North Carolina’s rail supporters, for both high-speed and light rail, want you to believe that rail is going to solve a lot of problems and that it’s long overdue. The fact is that rail is expensive, unmovable, and discriminatory against those who pay taxes to subsidize it but don’t live near it.

Instead of looking for ways to improve transportation based on the natural growth patterns of a city, our cities are looking at ways of socially engineering future growth to be compressed in high-density areas along certain corridors. Overwhelming evidence is that people come to N.C. often because it’s cheaper and they can escape those high-density scenarios. City planners, though, are so focused on the shiny new structures they want to build that they’re spending all their efforts trying to justify and fund those instead of supporting their existing citizens and natural city growth.

On September 16, the John Locke Foundation published a Spotlight Report Public Transit in North Carolina. The report, by Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute, features facts about how much taxpayers are subsidizing each rider’s trip on public transportation, how that compares to the much cheaper cost of driving a car, and five recommended changes that can address the concerns of state and local planners at much a lower cost and in a way that benefits the most people.

Check out the report here:
http://www.johnlocke.org/research/show/spotlights/250