Second, Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richard explained omitting Anaheim based on the cost of travel time savings:
Electrifying and improving the Los Angeles to Orange County route would cost $6 billion and save only 10 minutes of travel time, said rail authority Chairman Dan Richard.Let's do the math here. The project is justified on travel time savings, and the Chairman has now said that $600 million per minute is too high a cost. At about $70 billion, the current project needs to save more than two hours (116 minutes) to justify the expense if each minute is worth $600 million. Yet Richard says $600 is too high, but by how much? The current (new) business plan offers about 2 hour and 40 minute service from San Francisco to Los Angeles on some routes. (How travel times didn't increase with the blended plan is still a bit of a mystery.) So, can you get from Union Station to San Francisco in less than or equal to 4:40 under current technologies? Yes you can. Flying is faster, even with airport hassles (Try Burbank to Oakland!). Driving is a bit longer, but is much more likely to get you exactly to your destination resulting in similar door to door times.
"Why would we do that, pay $600 million per minute?" he said in an interview Friday.
Using the Chairman's logic that $600 million is too expensive to save a minute, the whole project is too expensive. Time savings do not justify the current business plan. I am legitimately curious how much is the right amount to save a minute. This is a major issue for transport planning, since nearly all new projects are based on increasing travel speeds and saving time.
To illustrate the absurdity of travel time savings, I put together this table of needed time savings for various costs pr minute. I used $600 million as the upper bound, since we know that's too high. I also assume that the project cost is already fixed as are travel times, and use the recent total cost from the business plan.
What this table shows is that as the cost per minute declines, the more minutes you have to save in order to justify the project. The proposed high speed rail project cannot be justified through time savings except when the project spends over half a billion dollars per minute saved. Based on the Chairman's value of a minute at somewhere south of $600 million, I don't see how the SF-LA project is any better than the LA-Anaheim leg. His stated preference of value of time at less than $600 million per minute is belied by his revealed preference for a value of time of about $600 million per minute for the balance of the project.
UPDATE: The table didn't show up when I first posted this, so I added it. To be clear of my point with this post, the entire project costs about $600 million per minute saved, so I don't know why that should prevent continuing to Anaheim. A broader point is that travel time savings is a suspect way to justify a project, but it is the primary way to do so. If Chairman Richard thinks $600 million per minute saved is too much, then the overall cost of the project still has to come down because the time saved will not be sufficient to justify the expense.
UPDATE 2: The data presented in the table assumes that travel time and project cost are held constant (I mentioned this). Since the rail will save about two hours, depending on various factors, the cost per minute of travel time savings is about $600 million, which is said to be too high. Table 2 illustrates what the project should cost at various values of saving one minute. The train will save about 120 minutes. If it is worth $400 million to save a minute of travel time, the project should cost $48 billion. This is a more straightforward way of thinking about the value of time.
UPDATE 2: The data presented in the table assumes that travel time and project cost are held constant (I mentioned this). Since the rail will save about two hours, depending on various factors, the cost per minute of travel time savings is about $600 million, which is said to be too high. Table 2 illustrates what the project should cost at various values of saving one minute. The train will save about 120 minutes. If it is worth $400 million to save a minute of travel time, the project should cost $48 billion. This is a more straightforward way of thinking about the value of time.
3 comments:
Note that you are assuming that there is no need for the new transport capacity. If there is a need for the new transport capacity, one way to go about it is to first work out the least expensive way to add the capacity, and then compare more expensive ways to add the new capacity and see whether they offer benefits that justify the incremental cost.
The HSR has been the cheapest way to add the new capacity. The way that the CHSRA was "solving" problems by just planning to throw more concrete at them was threatening that status, but after Gov. Brown's intervention, the runaway expansion of the project scope seems to have been brought back under control.
So the question is whether the net benefits of providing that intercity transport capacity with air and car oriented infrastructure justifies the extra cost. I'd say that if anything, the net benefits tilt the way of the HSR.
As far as how a blended plan can offer the same trip time ~ the big impact of the blended plan is on trainset capacity. The SF and LA ends were going to be 125mph Rapid Rail sections anyway, with the 220mph bullet train sections between the bookends, and its a bucketload cheaper to upgrade the existing corridor to allow 125mph operation and share it with existing operations than to build miles and miles of viaduct or cut and cover tunnels through LA.
And Judge Kopp's notion that a practical headway of 5 minutes meant 12 trains per hour running each way all day was always absurd. Most successful HSR corridors are more like two to four trains in a peak hour, one to two trains per hour off peak. Even overlaying Sacramento demand on LA demand in San Francisco, and Sacramento demand on San Francisco demand in LA, a capacity to handle six trains per hour seems perfectly adequate. And accomodating intercity six trains on the Express part of a well laid-out Local and Express system is perfectly reasonable ~ a well designed Express corridor can accomodate 18 or more trains when they are running on lock-step schedules.
As far as Anaheim, through running at lower speeds could well mean that the HSR train runs to Anaheim, even though the corridor is not built to support HSR speeds. After all, for the distance between LA Union Station and Anaheim, 79mph is still pretty fast.
I'm not making any assumptions about future capacity. Capacity has to increase for roads and airports regardless of what happens with HSR. Here I am only talking about travel time savings. I suspect most of the expected benefits of HSR can be achieved through conventional train service, though I haven't done any analysis of this or looked at how much of the cost is specific to HSR.
I also think anticipating capacity needs in 40 years is a losing proposition, especially as CAHSR focuses exclusively on personal travel (which is declining) and ignores goods movement (which is increasing). The blended plan may push some freight off rails and onto roads.
That said, my concern with HSR is that it should not be a priority for the state given the expected and hoped for benefits at it's present cost. There are better and cheaper ways to achieve social, environmental and traffic goals.
Well, everyone has different assumptions, thanks for sharing.
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