Wendell Cox - Urban Transport

Urban Transport

Cox believes that the goal of public transportation systems should be to provide mobility to those who do not have access to a car, not to reduce traffic congestion. As such he believes that agencies should seek to obtain maximum value for every dollar of taxes and fees expended, using whatever transportation choices maximize ridership. He believes that competitive approaches (principally competitive contracting and competitive tendering) are most effective in this regard.

Cox's transport site "The Public Purpose" claims it is not opposed to urban rail, but many of Cox's opponents strongly disagree. It instead argues that it is opposed to waste. The site claims that it would cost less to lease every new light-rail rider a luxury car than to build light-rail projects themselves; this has entered the planning lexicon as the "Jaguar Argument." He has suggested a correlation between personal mobility and income. He says public transportation does a "good job of getting people downtown and serving the low-income poor moving around the core, but it can't do any more than that." In response, representatives of the Sierra Club have called Wendell Cox an "itinerant anti-public transportation gun-for-hire."

His more recent transport activities oppose the claim that road congestion reduction is obtained from improving urban mass transit. Among other things, he claims his aim is to improve urban mobility through performance programs that obtain the greatest reduction in travel-delay hours for the public funding available. Cox claims to be "'pro-choice' with respect to urban development," and asserts that "people should be allowed to live and work where they like," consistent with the Lone Mountain Compact, of which he was a signatory.