The Ground Floor: Rail transit not a greenhouse saver, Cato Institute says

A new study released by the Cato Institute says that, over the last 15 years, cities in the United States have spent $100 billion on new rail transit projects and claimed that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but that these projects never meet their promised reductions.

The Urban Land Institute's Ground Floor blog outlines Cato senior fellow Randal O'Toole's argument about why rail transit is ineffective at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, including:

* That rail transit does not operate in a vacuum, often requiring feeder buses with low ridership, increasing emissions and costs per passenger mile

* That powering buses with hybrid-electric motors, biofuels and electricity and using smaller buses on less-popular routes is more effective

* That less fuel will be wasted by building roads, instituting variable tolls, and coordinating traffic signals

* That switching 1 percent of commuters to switch to hybrid-electric cars will cost less and save more energy than getting 1 percent of them to switch to transit.

A blog called Raze the Ladder says that O'Toole's findings are flawed because his fuel efficiency numbers include both urban and highway driving, transit's ridership and efficiency numbers have been driven down by decades of subsidies for drivers, and he fails to take into account the lower environmental impact that transit allows - namely, urban living.