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Re: DB West- Design Build---woulda, shoulda, coulda
Author: BOB2
Date: 11-16-2017 - 12:33
A lot of things going back to the beginning of the runaway money trains could have been done better, as one who has participated off and on since the inception of this from Project California back in the early 90's....but they weren't.
We could have started by analyzing actual travel demand in the markets to be served, and tested various operational scenarios and investment for the best fit of investment, operating cost, travel times, fares and ridership, to identify actual "alternatives"....and see which ones actually performed best, for the least cost to the taxpayers, and to potential future fare paying customers. It is one of those difficult equations where you have to solve for all of the variables, variations, and tradeoffs affecting demand and cost, and which was never done on this project.
But, instead the "criteria" to justify this "alternative" that we are building today seemed to be that mostly our trains had to be faster than anyone else, regardless of cost, based on no real demand modeling of any kind, and a ludicrous and untested "assumption" that the core demand would be for LAX-SFO.....
Part of that line of BS was based on a completely bogus travel survey done after 9/11 that asked folks waiting at LAX and SFO, in line taking their shoes off, if they would prefer a magical train, that would whisk them to LA faster, without taking their shoes off......to which they all said yes.... Of course, you could have proposed that Scotty would magically beam them to LA, too. And, those passengers would have likely said yes to that, too, using this highly sophisticated and scientific sampling methodology.
The original justification for HSR came from Project California, made up of what appeared to be mostly self interested contractors, and a handful of other notable self professed "visionaries", was that CA would run out of intra-state aviation capacity at our airports, and we would have an aviation "crisis" and the world would end. Which, of course was clearly already shown to be pure bull$#it, even before Kopp and the HSR were even "off the ground". This is because by the mid nineties those numbers for intrastate aviation demand had already flattened out, and then actually fell up to 15% for most of the following two decades, in the face of increased fares, 9/11 security and added travel time, the recession, and things like skype, that began to replace and reduce intrastate air travel by business and government for "meetings" or "training", that is now being done on-line.
Yes those mundane improvements to America's second busiest rail corridor LOSSAN are just "incremental" improvements, to increase service frequencies, increase travel speed, and improve safety. But at least these LOSSAN projects are based on good planning and cost benefit analysis, having had to go through the "checks and balances" of the normal planning processes, and was not the blatant product of self promoting self serving bull$#it, like the CHSRA planning "process".
At least the people in Palmdale could actually use a train, as opposed to a two or three hour commute on the 14, but of course that is all part of the vast evil conspiracy to actually serve voters and tax payers, as opposed to the vast CHSRA contractor welfare scheme and campaign contribution finance racket we have going now.
A DBOM to build what Kopp's visions had so poorly planned would have been hard to sell to many qualified firms.
I was working on public private partnership projects with one of the worlds largest DBOM firms in the world back then, on things like the proposed 710 tunnel under South Pasadena, or an extension of the 118 under Saugus Mountain to the 14 bypassing the 9/14 interchange and Santa Clarita traffic. And, this firm was initially quite interested in the HSR project, as they had done both highway and HSR projects using DBOM, all over the world. But, this firm quickly realized, after hiring some real good lobbying talent, that the state legislature would never produce any meaningful or profitable P-3 franchise opportunities, because of our political "addiction" to campaign contributions for never ending change orders...where quite often, the lowest bidder, suddenly isn't anymore.....
We also did do a "quick and dirty" financial analysis of the Union Station Run through tracks (phase one improvement in the HSR plan. And, we found that it would make a perfect DBOMP-P-3 franchise opportunity to be built with private investment. The cost could easily be repaid with a profit to the DBOM firm, with less than half of the annual operating cost savings the project would produce for LOSSAN and Metrolink.
I've probably come real close to violating the non-disclosure form I signed back then, so I probably shouldn't say much more.....
Yes, we shoulda done a lot of things different....but we didn't, did we?
We could have started by analyzing actual travel demand in the markets to be served, and tested various operational scenarios and investment for the best fit of investment, operating cost, travel times, fares and ridership, to identify actual "alternatives"....and see which ones actually performed best, for the least cost to the taxpayers, and to potential future fare paying customers. It is one of those difficult equations where you have to solve for all of the variables, variations, and tradeoffs affecting demand and cost, and which was never done on this project.
But, instead the "criteria" to justify this "alternative" that we are building today seemed to be that mostly our trains had to be faster than anyone else, regardless of cost, based on no real demand modeling of any kind, and a ludicrous and untested "assumption" that the core demand would be for LAX-SFO.....
Part of that line of BS was based on a completely bogus travel survey done after 9/11 that asked folks waiting at LAX and SFO, in line taking their shoes off, if they would prefer a magical train, that would whisk them to LA faster, without taking their shoes off......to which they all said yes.... Of course, you could have proposed that Scotty would magically beam them to LA, too. And, those passengers would have likely said yes to that, too, using this highly sophisticated and scientific sampling methodology.
The original justification for HSR came from Project California, made up of what appeared to be mostly self interested contractors, and a handful of other notable self professed "visionaries", was that CA would run out of intra-state aviation capacity at our airports, and we would have an aviation "crisis" and the world would end. Which, of course was clearly already shown to be pure bull$#it, even before Kopp and the HSR were even "off the ground". This is because by the mid nineties those numbers for intrastate aviation demand had already flattened out, and then actually fell up to 15% for most of the following two decades, in the face of increased fares, 9/11 security and added travel time, the recession, and things like skype, that began to replace and reduce intrastate air travel by business and government for "meetings" or "training", that is now being done on-line.
Yes those mundane improvements to America's second busiest rail corridor LOSSAN are just "incremental" improvements, to increase service frequencies, increase travel speed, and improve safety. But at least these LOSSAN projects are based on good planning and cost benefit analysis, having had to go through the "checks and balances" of the normal planning processes, and was not the blatant product of self promoting self serving bull$#it, like the CHSRA planning "process".
At least the people in Palmdale could actually use a train, as opposed to a two or three hour commute on the 14, but of course that is all part of the vast evil conspiracy to actually serve voters and tax payers, as opposed to the vast CHSRA contractor welfare scheme and campaign contribution finance racket we have going now.
A DBOM to build what Kopp's visions had so poorly planned would have been hard to sell to many qualified firms.
I was working on public private partnership projects with one of the worlds largest DBOM firms in the world back then, on things like the proposed 710 tunnel under South Pasadena, or an extension of the 118 under Saugus Mountain to the 14 bypassing the 9/14 interchange and Santa Clarita traffic. And, this firm was initially quite interested in the HSR project, as they had done both highway and HSR projects using DBOM, all over the world. But, this firm quickly realized, after hiring some real good lobbying talent, that the state legislature would never produce any meaningful or profitable P-3 franchise opportunities, because of our political "addiction" to campaign contributions for never ending change orders...where quite often, the lowest bidder, suddenly isn't anymore.....
We also did do a "quick and dirty" financial analysis of the Union Station Run through tracks (phase one improvement in the HSR plan. And, we found that it would make a perfect DBOMP-P-3 franchise opportunity to be built with private investment. The cost could easily be repaid with a profit to the DBOM firm, with less than half of the annual operating cost savings the project would produce for LOSSAN and Metrolink.
I've probably come real close to violating the non-disclosure form I signed back then, so I probably shouldn't say much more.....
Yes, we shoulda done a lot of things different....but we didn't, did we?
