Randal O’Toole – Podcast 189

Randal O’Toole talks about Light Rail, Street Cars, the Driverless Car, state and city planning, subsidies and the Highway Trust Fund, with The Bob Davis Podcasts. Cities all over the United States are spending billions, sometimes tens of billions to research, and billions more to build, light rail, streetcar and so called ‘high speed’ rail lines. Projects designed to serve centrally planned cities with subsidized high density housing. Millennials are interested in these cities, for now, but what happens when they start raising families? How did the Met Council come into existence? Do people really want this kind of life? Central Planners think so, but what if the future does not cooperate? What if the future is a dystopia with increasingly expensive transit systems, serving no one. In the second half of the Bob Davis Podcasts conversation with the CATO Institute’s Randal O’Toole we talk about driverless cars, the history of streetcars and the efficiency of today’s streetcar lines, and their costs. Why do a few elites make the working class pay for transit systems they use, expensive apartments they live in, in cities they design. They may not think they’re one per centers, but today’s Republican and Democrat liberals are creating what they think are utopian cities, but they’re not for the rest of the 99 percent. Hailing from Portland, O’Toole knows the folly of light rail and streetcar transit plans inside and out. If you want to learn how to argue against these plans at your city council and neighborhood meetings, listen to Randal O’Toole and learn how. Sponsored by X Government Cars!

Podcast 165

Take a ride on the near deserted Minneapolis to Saint Paul Light Rail ‘Green’ Line. A little more than a week ago, the new LRT line between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul opened to wide acclaim. As many as seventy five thousand people took advantage of a free ride on a train, while the local media gushed about the line’s ‘success’. Will this billion dollar project be a success? Have increases in federal and state funding for these kinds of projects in cities all over America produced higher levels of ridership? Do these LRT lines attract ‘investment’ or are tax dollars displaced to ‘subsidize’ development? Is the ‘creative class’ moving into downtown areas? Are companies moving into downtown areas? What about the transportation needs of industry and commerce, and the smaller cities in the state. Are you ready for a substantial increase in state and federal gas taxes to support these projects in the future? Sponsored by Edelweiss Design