Sources:  SCMAGLEV trips interpolated from figures on forecast ridership in 2030 and 2045 (Camden Yards) in Table 4.2-3 of DEIS.  Acela trips from NEC FUTURE Final EIS, Volume 2, Appendix B.08.

The Acela ridership figures are those estimated under various investment scenarios in the rail service in the Northeast Corridor.  NEC FUTURE examined a “No Action” scenario with just minimal investments, and then various alternative investment levels to produce increasingly capable services.  Alternative 3 (of which there were four sub-variants, but all addressing alternative investments between New York and Boston and thus not affecting directly the Washington-Baltimore route) would upgrade Acela service to the extent that it would go between Baltimore and Washington in just 20 minutes.  This would be very close to the 15 minutes for the SCMAGLEV.  Yet even with such a comparable service, the SCMAGLEV DEIS is forecasting that its service would carry 727 times as many riders as what Amtrak has forecast for its Acela service (in a scenario where there is no SCMAGLEV).  This is complete nonsense.

To be clear, I would stress again that the forecast future Acela ridership figures are a scenario under various possible investment programs by Amtrak.  The investment program in Alternative 3 would upgrade Acela service to a degree where the Baltimore – Washington trip (with a stop at BWI) would take just 20 minutes.  The NEC FUTURE study forecasts that in such a scenario the Baltimore-Washington ridership on Acela would total a bit over 31,000 trips in the year 2040.  In contrast, the DEIS for the SCMAGLEV forecasts that there would in that year be close to 23 million trips taken on the similar SCMAGLEV service, requiring 15 minutes to make such a trip.  Such a disparity makes no sense.

C.  How Could the Forecasts be so Wrong?

A well-known consulting firm, Louis Berger, prepared the ridership forecasts, and their “Final Ridership Report” dated November 8, 2018, referenced above, provides an overview on the approach they took.  Unfortunately, while I appreciate that the project sponsor provided a link to this report along with the rest of the DEIS (I had asked for this, having seen references to it in the DEIS), the report that was posted had significant sections redacted.  Due to those redactions, and possibly also limitations in what the full report itself might have included (such as summaries of the underlying data), it is impossible to say for sure why the forecasts of SCMAGLEV ridership were close to three orders of magnitude greater than what ridership has been and is expected to be on comparable Acela service.

Thus I can only speculate.  But there are several indications of what may have led the SCMAGLEV estimates to be so out of line with ridership on a service that is at least broadly comparable.  Specifically:

1)  As noted above, there were apparent problems in assembling existing data on rail ridership for the Baltimore-Washington market, in particular for the Acela.  The ridership numbers for the Acela in the DEIS were more than eight times higher in their base year (2017) than what Amtrak had in an only slightly earlier base year (2013).  The ridership numbers on Amtrak Regional trains (for Baltimore-Washington riders) were closer but still substantially different:  409,671 in Table D.4-45 of the DEIS (for 2017), vs. 172,151 in NEC FUTURE (for 2013).

Table D.4-45 states that its source for this data on rail ridership is a Table 3-10 in the Final Ridership Report of November 8, 2018.  But as noted previously, such a table is not there – it was either never there or it was redacted.  Thus it is impossible to determine why their figures differ so much from those of Amtrak.  But the differences for the Acela figures (more than a factor of eight) are huge, i.e. close to an order of magnitude by itself.  While it is impossible to say for sure, my guess (as noted above) is that the Acela ridership numbers in the DEIS included travelers whose trip began, or would end, in destinations north of Baltimore, who then traveled through Baltimore on their way to, or from, Washington, DC.  But such travelers are not part of the market the SCMAGLEV would serve.

2)  In modeling the choice those traveling between Baltimore and Washington would have between SCMAGLEV and alternatives, the analysts collapsed all the train options (Acela, Amtrak Regional, and MARC) into one.  See page 61 of the Ridership Report.  They create a weighted average for a single “train” alternative, and they note that since (in their figures) MARC ridership makes up almost 90% of the rail market, the weighted averages for travel time and the fare will be essentially that of MARC.

Thus they never looked at Acela as an alternative, with a service level not far from that of SCMAGLEV.  Nor do they even consider the question of why so many MARC riders (67.5% of MARC riders in 2045 if the Camden Yards option is chosen – see page D-56 of Appendix D-4 of the DEIS) are forecast to divert to the SCMAGLEV, but are not doing so now (nor in the future) to Acela.  According to Table D-45 of Appendix D.4 of the DEIS, in their data for their 2017 base year, there are 28 times as many MARC riders as on Acela between downtown Baltimore and downtown Washington, and 20 times as many with those going to and from the BWI stop included.  Evidently, they do not find the Acela option attractive.  Why should they then find the SCMAGLEV train attractive?

