SDG guidance is used to evaluate California high-speed rail ridership and economic impact forecasts

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just published its report on planning activities of the California High Speed Rail Authority (Authority), who are responsible for developing a high-speed rail system from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin.

The GAO carried out an extensive review of the Authority’s ridership and economic impact forecasts, referring to best practice guidance developed by Steer Davies Gleave in 2011 for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Steer Davies Gleave was commissioned by the OIG to document and recommend best practices for high-speed rail ridership and revenue, operating cost and economic impact forecasts.

To assess the Authority’s ridership and economic impact forecasts, the GAO relied primarily on the reports prepared by Steer Davies Gleave, but they also examined other sources of information and incorporated the views of independent experts.

With regard to the ridership forecasts, the GAO found:

“… the Authority's ridership and revenue forecasts to be reasonable; however, additional updates are necessary to refine the ridership and revenue model for the 2014 business plan. GAO also found the travel-demand-modeling process used to generate these forecasts followed generally accepted travel- demand-modeling practices.”

With regard to the economic impact analysis, the GAO concluded that:

“The Authority did a comprehensive job in identifying the potential economic impacts of the high-speed rail project. This includes identification of user impacts, such as effects on travel time reliability, and non-user impacts, such as effects on highway congestion.”

Jon Bottom, Head of Steer Davies Gleave in the U.S. said:

“We are pleased to see that our work for US-DOT continues to remain a key source of reference for high-speed rail. Our track record in working on high-speed rail projects throughout the world has helped us to lead the way in identifying best practices for ridership, operating costs and economic impact.”

Notes to Editors:

1. GAO report and recommendations: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-304
2. Original US-DOT report: http://www.oig.dot.gov/library-item/5760

About Steer Davies Gleave

Steer Davies Gleave has worked on a wide variety of high-speed rail projects including in Brazil, the UK, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Saudi Arabia and most high-speed rail corridors in the US.