wendell cox

In the "Speakout" section of this issue of IEEE Spectrum, the pros and cons of light rail systems are presented. On the pro side and using Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) as the example, the author presents the case for light rail. DART has experienced great success and popularity. Ridership has exceeded expectations, millions of dollars worth of development has been spent in the areas near the stops and along the rail line, over a dozen area communities have asked for inclusion in any expansion of light rail service and it is having an influence on land use patterns and the location of new development. DART is bringing about positive changes in planning, development and critical thinking related to urban/suburban development and smart growth. The opposing view suggests that light rail does not significantly reduce traffic congestion, is expensive and is something akin to offering the latest development in horse-drawn carriages. With urban population densities in such cit...

This presentation describes the significant influence that citizen committees have had on transportation policy in Los Angeles County. The experiences of three particularly successful committees are described. The Mayor's San Fernando Valley Advisory Committee of Transportation operates under the auspices of the Mayor of Los Angeles. The Committee faced a number of challenges relating to transit services, and without exception, it was instrumental in obtaining a more favorable result than was proposed by the regional transit agency. The presentation summarizes two experiences. The activities are also noted of the advisory committee established by the California Department of Transportation to assist in the implementation of a high occupancy vehicle lane (Diamond Lane) on Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway. The Ventura Freeway Improvement Coalition, which was established by business organizations in the San Fernando Valley to seek capacity enhancements along Ventura Freeway (U...

This article addresses the following point of contention: "In 40 years, the average person will live closer to her neighbors and farther from the ground than she does today."In 40 years most Americans will likely not live closer to their neighbors and farther from the ground than they do today, at least not materially so. American cities (which are all areas outside rural areas) will continue to disperse, as they did in the decade of the 2000s, when nearly 95 percent of major metropolitan growth was more than 10 miles from downtown areas (Cox, 2012c). Even the share of the Millennial generation (young adults ages 18 to 31) living in lower density areas increased (Kotkin, 2013b) (both contrary to popular lore and refuted by reality).To be sure, the resurgence of the micro-urban cores, including their population growth, has been encouraging. The actual footprint of occupying disused commercial buildings and abandoned land, however, is small compared with the growth that cont...

A debate about "smart growth" between the two authors, and also involving the members of the audience, comprises one of the sessions of the 2001 Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Annual Meeting. This brief is provided as a starter for those who wish to participate in the discussion, or who will not have been able to attend. Questions addressed include: What is smart growth? Why smart growth? Why not smart growth? The debate will cover the definition of smart growth, and its pros and cons.

Competitive contracting is a cost-effective service used for the delivery of public transit services by public agencies. This report states that the success of competitive contracting rests on 2 crucial issues: full public control and cost-effective services. The purpose of this research is to review cases in competitive contracting design and to make recommendations for practices favorable to public agencies competitively contracting public transit services. In depth interviews were conducted with administrators of these programs as well as detailed analyses of actual contracts in each of the cases. More mature programs were surveyed to capture the long term lessons and to assess the attitudes of the more experienced contract administrators. Contracts surveyed in this study covered all major classifications of public transit services--fixed-route and demand responsive. Detailed contract analyses and interviews were conducted with the following services: San Diego County, Milwaukee County, Suffolk County (New York), Hammond (Indiana), Ann Arbor (Michigan), Johnson County (Kansas), Yolo County (California), Miami (Florida), Carson (California), Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), and Fort Wayne (Indiana). In each of the cases, private companies provided service operations including maintenance and use of their own vehicles. This research examines and discusses competitive contracting and the public purpose as well as the following areas related to competitive contracting: Procurement Process, Service and Contract Design, Monitoring Contracted Services, Assessment of Competitive Contracting Experiences, and Principles of Successful Contracting Design.

This paper describes how large metropolitan areas have developed throughout the world as transport technologies have facilitated greater mobility and as people have left the poverty and lower income of rural areas seeking better lives in the city. Research has shown greater access to larger employment markets increases the potential for higher incomes, while generally improving metropolitan economic performance. Nonetheless, current planning and statistical methods in urban transport planning have generally not been directed towards the design of urban transport systems that maximize labor market mobility. A series of indicators are proposed in this paper that would provide officials and citizens with detailed information on labor market mobility both at the metropolitan area and sub-metropolitan area levels.

