Sunday Train: Why the CEI is Intrinsically Broken and How to Fix It

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

What is the CEI? It is the "Cost Effectiveness Index", used to evaluate applications for capital improvements in transit. As described by Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic:

In reviewing transit capital projects to fund with New Starts grant money, the Federal Transit Administration evaluates proposals from a variety of perspectives. Since 2005, it has placed an overwhelming focus on one criterion, requiring a medium “cost-effectiveness” rating, which values predicted overall travel time saved by commuters likely to use the new service.

And indeed, it is a puzzle from The Transport Politic which brings this issue back to the fore: a little while back, Yonah described how the CEI was forcing an inferior light rail alignment choice, in Minneapolis, while in the article linked to above, he is arguing against a proposal by two Congressmen to overturn the policy.

The thing is: the Cost Effectiveness Index is not simply a badly put together formula. Rather, it represents a fundamentally flawed assumption under which there is no way to put together an appropriate formula. However, setting that assumption aside would allow a framework to be established that would overcome the limitations of the CEI.


The Specific Problem with the CEI

The Specific Critique of the CEI is presented quite well by Yonah Freemark back in August:

One, the cost-benefit analysis is heavily biased towards the number of annual hours commuters will save by using the new transit system. This means that people who already have longer commutes are seen as more valuable for the FTA than those who choose to live in in-town locations with shorter distances between their residences and workplaces. As a result, transit networks are encouraged to extend out into the suburbs, rather than be densified and reinforced downtown. This policy encourages sprawl; though more suburbanites may find themselves taking transit to work, they won’t be using it to go shopping or out on the weekend. European policies, which generally encourage densification of transit networks in dense, inner-city locations, have produced transit systems that are far better-used per mile compared to American lines.

Two, similarly, the FTA likes speed. As a result, the slightly shorter 3A route is better for commuters in the far-out suburbs hoping to get to jobs downtown. The tunnel planned for route 3C, which ramps up costs exponentially, is only necessary because a surface route would be too slow and make the commutes of people from Eden Prairie slightly longer. Note that a 3C route without the tunnel would have a significantly lower construction cost, but it still wouldn’t meet FTA cost-effectiveness criteria because fewer outer-suburban people would ride it because their trip would be longer.

Three, the formula used by the FTA prefers new riders to old ones. In other words, a person moving from a car to a train is considered more important than a person moving from a bus to a train. This means that people already using transit are disadvantaged and are unlikely to receive upgrades to their transit service. Circuitously, the fact that fewer people use transit in the areas along route 3A (because of their wealth, car-dependence, and sprawling neighborhoods) means that they’re more likely to be considered for funding by the federal government.

Well, so fix it! The problem is, when you start digging into it, each modification has a strong counter-argument. Indeed, is it wrong to give credit to a line for better speed? Is it wrong to give extra credit to a line for attracting new riders? Indeed, it is wrong to give credit to a line for saving more hours to commuters rather than saving fewer hours?

If you step back and look at each of those in isolation, they are quite defensible. The central question is: how can you give weight to those factors while still allowing a local alignment to be designed that best meets local needs, where those generally good things may not be as high a priority as running the alignment through an attractive non-commute destination to provide stronger off-peak ridership.


The General Problem With the Cost Effectiveness Index

Its easy to so got lost in the details of the debate over the details of what is in the CEI that we lose sight of a more basic question: is any single index number going to be right for identifying all of the most worthwhile projects?

And the answer to the basic question is: of course not. A new transit project is an addition to an existing transport system, which is a structured collection of component parts. And that transport system is a subsystem in the local economic system.

There is no conceivable way to formulate any index that will pick the best new transit project for every different transport system in every different local economy in the country. If it picks the best alignment for Minneapolis, it will go awry somewhere else. The actual weight of the different facets of new transport infrastructure depends on the system in which it is to be placed.

But why would anybody imagine that there is a single index number that can pick out "the" right projects? Well, its not a surprising assumption in mainstream economics, which relies upon the fiction of "utility" based decision making, because it allows us to quite accurate in our predictions of what would happen in an entirely different universe where the people in the economy were not human beings.

