As liberals flock to light rail for its espoused environmental benefits, one economist specializing in environmental policy is preaching that mass transit - as it is pursued today - is bad for Mother Earth.
O'TooleCato Institute
According to Randal O’Toole, director of the Independence Institute's Center for the American Dream and a policy analyst with the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. RTD officials are misleading the public about the heavy toll light rail takes on the environment. Speaking to a packed house at the Independence Institute in Golden Monday night, O'Toole told the audience that a sprawling city like Denver does not get enough use out of the light rail system in order to make it environmentally friendly.
In addition, O’Toole criticized the philosophy of "Smart Growth," a public planning model that promotes mass transit systems, like Denver’s light rail, as a way to move people into higher density areas. He believes it results in ineffective social engineering - behavioral modification that aims to get people to walking more and driving less, but is often too cost prohibitive to be effectively implemented.
O'Toole promoted other options for reducing carbon emissions, including hybrid buses, many he says would have been more cost effective and environmentally sound than FasTracks. He said that since the completion of FasTracks, bus ridership is down, yet the RTD has not cut back on bus usage. Now, buses just funnel people to light rail stations.
O’Toole asserts that the light rail attracts less than 1 percent of automobile drivers. In addition to supporting hybrid buses as a mode of environmentally-friendly mass transit, O'Toole offers the following additional alternatives:
- Run two fleets of buses – smaller ones for non-peak hours, and the standard fleet for rush-hour
- Offer incentives for buying a hybrid or fuel efficient car
- Coordinate traffic signals – this will reduce the number of engines running as a result of people getting stuck at red lights in empty intersections
- Build new lanes above the current median for commuters
According to O'Toole, the above suggestions would reduce carbon emissions equal to, if not more than the light rail system, and they all would cost less than $6.5 billion. He closed his Monday speech by urging cities similar in size to Denver to consider other options before spending billions on a project that does nothing to benefit environment.
We Can See It
On March 12th, 2008 prk166 says:
The shame is that RTD knows it. Yet they continue to puff out their just and brag about trains that, outside of a couple hours and at that only in one direction (mornings going into downtown; afternoon leaving), that are never more than a 1/4 full.