This article was based on the premise that there are two primary elements in transit management: effectiveness (identifying and doing those things which best serve the community) and efficiency (doing what we do in the best way). Effectiveness, a political issue, includes the setting of service goals and standards which will be implemented by the transit system. A major subset of effectiveness is equity, i.e., defining the balance between serving transit needs and returning to various communities some portion of the tax revenue. Transit management should do all that it can to encourage the policy board to make effectiveness decisions because the policy board is most expert at politics. Efficiency, service provided in the most efficient manner, should primarily be under management control and less dependent on politics than is effectiveness. It is important to keep issues of effectiveness and efficiency clearly separated since mixing of the two unnecessarily clouds the issue. Managem...

Starting with the Myths What is the most dense urban area in the United States? If you answered New York, you are wrong. It is Los Angeles. Where was the first freeway opened? If you answered Los Angeles you are wrong. If you answered New York, you are probably right. This and more is outlined below in a description of what for 200 years has been America’s principal urban area. New York is the world’s second most-heavily populated

This paper has two principal purposes: (1) To provide a definition and listing of world megacities and (2) To propose considerations for using transport and land use policy to facilitate economic growth and the reduction or eradication of poverty. In one form or another, this is a virtually universal objective, underlying public policies in nations around the world. Current transport and land use preferences are examined. It is generally observed that these current preferences may not best serve the economic interests of megacity residents, especially in medium-income and low-income megacities.

It is commonly thought that public transit patronage would reduce traffic congestion. The author argues that this has not been the case, and offers reasons why public transit often fails to deliver on its promise. The only way to reduce traffic congestion, the author contends, is to increase highway capacity.

It is often assumed that lower density cities have longer average work trip travel times and greater traffic congestion than more compact cities. This paper summarises available data with regard to the association between urban densities and work trip travel times as well as between urban densities and the intensity of traffic congestion. The analysis indicates that higher urban densities are associated with both longer work trip travel times and greater traffic congestion (Figure 1). Because greater access is associated with more favourable urban economic outcomes, a greater focus on access seems advisable. This is all the more likely because of emerging research indicating that compact cities policies produce only modest GHG emission reductions.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In the United States, transit operating costs per vehicle mile increased 418 percent from 1970 to 1990�twice the rate of inflation and two-and-a-half times the cost of similar service in the private bus industry. Two-thirds of transit costs are paid by federal, state, and, predominantly, local subsidies. The majority of the public funding has supported low and declining

For two decades, most urban public transit services in the United States (US) have been provided directly by public authorities and supported by public subsidy programs. A substantial percentage of the public subsidies has been consumed by costs that have escalated well ahead of the inflation rate.Concurrently, the private bus industry experienced unit cost decreases (inflation adjusted). In response to

Transit costs and fares have risen well ahead of inflation and services have been poorly matched to markets or reduced. This results from three factors. First, suburbanization made conventional services less relevent. Second, transit narrowly focused on its conventional ...

Public transit today is faced with the challenge of serving its clientele while subsidies are failing to keep pace with increasing operating costs. In Los Angeles County, there are service distribution inequalities--overcrowding and unmet demand in some areas and, at the same time, ...

... Roger Teal, Genevieve Giuliano and Edward K. Morlok, Public Transit Service 1 ContractingReport prepared for the United States Department of Transportation, Urban Mass Transportation Administration, 1986. Price Waterhouse, Bus Service Continuation Project: Fiscal Year ...

It is often assumed that lower density cities have longer average work trip travel times
and greater traffic congestion than more compact cities. This paper summarises available
data with regard to the association between urban densities and work trip travel times
as well as between urban densities and the intensity of traffic congestion. The analysis
indicates that higher urban densities are associated with both longer work trip travel
times and greater traffic congestion (Figure 1). Because greater access is associated with
more favourable urban economic outcomes, a greater focus on access seems advisable.
This is all the more likely because of emerging research indicating that compact cities
policies produce only modest GHG emission reductions

The purpose of this presentation is to examine the relationship between better urban mobility and economic growth--- or stated another way, the relationship between better urban mobility and poverty alleviation.1 Virtually all nations seek to improve economic

FOR MANY POLICY ISSUES THERE IS GENERAL AGREEMENT ON policy goals. That is not the case with rail transit. Depending on who you ask, rail transit should reduce traffic congestion, improve mobility, get motorists out of their cars, clean the air, stimulate the economy, boost property values, concentrate development, fight sprawl, decrease social alienation, help make a city "world class," and so on. Once we focus solely on economists the list of potential goals shrinks considerably, but we are still left with a bundle of goals. Summarizing economists' views on rail transit poses additional challenges. Even simply separating the economists from the non-economists can be quite challenging. Many researchers from many different disciplines have weighed in on the merits of rail transit. In this case, we will examine only the opinions of economists, that is, those who have at least a Master's degree in economics or who have taught economics at the college level. In cases ...