But its a silly thing to just assume that such a surprising thing is possible in this case. So unless and until someone does present the formula which is accepted by all observers as picking out the very best projects in each of the various big cities, small cities, suburbs and rural areas of this country, there's no reason to believe there is any one index number that gets it right more often than not.


A Particular Solution to Fixing It

The reason that some bureaucrat was told, "make up an index number" was an effort to provide a means for selecting projects that was not entirely based on political clout. But when we accept that no one number can be all things to all people, that does not mean we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Say that we want to encourage construction of systems that save energy. And we want to encourage construction of systems that reduce emissions of CO2. And we want to encourage construction of systems that provide alternatives to suburban automotive commutes. And we want to encourage construction of systems that attract people to make a large number of rides. And we want to encourage construction of systems that promote economic development in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Once we abandon the effort to build a single index number, we actually simplify the formula making process. For energy efficiency, use energy saved per dollar. For reducing CO2 emissions, tons of CO2 emissions saved per dollar. For suburban commutes, peak-hour passenger miles per dollar. For attracting a large number of ride, rides per dollar. There could be six to eight different "good things".

Then, instead of putting all these quite distinctive goals into some arbitrary index, rank the applicants against each goal. For each goal, provide a certain pot of money to distribute and a maximum percentage of the system cost it can contribute. For example, energy saving can contribute 30%, CO2 emissions reduction 30%, suburban commutes 20%, ridership 20%, supporting economic development in (some already Federally designated) disadvantage neighborhood 20%.

Each system can obtain up to 80% of its cost - depending on how it ranks on a range of measures. However, unlike the existing CEI formula or any alternative CEI index, which is biased toward some particular type of system which is most useful to some particular type of local economy ... local communities can look at the range of goals being funded, and design a system that does an excellent job in serving some of those goals.

And ranking applications on each goal is a self-balancing system. If some goals are being less well served ... there is an extra incentive to try to do a better job of serving that goal, in order to win that slice of funding.


So, that fixes it, does it?

Of course, this is just one part of the problem. The bigger task might seem to be getting an adequate amount of money allocated to these projects in the first place.

Still, first things first. The system of ranking against distinct goals and allocating funding "slices" is one where it is far easier to ensure a wider range of communities will benefit from access to a larger pool of money. And that is critical to making sure that the benefits both cross urban/rural divides, but, sometimes even more critically, are seen to cross urban/rural divides.

If we are going to get the level of investment in sustainable transport that our nation will be needing in the two decades ahead - it cannot be seen as a "cities only" issue.

And so its an important innovation if we can break the funding regime free of the shackles of the "one size fits all" Cost Effectiveness Index.


And now, the headline act, Midnight Oil, with Dreamworld

Sunday Train: Rescuing the Innocent Amtrak Numbers from SubsidyScope

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

A few weeks back, SubsidyScope, "launched by The Pew Charitable Trusts, aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy", pursued its mandate into transport subsidies, coming out with a study with the headline figure of $32 subsidy per passenger for Amtrak.

Why Amtrak? Why not provide a headline figure on federal subsidy per motorist or airplane passenger? Critics of the report suggest that the answer is simple - consider, for instance, Charleston WV mayor Danny Jones:

Jones admits Amtrak relies heavily on subsidies, but so do other modes of transportation, he said.

"I think it's just easier to see how much of it's subsidized with Amtrak," he said.

And there is a lot of merit in that. Further, SubsidyScope is not focusing on Government subsidy, but on Federal subsidy. Not only is it harder to analyze government subsidies to driving and flying, given how many direct and indirect subsidies there are to take into account - but many of the subsidies are at the state and local government level, so for SubsidyScope's purposes they "don't count".

