The Excellence of Efficiency

• Author: Randal O'Toole
• Position: Senior Fellow with the Cato Institute and author of the new book'Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It'
• Pages: 22-27

Page 22 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Sept./Oct. 2010

e Excellence of Ef‌f‌iciency

In taking up transportation in 2011, Congress has the choice of rejecting “livability”

programs or enshrining them in law. A return to the user-fees principle would help

insure that investments in transportation place “ef‌f‌iciency” f‌irst

livability, which Secretary of Transportation Ray

LaHood def‌ines as “being able to take your kids to

school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery

or post of‌f‌ice, go out to dinner and a movie, and

play with your kids in a park, all without having

to get in your car.” In May 2009, LaHood told the

National Press Club that the administration’s goal

is to “coerce people out of their cars.” To achieve

that goal, LaHood ordered of‌f‌icials in the nation’s

400 metropolitan areas to incorporate anti-auto

land-use policies in their next f‌ive-year transporta-

tion plans.

e contrast between livability and ef‌f‌iciency is

particularly stark when looking at federal grants

for rail transportation. Some federally funded

transit lines are so expensive, and carry so few rid-

ers, that it would have cost less to give every daily

train rider a new Toyota Prius every year for the

next 30 years than it costs to build and run the

trains. Since the Prius is also more energy ef‌f‌icient

and pollution free per passenger mile than any

transit system, this policy would also be better for

the environment.

e Bush administration’s secretary of transpor-

tation, Mary Peters, was an ef‌f‌iciency champion. To

insure that federal funds are ef‌f‌iciently spent, Peters

wrote rules requiring that rail transit grants be cost

ef‌fective relative to buses and other alternatives.

In January, LaHood eliminated these rules, saying

livability was more important than ef‌f‌iciency. e

Federal Transit Administration immediately gave

hundreds of millions of dollars to Dallas, Detroit,

Livability versus ef‌f‌iciency. at is the

question Congress will face when it takes

up transportation in 2011. Highway users

pay about $40 billion a year in federal gas

taxes, and every six years Congress revisits

how to spend that money.

Livability advocates argue that the environmen-

tal impacts of automobiles are so great that the

federal government must signif‌icantly reduce per-

capita driving. ey want Congress to spend more

money on transit and other alternatives to autos

and to impose mandatory land-use policies aimed

at discouraging driving.

Ef‌f‌iciency advocates respond that the economic

benef‌its of driving are so great that it will be far less

expensive — and far less economically destructive

— to reduce the impacts of each mile of driving

than to reduce the number of miles driven. ey

believe transportation should be funded out of user

fees rather than taxes — which was mostly the case

before about 1965 — and urge that any federal pro-

grams aimed at protecting the environment should

be cost-ef‌fective; that is, produce the greatest envi-

ronmental benef‌its per dollar.

Several states, including California, Oregon, and

Washington, have taken up the livability cause. In

2008, the Washington legislature mandated a 50

percent reduction in per capita driving by 2050,

while the California legislature required cities to

implement strict land use policies aimed at getting

people out of their cars.

e Obama administration has also endorsed

Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow wit h

the Cato Institu te and author of the

new book“Gridlo ck: Why We’re Stuck in

Trafc and What to D o About It.”