Randal O'Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute specializing in public lands, urban growth, and transportation issues. O'Toole spent 15 years working with environmental groups helping them understand the perils of big government planning and 15 years working with libertarian groups helping them find ways to protect the environment without big government.O'Toole is an active cyclist who rides thousands of miles a year and a rail fan who loves riding passenger trains. But he is also an economist who recognizes that government spending must be cost-effective if it is to accomplish anything other than transferring money from taxpayers to special interests. This makes him skeptical of proposals to, for example, spend billions of dollars on urban rail transit or high-speed rail.A native Oregonian, O'Toole was Yale University's McCluskey Conservation Fellow in 1998 and the Merrill Visiting Professor at Utah State University in 2000. He also taught at the University of California (Berkeley) College of Natural Resources in 1999 and 2001. He currently resides in Camp Sherman, Oregon.