This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 20th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What is Mass Transit for if not helping low-income people get to work.

Cato's Randall O'Toole has a bolder claim he argues mass transit can harm low-income

workers.

We spoke last week. Mass transit systems in general are presented to city populations as this is a means of

transportation for low-income people.

It's reliable.

It moves people through a city, typically from lower-income areas

to higher-income areas, so that these people can get to jobs without having to depend on an

automobile.

And that's always struck me as fairly reasonable to the extent that programs that promote

welfare are targeted to the extent that programs that promote welfare are targeted to the poor, certainly one that gives people a reliable mode of transportation to move from home to work is a perfectly fine one.

There's a group at the University of Minnesota called the Center for Transportation Studies and

they've published a number of reports showing that in urban areas you can

reach far more jobs in a 20-minute auto drive than you can in a 60 minute transit ride in many urban areas.

And no urban area can you reach as many jobs in a 60 minute transit ride as you can in a 30 minute

auto drive.

So low income people have discovered this on their own

and they've gone out and bought cars.

And now, and they've also discovered that driving is cheaper than transit.

And so it's faster, it's cheaper, and it takes them where they want to go.

...