In his first of many blogs on the new Ten Transport Consultancy Website, our MD, Richard Fisher looks at the many international opportunities for High Speed Rail.
Firstly, let me welcome you to our new website. The original Ten Transport Website has been up and running since not long after we started the business. Back then, the company was just me, working from home on one client at a time. The growth of the business reflected my own in many ways, and looking back now, the last five years have been incredibly rewarding personally as well as professionally.
Looking forward to the next five years, my team of trusted associates and I have a clear view of the capabilities we have to bring to the market, and we are excited about refining those capabilities as we work with our ever-growing client base. If you want to know what we can do for your business, feel free to get in touch.
Also, thank you to Cynthia Duku-Asamoah for all of her hard work on leading our re-brand and website re-launch. Much of her work has been taking the various components that we have added to the business as we grow, and tuning this into one coherent voice and message, and I am very grateful for both her creative flair and marketing advice.
The website launch is part of our strategy of moving ourselves towards a broader international market, and our first steps will see Ten Transport Consultancy have a presence at the US High Speed Rail Conference in Los Angeles from April 30th to May 2nd this year.
The US Conference comes just a few months after California governor Gavin Newsom curtailed the California High Speed Rail project from San Francisco to San Diego and declared that “the project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long” and the conference takes place in Governor Newsom’s own state.
Much like High Speed 2 in the UK, the California project has run into challenges from people who don’t want a new railway building through their landscape or think the money could be better spent elsewhere. Where the UK differs is that the UK government is fronting the cost of High Speed 2, while in the US, the bulk of funding for the California project is being met by the state itself with only a fraction of the cost being met by the federal government. That might sound a little odd to those of us in Europe, but remember two things; The economy of California, the most prosperous state in the US is about the same size as the United Kingdom’s, and that Americans see federal funding as another way of expanding the control of the federal government into areas of policy which could and should be controlled by the state.
I’m not a transport economist, so when I look at a new railway opportunity, I will look at stats like population growth and job density along the route, but I always come back to asking myself one question “How do people predominantly get around today and what is that market share?”
Well in the case of Los Angeles to San Francisco, there are approximately 200,000 daily car journeys that originate in the Central Valley heading for Bay Area, and on top of that, on average over 96 flights a day operated by five airlines – this is 10th busiest domestic air route in the world and the busiest in the United States. It therefore is only natural to think of High-Speed Rail as the enemy of short-haul aviation, but I have always held a different view…
While airlines advertise the LAX to SFO route as taking between 1hr25 – 1hr30, we all know that by the time you have checked in, queued up, boarded, and then disembarked after landing, the total journey time is at least two and a half hours. Also, you need to consider that airports tend not occupy prime city centre land, so you have to factor in your transit time to and from the station.
Now if High Speed Rail could take you between Downtown LA to Central San Francisco in two and a half hours, it would dramatically impact the airlines flying this route, but instead of putting them out of business, it would actually benefit them as they can use their valuable landing slots at San Francisco and LA International for flights to new, longer distance destinations – bringing businesses that were originally too far away to the region and improving the economy of the state and wider country.
It’s not just California’s economy that would benefit from High Speed Rail. Singapore-Kuala Lumpur is the world's busiest international commercial air route with 84 flights a day operated by seven airlines, yet by land, the distance between these two cities is little over 220 miles.
Like California, the Malaysian government has also recently put a hold on this project with Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad saying the project was too costly in light of the other fiscal pressures on the South East Asian state.
So, are Governor Newsom and Prime Minister Mohamad right to hold off on big high-speed rail projects? Well without wanting to answer a question with a question, you have to ask if they have any other alternative? Continuing to let the roads and airlines take the bulk of passengers isn’t the answer, it causes unnecessary pollution and stifles the economy.
Bringing in high-speed rail should be seen as a necessity in these, and many more locations where cars are causing congestion and being used for long, tiring journeys and airlines are wasting valuable landing slots with short distance travel that can be better served by rail.
I look forward to seeing you all in Los Angeles.
Richard