A supposed “analysis” of a proposal for high-speed rail between Vancouver, BC and Seattle is full of “glaring and frequent errors” and is more of a “promotional brochure” than a serious analysis, says transportation accountant Tom Rubin in a report published last week by the Washington Policy Center. Rubin’s first clue that the so-called analysis was more like political propaganda was that it was proposing not just any old high-speed rail but ultra high-speed rail — a term, Rubin points out, that has never been previously used but that is defined in the analysis as trains going more than 250 miles per hour.
The second problem Rubin found is that the trains in the proposal didn’t meet this definition, having actual top speeds of 220 miles per hour. Rubin speculates that the company doing the analysis used the term “ultra” to try to distance its proposal from the California debacle, even though that plan was also for trains going at a top speed of 220 miles per hour.
The analysis was prepared by a company called WSP, which itself has earned $666 million on the California project and could reasonably be expecting to earn more if Washington decides to build a high-speed rail line. Rubin suggests that maybe this indicates that the company has a conflict of interest when preparing this analysis. Continue reading
