Randal O'Toole

Randal O'Toole (born 1952) is an American public policy analyst. The majority of O'Toole's work has focused on private land rights, particularly against public land use regulations and light rail.

Since 1995, he has been associated with the Cato Institute as an adjunct scholar and frequent anti-light rail campaigner. O'Toole was the McCluskey Visiting Fellowship for Conservation at Yale University in 1998, and has served as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (1999) and Utah State University (2000). O'Toole studied economics at the University of Oregon, but did not receive a degree in economics. He is the contact listed for the Thoreau Institute.

Early in his career, O'Toole worked with environmental groups to oppose the United States Forest Service's subsidized sales of public forest timber to the logging industry. His book Reforming the Forest Service built on his experience during this effort, and proposed a number of free-market solutions to management of U.S. public land and timber. He has written analyses of the usage and development plans of a number of U.S. national forests, working with state environmental agencies and other groups.

In the 1990s, O'Toole emerged as an outspoken critic of New Urbanist design and smart growth strategies after learning in 1995 of a county plan to rezone his neighborhood to allow higher density and mixed use development. O'Toole contends that these development strategies—in which regulatory measures and tax incentives are employed to encourage denser development, more efficient land use, and greater use of public transportation—ignore the desires and preferences of most housing consumers and ultimately waste public funds. He has campaigned against smart growth policies and light rail systems in several U.S. states as well as in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Ottawa, Ontario.

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