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Re: LA SCAX expansion of AVL into Kern County-Joe and I are better than the CHSRA, no doubt about it......
Author: BOB2
Date: 08-26-2018 - 11:26
There are indeed many good rail opportunities.
As, I did spend over half of my 50 years in railroading and transportation economics looking at modeling and travel demand analysis of the aviation, auto, transit and IC rail demand for travel in CA, and observing "our" complex travel behavior to identify the factors and trade offs people perceive and use when making these travel decisions and choices, I just have more direct experience doing it.
There are plenty of folks with good common sense, logic, experience, able make similar observations sampled form their encounters with real life, that seem to get these things pretty well. It doesn't take a PHD in quantum mechanics to figure most of this out. It's not brain surgery...
I've looked at very detailed travel demand models and analysis for rail passenger and HSR from the US and abroad These models use well established variables, and collect data on the costs, travel times, demographics, and existing ridership, to determine how the "price elasticity of demand" will affect the trade offs between speed and fare to determine ridership. These models test different operating scenarios and station scenarios, and compare the results to identify those trade offs.
The CHSRA, despite having and volumes of actual cost, travel time, and travel data for aviation travel demand, auto travel demand, and over 40 years of such data for Amtrak IC has never been able to produce such detailed station by station/station to station ridership forecasts or analysis.
The lack of such detailed modeling by the CGSRA is additionally troubling, in that such analysis is usually critical in identifying service "needs", allowing one to develop optimal design criteria for the expected volumes, the levels of operations, optimal station locations, resulting in more refined operating costs, and fares. Which you then plug back in, until you find the "sweet spot" where those tradeoffs are in "equilibrium". In a proper alternatives analysis process this would allow you to test alternative investment scenarios, cost, speed, access, and fares to find an "optimal" cost benefit trade off and the best investment to meet your travel demands.
Since none of this important work was ever done properly, we CA taxpayers find ourselves, building a $70 billion dollar boondoggle, based on exactly one politically determined criteria, the SFO-LA travel time, to design and build this fiasco. And this, unfortunately appears to be the a criteria which will result in the highest per mile operating cost, and thus (if the fairy tale/miracle about fares covering costs and still having full trains isn't pure bull$#it) highest per mile/km fare of almost any rail system in the world.
So I have absolutely no doubt that Joe Friday (an individual with insightful comments based on logic and experience) and I could very easily do a much better job of identifying our rail needs than the CHSRA has in planning this fiasco. For that matter, in behavioral economic studies, I've seen experiments with chimpanzees who make better economic decisions, than the CHSRA has proven to be capable of....
As, I did spend over half of my 50 years in railroading and transportation economics looking at modeling and travel demand analysis of the aviation, auto, transit and IC rail demand for travel in CA, and observing "our" complex travel behavior to identify the factors and trade offs people perceive and use when making these travel decisions and choices, I just have more direct experience doing it.
There are plenty of folks with good common sense, logic, experience, able make similar observations sampled form their encounters with real life, that seem to get these things pretty well. It doesn't take a PHD in quantum mechanics to figure most of this out. It's not brain surgery...
I've looked at very detailed travel demand models and analysis for rail passenger and HSR from the US and abroad These models use well established variables, and collect data on the costs, travel times, demographics, and existing ridership, to determine how the "price elasticity of demand" will affect the trade offs between speed and fare to determine ridership. These models test different operating scenarios and station scenarios, and compare the results to identify those trade offs.
The CHSRA, despite having and volumes of actual cost, travel time, and travel data for aviation travel demand, auto travel demand, and over 40 years of such data for Amtrak IC has never been able to produce such detailed station by station/station to station ridership forecasts or analysis.
The lack of such detailed modeling by the CGSRA is additionally troubling, in that such analysis is usually critical in identifying service "needs", allowing one to develop optimal design criteria for the expected volumes, the levels of operations, optimal station locations, resulting in more refined operating costs, and fares. Which you then plug back in, until you find the "sweet spot" where those tradeoffs are in "equilibrium". In a proper alternatives analysis process this would allow you to test alternative investment scenarios, cost, speed, access, and fares to find an "optimal" cost benefit trade off and the best investment to meet your travel demands.
Since none of this important work was ever done properly, we CA taxpayers find ourselves, building a $70 billion dollar boondoggle, based on exactly one politically determined criteria, the SFO-LA travel time, to design and build this fiasco. And this, unfortunately appears to be the a criteria which will result in the highest per mile operating cost, and thus (if the fairy tale/miracle about fares covering costs and still having full trains isn't pure bull$#it) highest per mile/km fare of almost any rail system in the world.
So I have absolutely no doubt that Joe Friday (an individual with insightful comments based on logic and experience) and I could very easily do a much better job of identifying our rail needs than the CHSRA has in planning this fiasco. For that matter, in behavioral economic studies, I've seen experiments with chimpanzees who make better economic decisions, than the CHSRA has proven to be capable of....
