If you were able to attend Randal O’Toole’s incredible transportation event a couple months ago, or you watched the event in this 5 part YouTube playlist, you might be interested in this follow up article written by Randal for the Wall Street Journal titled, “Taking the Driver Out of the Car.”

You’ll remember from Randal’s presentation that one of the free market solutions to gridlock, pollution, and our current array of dismal highways and roads requires a bit of a futuristic perspective. In other words, a little more Star Trek and a little less Am Trek, er, Amtrak. Never mind, you get it.

Anyway, as futuristic as driverless cars sound, the future is here! As Randal points out,

Consumers today can buy cars that steer themselves; accelerate and brake to maintain a safe driving distance from cars ahead; and detect and avoid collisions with other cars on all sides. Making them completely driverless will involve little more than a software upgrade.

“Robocars” as some call them have been in the making for years now and we are inching closer than ever before to having them as a legitimate option – if our elected officials deem it legal. And that is quite a big if. Futuristic geeks like Randal find themselves in the classic chicken-egg conundrum: these cars have little chance of gaining momentum with the public until we have the infrastructure built to use them properly. And we won’t have the proper infrastructure to use them until there is adequate public demand – and the legal okay.

It’s a coordination problem where someone on either side must first take a big risk in hopes that things catch on. Fortunately, public demonstrations like driverless car challenges, encourage the emerging field to reach greater innovation heights, while showing the public that these crazy things are out there – and they work!

The technology for driverless cars will be here sooner than later. Unfortunately, we just don’t know yet whether the law, infrastructure, and public support will. Lawmakers have the power to push us closer to Star Trek, but currently, all we’re getting is more and more Amtrak.

As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s deja vu all over again.”  Remember those FasTracks lies we’ve been told for 30 years?  Well, a new report from the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority makes RTD’s distortions look like child’s play.  The report claims that “high speed” rail lines between Fort Collins and Pueblo, and Denver International Airport and Eagle County – I-25 and I-70 respectively – would cost over $21 billion AND not need a dime of tax payer money.  I’ll let you finish laughing before I go on….

Further, the study claims, “for every dollar of capital and operating costs, the project creates economic benefits greater than one dollar.”  If true, that begs the question: why on earth would we need government to do it if the project is both economically feasible and profitable? The fact that entrepreneurs are not jumping all over this alleged gold mine is proof enough it’s a money loser.  Obviously I don’t even need to rely on any sort of theoretical argument here.  Look at the history!  Look at the empirical evidence right in front of our eyes!  We’ve got a FasTracks project underfunded, over-budget, and largely unbuilt that is already over 30 years in the making.

For your viewing pleasure, an additional assortment of unbelievable claims and interesting tidbits:

These great facts and figures were brought to my attention through this fantastic Denver Post editorial and Denver Daily News piece. The DDN article features our very own Senior Fellow in Transportation Randal O’Toole. Randal has been a waging a war on the bogus claims made by RTD over the years and pulled no punches on this outrageous report saying, “They’re using the most optimistic assumptions imaginable and then relying on compounded optimistic assumptions.” Yeah, kind of like compounded interest. Except with compounded optimism you don’t make money, you lose a ton and go deep into debt.

If the project gets off the ground and begins indebting our state and delivering nothing like all other ambitious transportation projects, the Independence Institute will be there once again to say, “I told you so.”  Randal will have the opportunity to say, “You should have listened to me.”  Again.

If you haven’t had the chance to hear Randal, take a few minutes and listen.  His recent appearance on my TV show Independent Thinking was an opportunity to say “I told you so” with Denver Post columnist Chuck Plunkett.  Randal also presented to an audience for an event here at the Institute a little while ago titled, “Mobility vs. Gridlock: Colorado’s Transportation Future.” You can view that event via “YouTube playlist here.

It’s a transportation policy wonk-fest on tonight’s Independent Thinking. I will be joined by Chuck Plunkett from the Denver Post, and Randal O’Toole, director of the Independence Institute’s Center for the American Dream and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. Tune in for a lively discussion about trains, buses and automobiles, and the future of transportation in Colorado. That’s tonight at 8:30 PM, re-broadcast the following Monday at 1:30 PM.

My web monkey just finished posting Randal’s fantastic presentation called “Mobility vs. Gridlock: Colorado’s Transportation Future” on YouTube in a playlist format. In the presentation, Randal points to the overwhelming evidence that rail transit in general, and FasTracks in particular, is a dead end in solving congestion, safety, and mobility issues. Instead, Randal offers a couple of his own solutions to these pressing problems.