ABSTRACT: There is an urgent need to raise the incomes of urban residents in lower income nations. Effective transport can assist in this process by expanding the labor market available to workers. Some lowerincome nations seek to emulate public transport strategies from high-income urban areas. These strategies, however, have produced counterproductive results. Lower-income urban areas would do well to focus on less expensive strategies that expand mobility and access for larger numbers of people.

The migration of people from rural areas to urban area started centuries ago and has now spread throughout the world. One consequence has been the rise of “megacities” (in English, “megacities”) -urban areas with more than 10,000,000 population. Megacities provide superior economic opportunities because they are larger labor markets in which there is greater potential for efficiently matching employees and employers. This paper examines land use and transport in megacities, especially in the developing world. The examination includes the role of mobility in the economic growth and affluence (poverty reduction) in urban areas, the relationship between land use planning, transport, economic growth and affluence in urban areas. A potential set of urban performance indicators is proposed. La migration des populations des zones rurales vers les zones urbaines a commencé il ya plusieurs siècles et s'est maintenant répandu à travers le monde. L'une des conséquences a été l'émer...

Poverty eradication has been identified as a prerequisite to sustainability. Developing Africa's poverty is intense and increasingly concentrated in the cities, which are capturing most population growth. Economic research indicates that improved urban access can contribute materially to higher levels of economic growth, and thus more rapid reductions in poverty. The largest urban areas in developing Africa (herein defined as sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa and Botswana) are described. Much of the present research is unfavorable toward mass transit developing African urban areas. Yet, for all of the criticisms, people have often chosen informal transport over formal transport and that for all of the customer service difficulties, the systems are strongly patronized. This paper would seek to synthesize the research on urban transport in these urban areas. The focus would be on the consumer preferences, needs , and indicators of consumer access. There would be emphasis ...

Within the space of a single year, the public focus on the housing market has shifted from a concern that persistent and high inflation of home prices will preclude homeownership for moderate-income families to a worry that a downturn in home prices will undermine the health of the economy. However, as a survey of the nation’s housing markets reveals, concern on both counts has been overblown, and the housing affordability problems that have emerged are concentrated in a limited number of metropolitan areas where years of counterproductive land-use regulations have limited the supply of building lots.

A world of driverless cars seems likely to provide massively improved highway safety, better mobility-especially for those with mobility disadvantages (such as the rising elderly population)- faster travel times, better use of existing roadway infrastructure, and a reduction in traffic congestion. All this should lead to better lives and better economies.Some people imagine a driverless car world in which a mobility service company delivers exactly the car you want (Neil, 2015) on a moment's notice. The ultimate vision may be a city with few residential garages and in which virtually every automobile trip might be in a different vehicle, often shared with strangers. Good reasons raise doubt, however, that this ambitious scenario will ever be achieved.An Evolutionary ProcessThe world of driverless cars heralds revolutionary changes, but for cities (metropolitan areas) the process will be evolutionary. No "Big Bang" will occur, in which today's driver-dependent perso...

This paper examines the competitive contracting issues raised by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, "The Emperor's New Clothes: Transit Privatization and Public Policy". The EPI report alleges that competitive contracting, or privatization, of public transit services results in higher costs, lower service levels, and is at odds with the objective of reducing automobile usage through increased reliance on public transit. By contrast, this paper documents the following points: 1. Public transit cost increases outpaced medical care and gasoline. 2. Competitive contracting reduces the costs of public transit. 3. Competitive contracting is a sound public management strategy. 4. Competitively contracted service is safe and reliable. 5. Public transit has a public purpose.

The proposed Dulles rail extension would link Washington, D.C. with Dulles Airport, via the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's rail transit system (METRO). This paper argues that the Dulles rail extension is a bad idea. Politically and bureaucratically the extension would be counterproductive. In addition, it would cost too much, and bring little benefit. Traffic relief in the corridor would be reduced by only 1.5%, compared with traffic volumes that would occur without the rail extension.

Through comprehensive case studies of privately planned cities and neighbourhood in Asia, Europe and North America, this book characterizes the theoretical basis and empirical manifestations of private urban planning. In this innovative volume, Andersson and Moroni develop an under-studied aspect of urban planning and re-evaluate conceptions of our urban future.