Even granting the grossly flawed mandate of looking at government subsidy without considering social benefit and of looking at only the Federal portion of that subsidy - SubsidyScope's analysis have a further glaring flaw, in that they do an entirely static analysis. This was pointed out shortly after the release of the study by Robert Cruickshank at the California HSR blog in his post of 27 October, 2009, How Much Per Driver Did US Freeways Lose?:

The number one flaw of the Pew report, by far, is it does not compare 2008 numbers to previous years. The report merely examines Amtrak route performance in 2008 alone. As you all remember, 2008 was a rather interesting year for American transportation. Most passenger trains - from Amtrak to the local subways and streetcars - experienced significant spikes in ridership as a result of the spike in gas prices.

Any study of 2008 passenger rail that does not take into account these effects is not credible. At all. And a study that doesn't even compare to past years is a joke.

Robert Cruickshank uses information from the Capital Corridor Joint Power Authority to show that even before the spike in ridership due to the Oil Price Shock in 2008, a 100% increase in state subsidy over the past decade has been met by a 269% increase in ridership, with four times the number of trains and the state subsidy per passenger mile dropping from $0.33 to $0.18.

Of course, the SubsidyScope analysis further confuses the issue by headlining subsidy per passenger, rather than subsidy per passenger-mile. This is, of course, absurd: it treats trips from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, from Washington DC to New York, and from Chicago to Seattle as each delivering identical "travel" benefit.

Indeed, Amtrak's figures themselves (p. 11, right) reveal that Federal subsidies are a declining share of Amtrak revenue.


Focusing on the Amtrak Routes

SubsidyScope extends its analysis to routes by by taking Amtrak figures on route performance, and then allocating costs that are not allocated by Amtrak to the routes, with a principle cost being depreciation.

The way that Subsidyscope does this is by working out the total unallocated costs, dividing by the number of passengers, and subtracting those from the per passenger profit/loss derived from Amtrak route information.

That is, if one passenger travels from Chicago to Fargo, North Dakota, Mayor Jones travels from Charleston WV to Chicago, and a third passenger travels from Providence, Rhode Island to Boston, each of them are considered to be participating in the same depreciation of Amtrak equipment and right of way.

This is, of course, absurd. Some services run in Amtrak corridors, others run in private railroad corridors paying an access fee. Charging depreciation of the Amtrak owned corridor to the passenger where the access fee is included in operating costs is obviously absurd. Charging the same depreciation of Amtrak trains to the passenger between Providence and Boston and the passenger between Chicago and Fargo is just as absurd.

Considering passenger miles instead of just passenger counts is better - indeed, it may be the most reasonable rough estimate for depreciation of Amtrak trains. But it still suffers from the problem of counting the access fee paid to operate on private rail corridors, and then allocating the corridor a share in the depreciation of the rail corridor owned by Amtrak.

Clearly SubsidyScope's analysis is grossly and obviously biased against those routes that run in private corridors and in favor of those that run on Amtrak-owned corridors. It makes a mockery of any pretense of SubsidyScope that it is analyzing the "profit and loss" of specific routes when it makes these capital adjustments.

Indeed, one wonders whether there is an ulterior motive in this gross analytical mistake. For any going concern with some business lines relying on its own infrastructure and others relying on paying access fees for infrastructure owned by someone else - just spreading depreciation uniformly between the different business lines is either gross incompetence or an effort at deliberate deception.

Not having any information to the contrary, I will make the charitable assumption, and presume that SubsidyScope is merely being lazy and grossly incompetent in their adjustment for depreciation.

Whether ascribed to incompetence or to malice, Subsidyscope's analysis is clearly useless for improving our understanding of rail capital cost issues. However, this does not mean the analysis is entirely useless. They do collect the Amtrak route information on operating revenue per corridor and match it up with profit/loss per corridor prior to engaging in their absurd gymnastics in allocating depreciation.

That means that they have collected information that can be used to infer operating recovery ratios by route - that is, the ratio of operating revenues to operating costs (Amtrak's "operating ratio" is cost/revenue, rather than revenue/cost).


Pity the poor numbers, they didn't make SubsidyScope do it

So this is a boring old data report posting. I earnestly apologize for that, but after grasping what a hatchet job SubsidyScope did in terms of their reporting on profit/loss on a per line basis, I just had to go in and see what I could do to recover some information from their shambles.

