Sam1Unfortunately, as pointed out by the Government Accountability Office in its report on high speed rail projects, the proponents tend to overstate the number of riders and revenues that will be generated by their project whilst understating the costs.
I would suspect there are significant political and social differences between the US and other countries to render ridership and cost comparisons almost useless.
The California HSR might be the cleverest way to not spend $2B and make it look like you're actually doing something. I'm starting to doubt whether they will ever be able to ante up their portion to get the $2B.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Generally it is preferable to provide a link to the actual article rather than summarize and put quotes around it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-high-speed-rail-20100701,0,1714268.story
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
So this project seems to be headed down the usual American path. It will eventually cost 4 times what it should have, if it gets built at all, because we have strangled it with studies, hearings, law suits, and bureaucratic nonsense that will cause it to be ten years before the first shovel of dirt is moved.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
schlimm Generally it is preferable to provide a link to the actual article rather than summarize and put quotes around it. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-high-speed-rail-20100701,0,1714268.story
Your are entitled to your views. I disagree.
The quoted points, which were lifted from a recent Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman Publication, captured the essense of the full article. The key point is clear. The estimates of ridership and revenue are unreliable.
oltmanndSam1Unfortunately, as pointed out by the Government Accountability Office in its report on high speed rail projects, the proponents tend to overstate the number of riders and revenues that will be generated by their project whilst understating the costs. They must be talking about projects worldwide. There are none to measure on shore....correct? I would suspect there are significant political and social differences between the US and other countries to render ridership and cost comparisons almost useless. The California HSR might be the cleverest way to not spend $2B and make it look like you're actually doing something. I'm starting to doubt whether they will ever be able to ante up their portion to get the $2B.
It has been about a year since I reviewed the GAO report. As I remember the key points, the auditors visited Germany and France to look at high speed rail in other countries. They also reviewed the documents for the Japanese system. From their observations of these systems, they concluded that high speed rail has not and probably will not be able to cover its full costs. They observed correctly that high speed rail requires a large government capital input.
The auditors reviewed the revenue and ridership projection models for many of the proposed U.S. high speed projects. I cannot remember the exact number. They concluded, based on their analysis of the models, that many of them used numbers that were not well supported. Moreover, they found that some of the models were inconsistent.
Proponents for a course of action, i.e. high speed rail, mergers, acquisitions, etc. tend to wear rose colored glasses. This was true in the case of the Fortune 250 Company where I was employed for decades. Management finally authorized the auditors to look at the models used by the proponents of major projects or contracts to determine whether they made sense. We found in most instances that the project proponents adopted the most optimistic estimates, even when a little scrutiny suggested that achievement of the most optimistic outcome was unlikely.
Clearly, estimating ridership and revenue 20 years out is chancy. Most of the corporate financial and organizational planners that I knew told me that anyone who thinks they can predict more outcomes more than 3 to 5 years with any degree of accuracy is just fooling themselves as well as their clients.
Sam1schlimm Generally it is preferable to provide a link to the actual article rather than summarize and put quotes around it. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-high-speed-rail-20100701,0,1714268.story Your are entitled to your views. I disagree. The quoted points, which were lifted from a recent Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman Publication, captured the essense of the full article. The key point is clear. The estimates of ridership and revenue are unreliable.
There are many good reasons for using the original article, if available. For example, in the actual article, it stated that the projections were:
"The authority estimates that the system would have between 88 million and 117 million passengers a year by 2030. However, under various scenarios offered by the agency, the number of passengers could be as low as 40 million a year."
This is quite a contrast to your summary, which indicates 41 million. You are applying the conclusion of the Berkley study that the numbers are unreliable to this low, outlying figure,. Given that the population of California is expected to be 46 million by 2030 (currently 38 million) , a ridership estimate in which each resident uses the HSR service only one time per year does not seem especially optimistic.
schlimm Sam1 schlimm Generally it is preferable to provide a link to the actual article rather than summarize and put quotes around it. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-high-speed-rail-20100701,0,1714268.story Your are entitled to your views. I disagree. The quoted points, which were lifted from a recent Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman Publication, captured the essense of the full article. The key point is clear. The estimates of ridership and revenue are unreliable. There are many good reasons for using the original article, if available. For example, in the actual article, it stated that the projections were: "The authority estimates that the system would have between 88 million and 117 million passengers a year by 2030. However, under various scenarios offered by the agency, the number of passengers could be as low as 40 million a year." This is quite a contrast to your summary, which indicates 41 million. You are applying the conclusion of the Berkley study that the numbers are unreliable to this low, outlying figure,. Given that the population of California is expected to be 46 million by 2030 (currently 38 million) , a ridership estimate in which each resident uses the HSR service only one time per year does not seem especially optimistic.
Sam1 schlimm Generally it is preferable to provide a link to the actual article rather than summarize and put quotes around it. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-high-speed-rail-20100701,0,1714268.story Your are entitled to your views. I disagree. The quoted points, which were lifted from a recent Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman Publication, captured the essense of the full article. The key point is clear. The estimates of ridership and revenue are unreliable.
It was not my estimate. It was from a summary of the article contained in the BLE&T news letter. Again, the key point is crystal clear. The estimates are suspect, as tends to be the case for all long term estimates.
OK. Here is the actual study in its entirety.
In its conclusion it states this:
"Our main conclusion is that the true confidence bands around the estimates from thesemodels must be very wide. They are probably wide enough to include demand scenarioswhere HSR will lose substantial amounts of money as well as those where it will make ahealthy profit."
As the 41 million figure mentioned in summary article from the BLE newsletter is clearly a lot lower than the other projections mentioned in the LA Times article, it is my contention that the Berkley review is not disputing that lower number.
Also missing from the article is any indication that this is one group of academics (Berkley) critiquing the statistical modeling assumptions of another, rival group (Cambridge/MIT).
Sam1It has been about a year since I reviewed the GAO report. As I remember the key points, the auditors visited Germany and France to look at high speed rail in other countries. They also reviewed the documents for the Japanese system. From their observations of these systems, they concluded that high speed rail has not and probably will not be able to cover its full costs. They observed correctly that high speed rail requires a large government capital input. The auditors reviewed the revenue and ridership projection models for many of the proposed U.S. high speed projects. I cannot remember the exact number. They concluded, based on their analysis of the models, that many of them used numbers that were not well supported. Moreover, they found that some of the models were inconsistent. Proponents for a course of action, i.e. high speed rail, mergers, acquisitions, etc. tend to wear rose colored glasses. This was true in the case of the Fortune 250 Company where I was employed for decades. Management finally authorized the auditors to look at the models used by the proponents of major projects or contracts to determine whether they made sense. We found in most instances that the project proponents adopted the most optimistic estimates, even when a little scrutiny suggested that achievement of the most optimistic outcome was unlikely. Clearly, estimating ridership and revenue 20 years out is chancy. Most of the corporate financial and organizational planners that I knew told me that anyone who thinks they can predict more outcomes more than 3 to 5 years with any degree of accuracy is just fooling themselves as well as their clients.
Sam1 is largely seconded by the French (TGV: What the US should learn from France's high speed train, Trains).
http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2010/07/12/daily5.html
HarveyK400"SNCF could not afford to build the TGV system today...now that...oprators are split from infrastructure owners...."
This should have been an easily predicted outcome when set this arrangement up. It's as if they thought rearranging the deck chairs would magically change the flow of money in and out of the whole system. Only government can go full speed ahead into stupid. (Well, maybe BP, too...)
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