The High Cost of High-Speed Rail

August 3, 2009

Randal O'Toole

Texas can do many things to cost-effectively improve transportation networks in ways that save energy, reduce accidents, and cut toxic and greenhouse gas emissions. High-speed rail is not one of those things.

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Fool Me Twice: Why the Texas Grid is Still Vulnerable to Winter Storms | Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem

Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem Five years after Winter Storm Uri, the ERCOT grid is still not ready for the next major winter storm. The first two installments of this series showed that demand has grown more than 20% since 2021 while firm generation capacity has barely budged, and the...

February 12, 2026

Higher Education

College Grade Inflation Undermines Workforce Competitiveness

For years, I’ve warned that college grade inflation is real, rampant, and ravaging a university near you. It is a cancer eating away at American higher education, undermining academic standards, devaluing transcripts, and cheating students and employers alike. My research has tracked this crisis over the last decade, and the evidence is stark: what was...

March 10, 2025

Economy

What the Private Sector can Teach the Public Sector about Efficiency

Recently, former President Trump floated the idea of creating “a government efficiency commission a federal commission to audit the entire federal government.” And even better, he suggested putting Elon Musk in charge of the commission, saying he is a great “cost-cutter.” Unleashing a commission of this nature on the federal government, led by a titan...

October 17, 2024

Randal O'Toole

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Fool Me Twice: Why the Texas Grid is Still Vulnerable to Winter Storms | Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem

College Grade Inflation Undermines Workforce Competitiveness

What the Private Sector can Teach the Public Sector about Efficiency