With respect to operating recovery, there is one flaw inherited from the slanted frame within which SubsidyScope operates. Since they ignore state and local subsidies, that means they treat state subsidies for state-subsidized services as part of revenues. For purposes of computing operating ratios, they should be excluded.

Now, I am going to do something similar to what I have just blasted SubsidyScope for doing, and do a simple pro-rata allocation of the total state subsidy share of state corridor route revenues to each state corridor route. In my defense, I will say:

• first, I know this is less than ideal, while SubsidyScope writes up a much more egregious pro-rata allocation as if it gives a precise answer;
  
• second, if anyone has the specific subsidies on a specific corridor, I will happily enter it into that corridor, and adjust the balance of pro-rata shares to reflect that; and,
  
• I am doing this analysis for free on a couple of Sunday afternoons, while someone got paid to make this kind of rough, back of the envelope calculation for SubsidyScope
  

If you are looking for something over and above looking at the operating ratios that I have rescued from SubsidyScope's numbers abuse - well, I hope you have already found it. The balance of this post is just a glance at these numbers.


The Northeast Corridor

The Northeast Corridor trains stand on their own. Of course, when running on track owned by Amtrak, access fees will be lower - and at the same time, this is where the bulk of capital depreciation on corridor infrastructure itself will be located. Still, according to SubsidyScope's figures, the entire Northeast Corridor yields an operating surplus.

The tables are set up with routes with operating recovery ratios at or above the total for the group in the left hand column, and those below the group's operating recovery ratio in the right hand column.

Northeast Corridor	Op Ratio	Northeast Corridor	Op Ratio
NEC Overall	158%
Acela	183%	NE Regional	139%

The State Corridor and State-Subsidized Routes

Corridor trains include the largest number of services that are eligible for direct replacement with an Emerging/Regional HSR service, as well as services that can be started relatively early in the development of the Steel Interstate system.

The most striking feature that emerges from SubsidyScope's information is the cluster of corridor service that are in the neighborhood of 60% operating recovery. A package of structural improvements - and, obviously improving effective trip speed will be a critical improvement - that can bring a "typical" corridor service from 60% to 100% operating recovery would bring the majority of routes and the corridor services as a whole into or close to an operating surplus.

The reasons for setting up the table into columns relative to the average for the group is for exploring the factors that help explain operating ratio. The table can be split in terms of above and below average length, or frequency, or population per route mile, or population per hour, or average on-time performance, and it can be seen at a glance when a factor tends lines up with the operating ratios. But that analysis will wait for some later set of Sunday afternoons.

While the average operating ratio for the State Corridor trains is not affected, bear in mind that the following involves a pro-rata distribution of state operating subsidies.

Corridor Route	Op Ratio	Corridor Route	Op Ratio
Corridor Services	58%
Chicago-St. Louis IL/MO	79%	Blue Water MI/IL	55%
Newport News DC/VA	77%	Zephyr IL	54%
Carolinian NY/NC	71%	Vermonter VT/DC	54%
Illinois-Saluki IL	70%	Albany-Toronto NY/ONT	54%
Adirondock NY/Quebec	69%	Capital CA	53%
Heartland TX/OK	67%	Piedmont NC	52%
Hiawatha IL/WI	66%	Empire NY	48%
Ethan Allen NY/VT	65%	Missouri River MO	45%
Downeaster ME/MA	64%	Pennsylvanian PA/NY	43%
San Jaoquins CA	61%	Wolverine MI/IL	39%
Keystone PA	61%	Springfield Shuttle MA/CT	32%
Cascades OR/BC	61%	Hoisier State IN/IL	15%
Pere Marquette MI/IL	59%
Pacific Surfliner CA	59%

The Long Distance Services

The long distance services are the ones that can gain the most converting the Strategic Rail Corridor Network into a network of Steel Interstates. Faster and more reliable Electric Rapid Rail service might be more important in terms of reducing cost per mile as in increasing ridership. Wages and salaries are 54% of long distance operating costs, and wages are paid per hour, not per mile - the faster the trip speed, the lower the labor cost per mile. And fuel and utilities is another 17% of operating costs, where electricity is less expensive on an equal-energy basis and electric locomotives are more energy efficient.

