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Originally Posted by Hybrid247
A few things about this. The 7 million riders was touted for the T-O-M section of corridor, which serves a population of about 12-13M. So that's roughly 18-19% of the UK's population, not quite 1/4. However, that actually doesn't have much to do with my reasoning to doubt the 7M figure.
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My concern isn't that you doubted the projection, but rather than you seem (or at least seemed) to reject it. I did notice that your reasoning didn't seem to consider the comparison that I raised, and my intention was to point out that perhaps it should. It shows that there are examples of conventional speed services attracting (greater than) that level of ridership despite the claims from some that it's impossible since only full HSR can compete effectively with airlines. The UK may have 5 times the population of Canada's corridor but we can compare the WCML specifically. While the UK is served by multiple frequent mainline rail corridors (East and West Coast Mainlines, Great Western Mainline, Midland Mainline, et al) the WCML being the most important mainline connecting major metro areas containing about 30 million (but is not the only route connecting most of them). That make the WCML a corridor of about 2.3x the population. So an equivalent percapita ridership would be about 16 million (37/2.3). The UK has ~31% lower auto ownership rates, but also much cheaper flights. Even if we ignore the air aspect and grant that Canada would have 31% lower rail usage percapita due to automobile prevalence, the 16 million would drop to 11 million. Sure the WCML has had frequent service for longer so would have more time to build up patronage and shape travel patterns, so we can drop the ridership by another third. But even after lowering the projected ridership to adjust for all those factors, the resulting number is still so implausibly high that it warrants a "fat chance?"
Fact is, Canada may be a laggard in terms of offering public transportation services, but when reasonable services are offered, we don't fall behind in terms of using them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hybrid247
If you've followed the HFR proposal over the years, you'd notice that much of the purported benefits and costs have significantly changed. Back when VIA was touting 7M riders, they were also touting a Tor-Ott run time of 2.5 hours (!!!) and project cost of $2.5B for just the infrastructure (excluding rolling stock and electrification). If 2.5 hours was actually the possible run-time, then 7 million riders would be far more believable. However, they've since changed the purported run-time to "as low as 3.25 hours" and increased the cost to $4B for just the infrastructure. Not to mention they seem to have dropped the 7M ridership figure for T-O-M and are now touting 9.9M for the entire corridor by 2030.
When you consider that and the rate of service and ridership growth over the years (that I broke down in my earlier post), I think my skepticism is warranted.
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I think that skepticism is great, but skepticism represents neutrality, ie you don't know whether or not to believe an assertion until you receive more evidence. It responds to the assertion of "A equals B" with "how do you know?" However, the response of "no it doesn't" is not skepticism, but rather it's own counter assertion. I think it would be great to see the details in the VIA ridership projections, but until then I think true skepticism (neutrality) is warranted. I don't wish to say that the projected number is accurate or inaccurate, but rather that it isn't implausible and therefore doesn't warrant rejection.