Comments on: The Magic Bullet Theory Spawns Another Frivolous Lawsuit

By: adirondacker12800

adirondacker12800 — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:14:50 +0000

It’s not so much the age but the pointlessness of it. I picked the Penn Central because almost everybody who has rummaged around a bit has heard of the Penn Central. Want to go for age how about a round of alternatives for the B&P tunnel? …not for it’s replacements but what they could have built instead…

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:03:28 +0000

Meh. Penn Central is too recent. I’ve started arguments about whether the IND was a good idea.

By: BruceMcF

BruceMcF — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:51:43 +0000

That’s a lame excuse. The CHSRA had about 8-10 months notice that they’d be expected to prepare an updated Business Plan.

What is the relevance of the “notice” that the CHSRA has when the legislature either fails to fund the preparation of the Business plan (2008) or through their general financial incompetence makes it impossible for the CHSRA to fund their operations (2009)?

It is a fairly lame excuse, I agree, in terms of your making excuses for the screwed up legislature of your screwed up state government in your perpetually financial crisis ridden state.

By: BruceMcF

BruceMcF — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:47:27 +0000

You forget that every single one of the alternative model runs in the argument result in the current alignment generating an operating surplus. It is not a near thing, and the substantial questions are how quickly it will reach an operating surplus and how substantial the operating surplus will be. On the one hand, even a 20% gain in potential operating revenue over the Altamont would not make it worthwhile to halt the current project and start over, because that puts that potential operatign surplus many more years out in the future. However, on the one run of the model that is repeated by the HSR obstructionists, that is less than 8% more ridership, and since the average miles per trip of Altamont is lower, there might not even be any potential operating revenue gain even if that particular model run is dead on.

By: lyqwyd

lyqwyd — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:39:09 +0000

I though some of the prop 1a fund were going to be used for improvements that would be of benefit to the Altamont overlay. Am I mistaken?

By: BruceMcF

BruceMcF — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:33:11 +0000

There’s no experience with intercity rail, though some of the “transit” may be some form of local rail systems. Has mostly worked on road projects (but of course that may just be the nature of the jobs on offer).

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:31:01 +0000

Nice. That should take the wind out of NIMBY sails.

By: YesonHSR

YesonHSR — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:26:44 +0000

The SanJose Mercu has a story that it was just a typo..of course the deniers say it does not matter!!!

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:08:32 +0000

By the way: the reason I’m bringing up expertise is that if Marshall were not an expert, one could come up with multiple reasons why he’s making things up. For example, either he or the PA Online article seems to confuse correlation coefficients with regression coefficients. And linear correlation/regression sometimes gives numbers that are clearly wrong at the endpoints of the dataset. The coefficients can be plausible for the range of numbers CAHSR is interested in, while still breaking down as train frequency increases to an hour. When the relationship between two variables is not linear, this can happen very easily – try to come with a linear relationship between height and healthy weight, or ticket cost and ridership.

By: Francis

Francis — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:58:40 +0000

Word. I think that is a huge benefit to California which, to my knowledge, is the first time it has been brought up. The unifying aspect has political advantages far beyond HSR, it might help foster greater cooperation on issues such as water and power which will significantly grow in importance over the years.