The Auto Train stands head and shoulders above the typical long distance route in terms of operating recovery, and would seem likely to have an operating surplus if run on a Steel Interstate.

Of course, our two main long distance transport systems run on operating subsidies, so that it would be biased to expect that long distance trains ought to break even when cars and planes are not expected too. However, even if we expect to continue subsidizing these operations, raising the operating recovery ratios allows us to leverage more transport service with the same level of subsidy. That is, consider a service operating on the basis of 40% service revenue, 60% subsidy. If that same amount of subsidy is maintained, then in terms of operating costs alone:

• 50% operating recovery allows 1.2 times as much service
  
• 60% operating recovery allows 1.5 times as much service
  
• 70% operating recovery allows 2 times as much service
  
• 80% operating recovery allows 3 times as much service
  
• 90% operating recovery allows 6 times as much service
  

I am not sure what combination of fuel prices and service improvements are required to get these services up to operating break-even - or even whether we ought to be targeting operating break-even. However, it seems quite likely that the operations on a Steel Interstate system would allow the majority of the routes below to get into the range of 70% operating recovery.

Long Distance Route	Op Ratio	Long Distance Route	Op Ratio
Long Distance	49%
Auto Train VA/FL	85%	Silver Meteor NY/FL	47%
Empire Builder	61%	Capital Ltd DC/IL	45%
Palmetto NY/GA	55%	Coast Starlight WA/CA	45%
SW Chief IL/CA		Crescent NY/LA	44%
City of New Orleans IL/LA	49%	Texas Eagle IL/TX	43%
		CA Zephyr IL/CA	43%
		Silver Star NY/FL	41%
		Lake Shore Ltd MA|NY/IL	41%
		Cardinal DC/IL	34%
		Sunset Ltd LA/CA	23%

Conclusions

I have few conclusions, other than dismay that Pew would finance work like the work that SubsidyScope has turned out without demanding its money back. However, I do expect that I will be able to take these tables and find the key factors that tend to drive operating recovery up toward the direction of operating break-even.

Midnight Oil - River Runs Red
   Unauthorized Protest Concert at Exxon HQ

Sunday Train: High Speed Rail - The Recruiters

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Note This is a repeat of one of my train diaries from 2007 that I wish to add into the Sunday Train knowledge base. Unless there is major rail news in the next week, Sunday Train next week will be considering the limitations inherited by the recent SubsidyScope report on Amtrack subsidies that they inherited from an uncritical acceptance of the limitations of traditional mainstream marginalist economic theory.

The big knock against high speed rail is, of course, that it does not run door to door. This is, of course, why the passenger air transport market is such a strategic target ... it is an existing fuel-inefficient mode of transport where everyone travels as a pedestrian. And a well designed high speed rail system will deliver the target market among pedestrian travellers from as close or closer to their origin, and drop them off as close or closer to their destination.

But those are not the only passengers that HSR will be catering to. A term I have heard railfans use for this type of activity is "recruiting" patronage, so, after the fold, I step through some of the important current, and potential, recruiters.




Ubiquitious Marginal Recruiter: Da Car

People today in the US normally get to the airport by car, so the first reaction of most people in the US when an airport-substitute becomes available is going to be to drive there.

This means that substantial parking will need to be provided in the vicinity of any outer suburban HSR station, for traditional park-and-ride use of the station.

However, we should never look at a fuel-efficient mode of transport, decide a strategic core market, and then stop there! A substantial benefit of high speed rail is that it brings rail outside of the inner-metropolitan core and through the outer suburbs, where a high speed rail stop can act as a support to a wide range of pro-Energy-Independence local transport.

In the balance of this piece, I am going to assume that about half of the eighth-of-a-mile zone surrounding the HSR station entrances will be devoted to the car ... access, egress, and parking. Often this will be two-level parking with covered walkway access directly to the station, making it easier for the individual park-and-ride users to avoid getting killed by the other park-and-ride users as they access and egress the station parking.

