completely counter to one’s own personal preferences to be admired or abhorred? Some might find it eccentric, and it certainly is a minority trait. My experience has been that most people in this world assume that others share their likes, and if they don’t, they will do so with just a little persuasion. In some cases this may be true. But regardless, this is certainly a convenient outlook because it means there is a happy coincidence: the best path to doing selfless good for others just happens to be promoting public policies that cater to one’s own self-interest.
I personally don’t think I’m smart enough to know what other people want without asking them, or at least seeing how their preferences play out in their behavior; if people are happy jeopardizing their immortal souls by rooting for USC football, I can’t really see how it’s my duty or even right to interfere. I also feel a bit queasy asking – indeed, forcing – others to pay for a transportation system that I don’t think will benefit them (in the net) just because I think trains are cool.
In fairness, HSR advocates would maintain that their support of the policy has nothing to do with self-interest or computer game proficiency and everything to do with potential benefits – environmental, economic, aesthetic, and even security – they perceive will be had from the proposed system. More on these in the future.
But for me, there are simply too many question marks swirling around HSR to sign on to spending tens (hundreds?) of billions on it at a time of worrying budget deficits. With the (minimum of) $1200 per Californian we would otherwise spend on the construction costs of the California segment alone, we could indulge the railroad jones of our citizens by buying each and every one of them a pretty tricked out model train set — with plenty left over for the UCLA football season tickets they should be required by law to purchase.
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So are you going to get into a disucssion to figure out how much we subsidse the auto and airline industry when comparing it to passerenger rail? I would be interested in that, but usually from this bog you get a pretty one sided analysis – that will most likely omit the dismantling of public transportation systems pushed on us by GM… or the billions we spend on airports and interstate highways not to mention our land use policies
It sems that one of the most obvious faults of all transportation planners is to neglect the HUGE subsidies that are given to automobile transportation. The Cost-benefit analysis that is appropriate is not whether subsidizing rail, or balloons, or submarines is a a good way to invest money as a a stand-alone option. Rather, it is to consider the merits of other transport mode subsidies vis-a-vis subsidizing automobile transportation.
“It sems that one of the most obvious faults of all transportation planners is to neglect the HUGE subsidies that are given to automobile transportation. ”
Seems a bit presumptive to me. This might be something I’d have to ask an acquaintance of mine who has been trying to plan for light rail in Florida for years now, but I’m pretty sure comparisons to roads are made. Off hand, I would think cars are simply more plausible for short and precise trips, while rail and others make sense over long distances, or for hauling lots of freight. Transfer times alone would make rail a complete waste for a typical drive to work in a lot of areas.
I might not totally disagree with Mr. O’Toole, but this article hasn’t convinced me.
Robocars? Come on.. I’m in favor of teleportation technology too, but I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to develop it. I can think of so many practical problems with automated driving – technical issues, legal issues, privacy issues – that I wouldn’t even know where to start. It’s hard for me to understand how someone can be on the fence over HSR, but totally in support of robocars.
There’s nothing in this post to make me question the hypothesis that well-planned public transportation drives smart, efficient growth and that unplanned, individual transportation encourages sprawl and inefficiency.
Societies do LOTS of things that can’t really be justified by bean counters. National parks, invading other countries, public monuments, space exploration…for example.
Anyone who argues against projects just because they don’t fit into a cost-benefit analysis is a boring clueless person and a bad lunch date.
But make no half-vast plans…they don’t have the power to inspire…or open pocketbooks.
In a very real sense, airplanes have an enormous cost-benefit ratio. The require very little infrastructure between airports. Want to make it more efficient? Just make bigger airplanes.
But I’d vote for HSR…actually HS maglev. coast to coast.
The approximate cost of constructing a twin-track 10,000 km maglev system including 300 kph trains, tunnels, bridges and stations, between major US cities is about $800 billion (just what the Wall Street Bankers stole).
Average construction cost would be about $50 million per kilometer. About 1200 maglev cars would be needed. The rolling stock would cost only $20 billion.
Actually, like most big mass transit systems, it would not be able to pay its own way, but at least you’d see where your money went….unlike the rat hole of Wall Street.
Luckily I know that O’Toole is well aware of how subsidized roads and auto travel is, and focuses a lot of his advocacy on removing those subsidies.
Brett writes, “My taxes subsidize the train system, but I get no benefits from it.”
Not true. If everyone who rode NJ Transit drove into NYC instead of taking the train, your 45 minute auto trip would become much longer.
It is very difficult to provide an accurate comparison of the “subsidies” given to auto and transit. Consider:
- a transit agency pays for the vehicles and operators, while under auto these costs are paid for by users (and almost never accounted for)
- every person who takes transit subsidizes every person who drives by reducing congestion
- every person who drives is subsidized by society at large, which absorbs the health consequences of increased congestion
- every person who drives is subsidized by the people who pay municipal taxes that pay for snow removal, police services, fire services, ambulance services, and so on
For example, as a resident of Boston, I rarely drive. But an enormous portion of the property taxes my landlord pays goes to paying for police, fire, and ambulance services to respond to highway accidents caused by the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that enter the city every day. I am forced to breathe the exhaust that all of these vehicles emit. My city loses tax money on land owned by the state DOT, land that would otherwise be extremely valuable (transit can move the same number of people using a much smaller ROW).
Does O’Toole consider, for example, that some of the highest rates of breathing illnesses occur in places like the Bronx, which suffers heavy expressway traffic? Does he consider the lost wages and productivity caused by highway accidents, which carnage claims over 100 lives and causes many more injuries every day in the US? I will have to read O’Toole’s book to see, but I doubt it. These analyses usually look only at the cost borne by the government.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why libertarians hate government-funded rail transit so much. Even O’Toole’s precious historic trains were heavily subsidized – lines in the eastern US were given the power of eminent domain in order to procure their ROW; the transcontinental railroads were given massive land grants in the western US, which produced huge agricultural and mineral wealth to support the railroad.
@Brett from NJ
You live in an extremely dense, yet extremely poorly designed state. Your dense state is still nearly impossible to navigate without a car because it was designed for that. That is the reason the train is of little use to you. You also live on one of the few lines that does not have a direct route into the city. Don’t pretend that the train there is garbage simply because it doesn’t fit in with your life.
The main purpose of the train is to move commuters in and out of NYC. It is very effective at doing that, especially along the direct lines. There are three small and congested car entrances to Manhattan from NY. NJTransit and PATH bring thousands of people in and out of the city each day. Can you imagine the gridlock if those people had to drive? I use the train frequently to get to school in New Brunswick. I could potentially get there faster by car, but the variability is outrageous as it could take 50 min, or it could take 2.5 hours, routinely. The fact that more people take the car than the train due to poor live/work/built environment choices does nothing to make me feel better about the fact that Corzine cut NJTransit (used by most of the state’s low-income population) by 25%, but did not touch highway funding, nor the gas tax, which is one of the lowest in the country. My taxes are subsidizing your car, but I receive no benefits. This does not really bother me as long as my mode of travel is also subsidized and efficient because a well-functioning transportation system is important to our society and would not be provided by the market.