david vartanoff Wrote:
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> Yes, a serious base day service is better. The
> question is whether sparse service will prove
> popular enough to then encourage expanding
> frequencies. If memory serves. the present San
> Joaquin service started as two RTs a day. As to
> SMART, my experience is that the trains are used.

Most of the folks who hired me tended to pay me more for knowing, than for guessing, but obviously that's not always the case in some of these projects...

I tend to prefer to base my assessments on the actual numbers we have for travel behavior changes we have observed, and that many smart folks can actually seem to model with a higher probability of success, like Brightline did, than on guessing.

We actually have vast volumes of travel behavior data and models that can test these things, and show what the reasonable probability of traveler will choose rail (or buses, or planes, or cars...) that for whatever reason it seems are not used to test alternative scenarios for rail ridership tradeoffs in operational capital investments by too many public agencies.

Yes, I believe that the San Joaquin's did restart by operating two or three trains. The experience of LOSSAN service expansion had been somewhat of a "learning experience" back then. But, I remember a presentation back in the early 80's of the Irish State Railways intercity rail "gravity" model, on which they had run LOSSAN, and "go figure", it showed the same result for the service increases in the late 70's and early 80's, as more frequent service was added.
This is not even something we need to re-invent.

So, I just have to ask, should we start all services we've spent millions or even billions on with two trips per day and see how it goes? Is that the strategic service marketing operational plan for the CAHSRA?

This does not appear to be Brightline"s operational and investment strategy for a "cost effectives' service with sufficient market penetration with convenience of departure that sees the need for a 16 train per day schedule just between Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

I think the rolloout of the Connecticut Valley services is a more realistic operating scenario for what it really takes to generate a much higher rate to trips and thus lower passenger mile cost of capital per passenger served.

In "old timey" microeconomics 101 we call increased "productivvity" something that is a result the "economies of scale", as opposed to the modern political "economics" we see on some of the more egregiously irresponsible bloated public sector boondoggles of "build it, and the contractors will come....."