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Re: We don;t have to "guess" at ridership.... Some of us took the hard courses......
Author: BOB2
Date: 02-11-2021 - 08:29
LES Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Currently over a million SJ riders per year for
> Merced-South. Adding the new ACE stations and
> service will induce greater ridership. Valley's
> current population increases will ensure more.
> System should be good for at least 2 million post
> pandemic.
>
> An Observer Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I hate to go back to asking dumb questions, but
> > why would someone want to ride to Bakersfield
> from
> > Merced? Ride to college in Merced when you've
> got
> > a perfectly good school in Bakersfield or vice
> > versa? Business trip to Merced, for ???? Going
> to
> > Bakersfield to discuss the sale of oil leases
> in
> > Merced? The mall in Merced is shutting down so
> you
> > need to go to Bakersfield to shop?
We don't have to "guess" at potential ridership....
We actually have fifty years of "observations" to provide us actual "time series" data, on riderhsip, and ridership changes from more frequent service, from faster or slower service, from fare changer. And, we have the underlying data on changes in population demographics, income, education, age, and other variable that affect travel demand.
You see we didn't start with a million trips on that segment, but added services, populations changed, there were fare changess, and reliabilty improvements, and folks factored those into their travel mode choice decision making, and we got there over time....
So we could actually use that data to "model" the likely changes in ridership, from shorter travel times, or more frequent service levels, and from various proposed fare levels, and make "estimates" using that kind of "data", about the liklihood of increased (or decreased) travel demand from these proposed changes in rail travel times and proposed fare levels.
We do actually "know" that travel "costs", like the fares, do have a significant impact on the propensity to travel by various modes. And, we do know that if HSR fares need to be 3 or 4 times higher to cover the much higher marginal costs per mile to operate "super" high speed service, that it would very likely have a negative effect on ridership. An example would be, that if the price of gasoline doubled or tripled, would you be more or less likely to travel more....? And no, these weren't the hardest economics courses I had to take....
Since travel time from SFO to LA was the only planning and design parameter that has been used to design and build this utter fiasco, that kind of in depth analysis to determine what those "trade offs" would be between construction costs, operating costs, and fares to determine the cost most effective rail option to serve the greatest numbers of potential riders, at an operating cost, and fare level when we were planning the "runaway money train", and after twenty years, it would appear we still have not really done so....
-------------------------------------------------------
> Currently over a million SJ riders per year for
> Merced-South. Adding the new ACE stations and
> service will induce greater ridership. Valley's
> current population increases will ensure more.
> System should be good for at least 2 million post
> pandemic.
>
> An Observer Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I hate to go back to asking dumb questions, but
> > why would someone want to ride to Bakersfield
> from
> > Merced? Ride to college in Merced when you've
> got
> > a perfectly good school in Bakersfield or vice
> > versa? Business trip to Merced, for ???? Going
> to
> > Bakersfield to discuss the sale of oil leases
> in
> > Merced? The mall in Merced is shutting down so
> you
> > need to go to Bakersfield to shop?
We don't have to "guess" at potential ridership....
We actually have fifty years of "observations" to provide us actual "time series" data, on riderhsip, and ridership changes from more frequent service, from faster or slower service, from fare changer. And, we have the underlying data on changes in population demographics, income, education, age, and other variable that affect travel demand.
You see we didn't start with a million trips on that segment, but added services, populations changed, there were fare changess, and reliabilty improvements, and folks factored those into their travel mode choice decision making, and we got there over time....
So we could actually use that data to "model" the likely changes in ridership, from shorter travel times, or more frequent service levels, and from various proposed fare levels, and make "estimates" using that kind of "data", about the liklihood of increased (or decreased) travel demand from these proposed changes in rail travel times and proposed fare levels.
We do actually "know" that travel "costs", like the fares, do have a significant impact on the propensity to travel by various modes. And, we do know that if HSR fares need to be 3 or 4 times higher to cover the much higher marginal costs per mile to operate "super" high speed service, that it would very likely have a negative effect on ridership. An example would be, that if the price of gasoline doubled or tripled, would you be more or less likely to travel more....? And no, these weren't the hardest economics courses I had to take....
Since travel time from SFO to LA was the only planning and design parameter that has been used to design and build this utter fiasco, that kind of in depth analysis to determine what those "trade offs" would be between construction costs, operating costs, and fares to determine the cost most effective rail option to serve the greatest numbers of potential riders, at an operating cost, and fare level when we were planning the "runaway money train", and after twenty years, it would appear we still have not really done so....