Hopefully, as the mode share of private vehicle use declines over the next two decades, some of the space devoted for car parking can be recaptured for a more intrinsically useful purpose.

Core Recruiters

There are a number of established transport technologies ... though not all of them established in the United States in this particular role ... that are inclined to act as very effective recruiters for a High Speed Rail station, because HSR provides them with an effective complement for the local transport services that they provide.

The five that come to my mind are walking, bicycles, neighborhood electric vehicles, local buses, and local rail (of all sorts).


Core Recruiter: Shanks Mare


The first recruiter is the transport mode called "Registration 11" in Grenada and what by those running the railroads of Oz are mostly thinking of as "self loading freight" ... that is, pedestrians.

The appeal of pedestrians is that they are a core market. A very large number of the people who rely heavily on foot power to get around locally will have a strong preference for the train over any other form of longer distance travel ... so market penetration by the high speed rail service among pedestrians living in the vicinity of a high speed rail station will be very strong.

On the other hand, it would seem as if we could disregard pedestrians in outer suburbia, because nobody in outer suburbia lives within walking distance to anywhere ... ... well, at least, practically nobody (after all, a handful live in small towns that have been swallowed up by outer suburbia).

In urban settings in Oz, where more people are accustomed to walking a few blocks, the high intensity pedestrian recruiting range for a train station is taken to be about a quarter mile, with a lower intensity recruiting range of just over 0.6 of a mile (and, yes, I have done the conversion from metres for you).

A quarter mile radius gives an ideal circle of around 19% of a mile. At 640 acres per square mile, that is about 120 acres within the high intensity recruiting range. With half acre blocks, that's merely 240 households ... with area wasted on streets, less ... with one acre blocks, only 120.

As suggested in Retrofitting Outer Suburbia, the key step in building pedestrian traffic is in actually building places for those pedestrians to live.

Rezone the area around the rail station so that inside an eighth of a mile radius, half of it is mixed ground floor streetfront business, 2/3 floor townhouse residential. Rezone the balance of the quarter mile radius so that it is three story stacked townhouse residential. If a townhouse occupies an eighth of an acre, that is about 1,400 households in the quarter mile to eighth mile ring, surrounding about roughly 120 households in the eighth of a mile radius ... more than 1,500 households in an short walk to the HSR station.

Of course, the zoning does not create the buildings ... building pedestrian traffic will be an ongoing, incremental process, over ten to thirty years, once the zoning is in place, and as the price of energy continues to rise. But permit a suburban village to emerge around a high speed rail stop, and in the energy cost conditions we will be facing over the next twenty years, it will emerge.

It is important to ensure that access to the station is pedestrian friendly ... in part for the direct use of the station by local residents, and in part to maintain the connection between the station and the small commercial precinct surrounding it. This has to be built in from the ground up, and certainly warrants funding as an aspect of the station infrastructure itself.


Core Recruiter: The Bike


To get improved mode share for cycle-and-ride transport, there needs to be infrastructure support. As was discovered in the first bicycle boom at the turn of the last century, effective bicycle transportation requires paved roads ... dirt or gravel roads are not nearly as ineffective. Luckily, most of outer suburbia is equipped with a suitable network of bike paths, connecting to each household in the area ... these bike paths are called "streets". So the infrastructure is already in place.

Some cyclists on arriving at the station will bring their bike with them on the train. However, others will require parking, and a generous amount of both cycle-post parking and cycle lockers must be provided.

The greater range of the bicycle means that it can provide a useful supplement to pedestrian traffic, even if only a relatively small share of the population adopt it. Taking 5 times the pedestrian recruiting range as the core bicycle recruiting range gives a radius of 1.25 miles ... the ring from a quarter to one and a quarter miles is about 4.7 square miles, or 3000 acres. With half acre blocks, that is 6000 households.

Even without infilling, if bicycles can gain a mode share of 5%, then that adds 300 households to the self-powered recruiting range of the station, more than 15% on top of the core pedestrian households ... raising it to over 1,800.

