Peter Callaghan, a reporter for the Minneapolis Post, has figured out that rail transit planners routinely overestimate transit ridership. He calls this the Pickrell Effect, after US DOT researcher Don Pickrell, whose 1990 report found that most rail projects underestimated costs and overestimated ridership.
(Callaghan doesn’t mention the other Pickrell Effect, which is that government employees who report such shenanigans are likely to be sent to the local equivalent of Siberia. For his effort, Pickrell was told by a Deputy Secretary of Transportation that he would never be allowed to work on a transit study again.)
Callaghan does say that Pickrell’s study led to “more scrutiny” by the Federal Transit Administration, resulting in “a measurable improvement in forecasts, with mixed results.” Which is it: an improvement or mixed results? Callaghan says that a 2003 FTA study found that, of 19 projects since the Pickrell report, “only” eleven greatly overestimated ridership while eight came within 20 percent of ridership estimates.
Similarly in case of heart patients or order discount viagra other such chronic issue, it is best to be a bit cautious. They were assessed five years later. viagra on line It would be no different had Barack Obama won no votes in india viagra online the state. An un-prescribed dosage may cause undesired body reactions and may develop the tendencies like headache, dizziness, upset stomach, diarrhea, shortness of breath, muscle pain, back pain or viagra properien seizure. Calling this a “measurable improvement” is pretty generous, especially since Callaghan ignored or did not know about other FTA studies of ridership forecasts. As the Antiplanner showed a few months ago, projects that opened in the 2000s were no more likely to have accurate ridership than projects in the 1980s.
The 1980s projects studied by Pickrell had ridership overestimates averaging 69 percent. Projects in the 1990s that would have been in the report cited by Callaghan had overestimates averaging 61 percent, not much of an improvement. Projects opened in the 2000s reported in later FTA reports had overestimates averaging 80 percent, worse than in the 1980s. Projects opened in the last few years had overestimates of just 10 percent, but it is really too soon to tell if those numbers will hold up.
Minneapolis’ Green Line actually came pretty close to its estimated ridership, but whether that can be sustained remains uncertain. However, Minneapolis’ North Star line, which opened just four years earlier, overestimated ridership by almost 90 percent. Any future line will be hit or miss, and it is not too much to say that any ridership projections for proposed new lines should be reduced by 30 to 40 percent at least before they can be considered credible.
Costs are another story: even by the most generous measure, there has been no improvement in these estimates at all over time. Minneapolis’ Southwest light-rail line, which is still under consideration, is a case in point: a few years ago, it was supposed to cost $1.2 billion; currently it is up to $2.0 billion and rising.
Of course the original source of the on-line Pickerell report is a scan done by debunkingPortland.com found at http://www.debunkingportland.com/docs/Pickrell(no_text).pdf
This is readily apparent by comping the document’s creation dates. DebunkingPortland decided to not use the OCR text because of errors typically introduced by OCR.
The word “overestimate” is a kind way of saying fraud.
A 90% overestimate is impossible to achieve in any honest way.
I would “estimate” that 90% of the white collar criminals in prison did not have the nerve to commit such blatant fraud.
Planners have also been habitually overestimating highway travel since at least the mid 1990’s.
Huh. Let’s look at the so-called ” State Smart Transportation Initiative”. Their “about me” states:
“The State Smart Transportation Initiative promotes transportation practices that advance environmental sustainability and equitable economic development, while maintaining high standards of governmental efficiency and transparency.”
There is some more meaningless blather at their site but overall this is yet another smart growth group trying desperately to appear not to be a smart growth group.
Also, irony is lost on government planners and the writers of that WaPost article, where a picture of a severely congested highway is used on a article claiming that government is overestimating driving. I should also add that the article is from early 2014, since when driving has greatly rebounded (gee, I am sure Ohai didn’t mean to leave any of that out, it was a honest oversight (/sarcasm)).
OK, sure, but are the numbers wrong?
And what a rebound, too! Adjusted for population growth driving is now only 6% off its 2005 peak. Per capita the US is driving about as much as it did 28 years ago.
And what a rebound, too!
By those standards, let’s look at transit usage, historically:
http://www.cato.org/blog/transit-ridership-falls-2008
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=10380
Oh wait, you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?
“Planners have also been habitually overestimating highway travel since at least the mid 1990’s.’
So you justify a 90% fraudulent figure by saying someone, somewhere, someplace, sometime was a little off in their estimates for highway driving.
You can’t make such an argument if you have any conscience.
You can’t make such an argument if you have any conscience.
Well, he is a government planner.
Wow. One might think that on a blog “dedicated to the sunset of government planning,” merely pointing out that government planners overestimate future highway travel would be a pretty uncontroversial statement–that is unless the readership isn’t really against government planning so much as government planning that doesn’t favor more highways, cars, and sprawl.
Everyone knows it’s far more important to focus on a minor overestimation of travel on a highway than it is to focus on a 200 million a mile boondoggle light rail line that is slower than the buses it replaced and carries fewer people than a 2 lane city arterial.
that doesn’t favor more highways, cars, and sprawl.
“sprawl, highways, cars”, planners’ pejorative code for how people really want to live but planners think they shouldn’t be able to do so.
@antiplanner,
Correction —> it’s “MinnPost” , not Minneapolis Post
The estimate for Metro Transit’s proposed Bottineau Line just jumped 50% to @$1.5 Billion.
http://www.startribune.com/price-tag-increases-by-almost-500-million-for-bottineau-blue-line-lrt/338139341/
It would’ve been hard to screw up the ridership projections for Metro Transit’s new Green Line. It’s a long established corridor long served by frequent local buses ( route 16 ) along with limited stop versions along University Avenue.
”
However, Minneapolis’ North Star line, which opened just four years earlier, overestimated ridership by almost 90 percent.
” ~Anti Planner
The North Star line is a classic case of why these projects shouldn’t be built without have defining what metrics they need to reach to not be shut down. On average, the line is only used by a thousand individuals a day. But that statistic is deceptive.
A large part of Metro Transit’s North Star Line’s total ridership comes from events. In the first half of 2015 one quarter of the ridership occurred on one single day. North Star’s median ridership numbers are beyond dismal.