This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Mass transit proponents often suggest that new transit stops will attract development.

But is that true?

And what's the relationship between land development and mass transit?

Randall O'Toole is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

He says transit-oriented developments, quite simply, aren't transit-oriented.

He says they're a giveaway to some developers and often costly to homebuyers.

Development that is focused around transit lines is sold, I think, to the public as something that is essentially

organic, something that is essentially organic,

that just occurs around these transit stops.

Can you discuss that?

Well, there's two big problems with transit-oriented developments,

and one is that not very many people want to live that way.

According to surveys, only about 18% of people would like to live close to shops and

work and transit lines.

82% of Americans say that they aspire to live in a neighborhood of single family homes with large lots and they don't care how far it is to shops and work in transit lines. So because the market for high density

mixed use transit oriented developments is so limited, the cities end up having to subsidize these developments.

And we see huge subsidies going for these developments in Portland, in Denver, and

Minneapolis, in other cities all over the country.

What are the impact of these subsidies on the market for land in those areas?

Most of the cities that are subsidizing developments, transit-oriented developments, are simultaneously

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