Civic Groups requested that a lawsuit be reopened on the basis of faulty ridership and revenue analysis not previously made public by the California High Speed Rail Authority. The petition alleges that the ridership projections used by the Authority as the basis of its selection of the Pacheco Pass route did not come from the ridership model that had been peer-reviewed and fully documented.
The California Rail Foundation (CRF), Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund (TRANSDEF) and Planning and Conversation League (PCL) combined with the cities of Atherton and Menlo Park filed a legal action seeking to reopen the Court's decision on their 2008 challenge to the Bay Area-Central Valley Environmental Impact Report issued by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), based on discovery of the new facts in the case.
David Schonbrunn, president of TRANSDEF said, "They've [High Speed Rail Authority] been playing hide the ball, "a model was peer reviewed and documented but that was not the model used to generate ridership numbers." Schonbrunn continued, "We don't know what motivation led to the undocumented changes to the model-- whether it was innocent negligence combined with time and budget pressure or whether there was intent to "game" the process to come out with a predetermined result." But in a more candid moment on local tv, Schonbrunn said "Our expert has concluded that the model was jimmied to come out with higher Ridership for Pacheco than it should have."
Why is this important? Schonbrunn thinks an "honest model will call for fewer trains which means a less expensive system with lower impacts. This will have a direct bearing on the number of tracks required and the size of stations." In addition it should be noted, these same environmental organizations unveiled a new Altamont alternative for CHSRA to consider, in time to be filed for the Bay Area to Central Valley Program Level EIR comment period which ended April 26the.
" It turns out that all the emails from the critical period of Winter and Spring in 2007, have been erased, leaving no records of how these changes come about. We believe that the seriousness of these acts, leading to the massive expenditure of public funds needs to be investigated to determine whether wrong doing was occurred. Because the Attorney General represents the Authority, they would have a conflict in investigating their client, therefore we are asking for the appointment of a special prosecutor independent of the attorney general to review this matter."
There are more questions than answers besides the obvious one, "what the heck happened here?"But here are a few that come to mind:
- Was it deliberate manipulation or was it ignorance and carelessness or both?
- Who had access to the model after it was delivered by Cambridge Systematics, the developer of the model?
- The consultant contracted with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). High Speed Rail Authority was named as part of the project team to have access to the model? How about HSR's contractors?
- What is the relationship between MTC and High Speed Rail Authority?
- Who had the knowledge to make the highly technical changes that would affect key outcomes?
- Who had something to gain from particular outcomes?
- Why did Cambridge Systematics at first deny responsibility for the model issues (highly unusual), only to take full responsibility a few months later? The contract indemnifies MTC against any legal action regarding any negligent or wrongful act or omission making this potentially a very expensive admission.
Bigger questions:
- UC Berkeley Transportation Institute will come out shortly with an analysis of a ridership model as well. If two independent analyses agree the data is unequivocally flawed, does this invalidate the November 2008 vote and require the High Speed Rail to go back to the drawing board?
- Will there be enough riders to support a High Speed Rail Program?
- Can a scaled down system be built and sustained without ridership or revenue guarantees, which are prohibited by Prop 1A?
- What other transportation Planning have used this model and how are they affected?
This is a highly technical subject but in future articles, I will attempt to simplify key points in the ridership model analysis and present them a little at a time. Here is the link for the complete information on the lawsuit with supporting documentation. http://www.transdef.org
(Click on High-Speed Rail, then Ridership Challenge)
Comments
I would hope our governor would step in and do the right thing here. It appears that there are some people who are the caretakers of this project who are trying to force a decision with data that is highly suspect if not totally bogus.
Governor S please step in.
Kevin Tighe
Nice article. As a public transit Examiner, I applaud your research. I would go further than anyone else and suggest that the question is: who owns the vacant lands that might be developed if a high-speed rail station is plunked in Pacheco? It is an act of insanity to fight Atherton and Menlo Park when you could avoid them with an Altamont Route.
Not only that, this route could absorb the subsidy now payed to the Altamont Commuter Express (ACE)and provide a far better service (this "Express" is slower than a turtle). Side tracks could provide additional stations without slowing down the non-stop service to Stockton and points north or south.
There has got to be some money in it somewhere for someone to fight so hard for what is a patently bad idea.
What is the relative magnitude of the mis-estimation of ridership due to the poor modeling? The legal challenge would look foolish if the numbers are wrong by just a few percent. Have the challengers estimated how much the numbers would change if the modeling were done right?
Bill,
You asked about quantifying the mistakes. There are two different classes of mistakes.
One set affects the relative Pacheco and Altamont ridership. According to numbers from the ridership study itself, the trip-splitting penalty was 20 million riders, or twice that of the entire ridership of the Northeast Corridor. We have more details about this at our website calhsr (look under resources->ridership forecast-> scoping comments (sorry no link, rules of this site)
Another set of issues is about the ridership levels. Our best guess is ridership is overestimated by 2 to 3x.
As a publication that espouses unbridled private enterprise, by nature, the Examiner objects to public transportation spending. As such, any article on a subject such as this is skewed by it's political editorial bent.
Jim this is nothing more than some nimbys(yes she lives by the tracks) blog..every article has a anti HSR slant its only news becuase this web site but a news pointer on it
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