O'TOOLE

Feb. 9 The Red Line Regional Rail Project came under fire Wednesday at a Cornelius Red Line Task Force forum Wednesday when a well-known commuter rail critic attacked the economic development numbers CATS uses to justify the Red Line and the Lynx line in Charlotte. Randal O'Toole, a fellow at the Cato Institute, said growth in and around Charlotte is occurring at the rate of 3 percent a year, with or without rail. Subsidies for rail merely shift where the development takes place, he said.

As expected, the fellow with a distinct libertarian bent excoriated the proposed $452 million rail line from Lake Norman to Charlotte as a government excursion into 19th century technology. Instead, O'Toole advocated sort of a new era of bus and car technologies which would tap into the dispersed nature of both worker populations and jobs. Only 30 percent of all jobs are in traditional employment centers like downtowns, he said.

Many people in the real estate community are taking a wait and see approach as three months of meetings--and intense review--near the mid-point. Elected officials in North Mecklenburg and Mooresville hope the ferocious debate will help consultants devise a business plan that might win public approval. Feedback on proposed governance and financial plans is part of studying the project and improving it, Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte said.

"From the perspective of the real estate brokerage and development community we appreciate the opportunity to review the draft business and finance plan," said Brad Howard, one of the developers of the Langtree at the Lake mixed-use project in Mooresville. "We are actively engaged in the process and plan to stay engaged to analyze and better understand the details of the finance plan. I would like to hear from an expert that supports rail transit to provide balance to the discussion." He asked for local officials to bring in a rail proponent to speak "so we may hear opinions from both sides."

O'Toole also said ridership numbers put out by CATS to the public are 40 percent higher than those they report to the Federal Transit Administration. "When you have a train that goes from where you don’t live to where you don’t want to go, most [commuter] trains are empty," he said.

The Cato Institute, which criticized both Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008, has weighed in on everything from urban growth and public land uses to the Iraq War and Social Security. O'Toole has written two books relating to tarnsportation: "The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths" and "Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It." The Town of Cornelius, in a press release, said O'Toole wrote Cato Policy Analysis No. 663 in 2010, "Defining Success: The Case against Rail Transit."