Further, the effective range of the bike is dependent on the strength of the rider. Assuming the same 5:1 ratio for the outer recruiting zone, then the outer recruiting "ring" is 1,600 acress, or 3,200 households, plus, with half acre blocks. If 1% of transport mode share was taken up by these "strong riders", then that would push the effective non-motorized transport market to over 2,000 households.


Core Recruiter: Neighborhood Electric Vehicles


This core recruiter is newer technology than the more than century old bike, and the Shanks Pony from as long as we have been around (how many millenia is, of course, is subject to some debate among the Republican Presidential candidates) ... but in the niche of getting around complexes, sprawling stadium parking lots, and similar tasks, it is a well established technology.

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles have a substantial part of their niche defined by the National Highway Traffice Safety Administration definition of a "low speed vehicle":

low-speed vehicles (as defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) are capable of up to 25 mph. Low-speed vehicles must have seatbelts, windshields, turn signals, headlights, brake lights and other safety equipment that golf cars don't require. NEVs are designed to be used in residential areas with low density traffic and low speed zones. With a top speed of 25 mph, low-speed vehicles can be used on streets with a posted 35 mph speed limit or less.

NEV's are street legal on 35mph or less streets, but unlike bikes are not normally legal to operate on higher speed avenues and highways. This makes it important to ensure that there is access to the train station via a network of 35mph routes.

The train station can encourage the use of NEV's by providing special parking close to the station for ultra-compact vehicles, and providing a charge station were a driver of a NEV can park&plug&ride.

Assume an average operating speed of 20mph, and a core recruiting radius of 15 minutes ... or 5 miles. With half acre blocks, that gives more than 100,000 households in the core recruiting radius. Turn 1% of those on to NEV's, and that is up to 1,000 additional core market households ... turn 5% on, and its up to 5,000.

Variety, of course, is the hallmark of a focus on high energy efficiency, since one-size-fits-all tends to be one-size-wastes-always. Also lying within this general niche are electric bikes and communities including a dedicated alternative path network for golf-carts.


Core Recruiter: Local Bus


Of course, some people are not in a position to walk a quarter mile to the station, and we will be building up both cycle-and-ride and park-plug-and-ride use of the HSR station over a decade or more to get the types of mode shares described in those sections.

Meanwhile, the first resort for providing an alternative to cars in outersuburbia is bus service. From personal observation, this is presently very heavily biased toward a mix of college, very low income, and wheelchair riders, but our experience in the US seems to have been that bus ridership can shift toward the mainstream as gas prices hit unaccustomed levels.

And it is in this respect that local buses and a HSR station can often be the best of friends. Part of the very successful re-introduction of commuter rail to Perth, Australia, was a system of short local bus routes tightly integrated to the service schedule at the local rail station. For some reason, people that would not dream of getting on a bus to go shopping will not blink twice at hopping onto a bus for a five minute ride to the local station.

I'm not sure why the stigma associated with riding the bus is so easily waved off with, "I've got a train to catch". This may be mysteriously connected to the psychology in which someone over the age of 30 riding a bus to get downtown is a failure (to specialized Maggie Thatcher's famous turn of phrase), but a fifty year old in a suit and tie will readily hop on a downtown free circulator bus in distinctive livery to get to a lunchtime eatery.

On the one hand, the local bus has a greater top speed than the NEV ... but on the other hand, there is scheduling leeway required if it is going to arrive reliably in advance of the departing train. So as a rough guestimate, I'm happy to take the 100,000 houses in the radius of the LEV, and aim for a similar 1%-5% mode share in people who would use the bus to reach the HSR station.


Core Recruiter: Local Rail


A major advantage of local rail is that it can often share the HSR station, allowing on-platform transfers between the HSR and local rail. Local rail that does not run on standard rail can normally be integrated comfortably with dedicated transfer stations.

Of course, one of the benefits of local rail is that the local core recruiter net surrounding the HSR station can be replicated around each of the stations of the local rail system:
* Each can be zoned for a donut of higher density stacked townhouse housing surrounding a mixed commercial/residential core
* Each provides the center of a wider ring of cycle-friendly access to the station
* Each provides the target for NEV's in the vicinity
* Each provides an traffic driver and interchange anchor for a system of short, local bus routes.