Randal tackles these issues more in-depth in his book, “Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.”

Senior fellow at Independence and the Cato Institute, Randal O’Toole, hit the big time the other day when he found his way onto the new John Stossel show on Fox Business Channel. He did a great job summarizing some major points against building infrastructure for rail, rather than more efficient and less costly means of transportation like buses. If you happen to be a “read” rather than “watch” kinda guy, then take a gander at Randal’s arsenal against light-rail here.

Pro-Tint Window (14th and Wadsworth) owners and couple of 25 years Galen Foster and Kim Snyder check in with me again on last weeks episode of Independent Thinking. We wanted them to come on and discuss the latest developments in their struggle to keep their home and business. In case you haven’t been following this tragic case – what I like to call Colorado’s Kelo case – you can check out the first interview we did with them over a year ago when this process was just beginning. Subsequently, they have been entangled in a legal battle with RTD over their home for two years now. This was one of the most emotional, tear-jerking, unforgettable shows I have ever done.  Forget the economic cost of fighting eminent domain, listen to the heart-wrenching human cost of fighting for a house that’s always been yours. As Kim says at the end, “we have Boardwalk, and they want it.”

Below is a condensed, 8 minute version of the show we did.  Please help me get the word out on this amazing couple and their struggle to keep their piece of the American dream.

Is there any recourse for property owners caught in the path of FasTracks? Property rights attorney Robert Hoban, Jessica Corry of the Independence Institute, and the owners of Pro-Tint Windows Kim Snyder and Galen Foster join me to detail RTD’s handling of property owners and abuse of eminent domain.  Tune in this Friday night at 8:30 p.m. to KBDI Channel 12, Fridays; repeated the following Tuesday at 5 pm.

You’ve read my take on Cal Marsella leaving RTD for the private sector, now read Director of the Center for the American Dream Randal O’Toole’s take on the situation.

Ouch.

By leaving RTD, Cal Marsella now becomes the deadbeat-dad of the bastard child called Fastracks.

I hired Cal Marsella to his post at RTD, and NOW he leaves AFTER he creates the Fastracks fiasco?  Now that’s timing.  Apparently the third of a million dollars salary at RTD wasn’t enough to make ends meet.  Who could blame him?

Two thoughts come to mind after hearing that Cal was leaving RTD.  The first one is that he saved competitive contracting at RTD.  And for that he should be heartily commended.  Cal was my choice for GM while I was on the RTD Board back in 1995.  In fact, I am rather proud of my political skills needed to get the board who didn’t want him, to eventually hire him.  The staff at that time had almost destroyed the practice of contracting with private firms for fixed-route bus service.  The mandate that 20% of RTD bus service be contracted came down from the state legislature (thanks to then state rep Bill Owens, Senator Terry Considine, and Governor Roy Romer who signed it).  RTD fought it every inch of the way, to the point that they would compare the in-house service costs without including the cost of the actual buses, compared to the private firms’ cost including their cost to buy buses. (Amazingly the contracted private costs were still lower!)  Cal set the policy straight and, lo and behold, we found that the contract bus service was 40% cheaper than the in-house service.  RTD now contracts roughly 50% of its fixed-route bus service, better serving taxpayers and riders.

But that’s not why I am sorry to see Cal move on and finally make a living wage in the private sector.  It was Cal more than any other individual who is responsible for selling a naive public on the corporate-welfare scam that is the Fastracks project.  And it is Cal Marsella who should stay at RTD and oversee the financial devastation to which he gave birth.

As amazing as it is to me, not everyone follows the dysfunction that is the Regional Transportation District.  So many forget that in 1997 Cal engineered the first go-around to raise RTD taxes 67%.  Back then it was called “Guide the Ride.”  It was my first real anti-tax campaign, and we taxpayers won.  Not discouraged, Cal put the same basic plan back on the ballot in 2004, but this time with five times the campaign budget and a Kumbaya choir of mayors and newspapers.  The Independence Institute did what we always do – stand up for those who don’t have special interest money to do their talking.  Our own Randal O’Toole said in his study of Fastracks in 2004 that it was going to be over budget and under revenue.  But Cal convinced voters otherwise.  And now instead of staying and dealing with the consequences of lying to the public, he cuts and runs.

His successor will have the luxury of saying, “you can’t hold me responsible, I wasn’t in charge when it happened.”  This is just what Cal Marsella says when asked about the RTD tax election back in the 1970’s when we were promised over a hundred miles of fixed guide-way transit that never materialized.

Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.