A new group called Mobility Choice claims to support the use of free-market tools to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Their Blueprint for achieving this goal has a somewhat realistic understanding of the limits to using transit to achieving this goal.
“Public transit is often inefficient, inconvenient, and uneconomic,” the paper admits. The blueprint includes market tools such as HOT lanes and congestion pricing. The plan also suggests that, if we want to provide transit for low-income people who lack access to autos, vouchers make more sense than funding giant transit bureaucracies. All these ideas have been endorsed by the Antiplanner.
As if to further gain free-market credibility, the blueprint quotes an article published by the Cato Institute a dozen years ago. Despite the article’s title (“How Government Highway Policy Encourages Sprawl”), however, it does not really support the blueprint’s argument.