Of course, the Route Matrix Revolution applies to local rail at the HSR stop as well. If one local rail line is along the corridor that is carrying the HSR, then the HSR station is a natural location for another local rail to intersect from a different line of travel. The local transport centers focused on a local rail station can radiate out from the HSR station in multiple directions.


New Recruiter Technologies

Of course, these are just established technologies. There are a number of new transport systems coming down the pike that could serve as effective recruiters for HSR stations, but there are three that I would like to single out for mention.

Pluggable Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Regular HEV's gain two advantages from the battery-electric component of their drive train. The first is the greater efficiency of running combustion engines at a steady pace, and second is the energy recycling from recapturing energy while breaking that can be used again when re-starting.

Pluggable hybrid electric vehicles also gain from the greater energy efficiency of all-electric traction and from the cost savings available when buying electric power off-peak ... but only for the portion of the journey that takes place on stored electric power.

This means that if the normal drive to the station and back, plus sidetrips, falls within the normal all-electric range of the PHEV, the HSR station offers a natural complement to reliance on the PHEV for local driving. Just as with NEV's, this can be extended further and made sticker by providing park-and-plug-and-ride parking, in which the HSR user would pull in, deposit funds or leave an authorization for the electricity stored by the car, and head off to catch the train.

Aerobus / Elevated Suspended Local Light Rail
I have mentioned the Aerobus system previous, in Retrofitting Outer Suburbia. In essence, the system involves laying light rail on suspension cable, with the vehicle consisting of a passenger compartment suspended below an enclosed pod that contain the motors and wheels. This allows for a suspended vehicle with capital costs similar to a light rail vehicle installed into an already available right of way.

This system never got beyond pilot test status in the West, but its cost advantages and the relative simplicity of crossing water with the Aerobus has won the company two contracts in China ... one in a "Three-Rivers" urban setting, and another to connect an island city with the neighboring mainland.

This is an especially appealing option for providing a local rail system that cuts across the HSR corridor, where there is no suitable Right of Way available. Individual pylons about 600 feet apart provides for the lowest capital costs, but if there are tricky clearances, its possible for individual pylons to be up to 2,000 feet apart.

Running an Aerobus system across a rail corridor would allow an Aerobus island platform to have direct ramp / stairs / escalator and elevator connection to two or more rail platforms underneath. Since it is common for major employment centers like Hospitals, Universities, Shopping Malls and Office parks to be located at some distance from existing rail corridors, and an Aerobus system can provide service closer to the door than the average car in the parking lot.

Rail/Bus
This vehicle, being developed in Japan, functions on the same principle of track maintenance vehicles that can get around track breaks by driving on the road. It has rubber wheels for running on the road, and steel wheels for running on the track. A short access siding would normally be the only new infrastructure required.

This, of course, can get over the passenger home side of the "door to door" equation, allowing a service that a passenger could book to stop in front of their house, to be let off directly at the HSR station platform. It is also appealing for small towns that have grown away from their original rail-orientation ... instead of bringing a new rail line to the people, bring the people to the existing rail line.

On-call mini-bus


This core recruiter was brought to my attention by das monde, who diaried on it on 31 January (2007) in A transport service to reduce CO2 emissions.

The On-Call mini-bus combined the conventional Dial-A-Ride with an on-call taxi service. The conventional dial-a-ride simplified the logistics of the process with notional routes served by the dial-a-ride service and lead times of a day or longer. The On-Call mini-bus uses modern logistics mapping and GPS tracking technology to create the bus route on the fly, in response to demand.

From the user perspective, the next available service or service with a target pick up time will be available from mobile phone or internet, or by conventional telephone ... and the bus service can automatically inform the user of when the service will be picking up by SMS or email.


Your Turn

Now I throw the floor open. What are your ideas for effective Recruiters for HSR system ... and, yes, irrespective of my framing of this as a hypothetical outer-suburban HSR station, you can place your HSR station where you like ... in the middle of downtown, in a traditional cross-roads small town, or even, if you wish, in a tunnel station underneath the main terminal building of the international airport.