3)  The answer as to why MARC riders have not chosen to ride on the Acela almost certainly has something to do with the difference in the fares.  A round-trip on MARC costs $16 a day.  A round trip on Acela costs, according to the DEIS, an average of $104 a day.  That is not a small difference.  For someone commuting 5 days a week and 50 weeks a year (or 250 days a year), the annual cost on MARC would be $4,000 but $26,000 a year on the Acela.  And it would be an even higher $30,000 a year on the SCMAGLEV (based on an average fare of $120 for a round trip), and $40,000 a year ($160 a day) at peak hours (which would cover the times commuters would normally use).  Even for those moderately well off, $40,000 a year for commuting would be a significant expense, and not an attractive alternative to MARC with its cost of just one-tenth of this.

If such costs were properly taken into account in the forecasting model, why did it nonetheless predict that most MARC riders would switch to the SCMAGLEV?  This is not fully clear as the model details were not presented in the redacted report, but note that the modelers assigned high dollar amounts for the time value of money ($31.00 to $46.50 for commuters and other non-business travel, and $50.60 to $75.80 for business travel – see page 53 of the Ridership Report).  However, even at such high values, the numbers do not appear to be consistent.  Taking a SCMAGLEV (15 minute trip) rather than MARC (60 minutes) would save 45 minutes each way or 1 1/2 hours a day.  Only at the very high end value of time for business travelers (of $75.80 per hour, or $113.70 for 1 1/2 hours) would this value of time offset the fare difference of $104 (using the average SCMAGLEV fare of $120 minus the MARC fare of $16).  And even that would not suffice for travelers at peak hours (with its SCMAGLEV fare of $160).

But there is also a more basic problem.  It is wrong to assume that travelers on MARC treat their 60 minutes on the train as all wasted time.  They can read, do some work, check their emails, get some sleep, or plan their day.  The presumption that they would pay amounts similar to what some might on average earn in an hour based on their annual salaries is simply incorrect.  And as noted above, if it were correct, then one would see many more riders on the Acela than one does (and similarly riders on the Amtrak Regional trains, that require about 40 minutes for the Washington to Baltimore trip, with an average fare of $34 for a round trip).

There is a similar issue for those who drive.  Those who drive do not place a value on the time spent in their cars equal to what they would earn in an hourly equivalent of their regular salary.  They may well want to avoid traffic jams, which are stressful and frustrating for other reasons, but numerous studies have found that a simple value-of-time calculation based on annual salaries does not explain why so many commuters choose to drive.

4)  Data for the forecasting model also came in part from two personal surveys.  One was an in-person survey of travelers encountered on MARC, at either the MARC BWI Station or onboard Penn Line trains, or at BWI airport.  The other was an online internet survey, where they unfortunately redacted out how they chose possible respondents.

But such surveys are unreliable, with answers that depend critically on how the questions are phrased.  The Final Ridership report does not include the questionnaire itself (most such reports would), so one cannot know what bias there might have been in how the questions were worded.  As an example (and admittedly an exaggerated example, to make the point) were the MARC riders simply asked whether they would prefer a much faster, 15 minute, trip?  Or were they asked whether they would pay an extra $104 per day ($144 at peak hours) to ride a service that would save them 45 minutes each way on the train?

But even such willingness to pay questions are notoriously unreliable.  An appropriate follow-up question to a MARC rider saying they would be willing to pay up to an extra $144 a day to ride a SCMAGLEV, would be why are they evidently not now riding the Acela (at an extra $88 a day) for a ride just 15 minutes longer than what it would be on the SCMAGLEV.

One therefore has to be careful in interpreting and using the results from such a survey in forecasting how travelers would behave.  If current choices (e.g. using the MARC rather than the Acela) do not reflect the responses provided, one should be concerned.

5)  Finally, the particular mathematical form used to model the choices the future travelers would make can make a big difference to the findings.  The Final Ridership Report briefly explains (page 53) that it used a multinomial logit model as the basis for its modeling.  Logit functions assign a continuous probability (starting from 0 and rising to 100%) of some event occurring.  In this model, the event is that a traveler going from one travel zone to another will choose to travel via the SCMAGLEV, or not.  The likelihood of choosing to travel via the SCMAGLEV will be depicted as an S-shaped function, starting at zero and then smoothly rising (following the S-shape) until it reaches 100%, depending on, among other factors, what the travel time savings might be.

The results that such a model will predict will depend critically, of course, on the particular parameters chosen.  But the heavily redacted Final Ridership Report does not show what those parameters were nor how they were chosen or possibly estimated, nor even the complete set of variables used in that function.  The report says little (in what remains after the redactions) beyond that they used that functional form.

A feature of such logit models is that while the choices are discrete (one either will ride the SCMAGLEV or will not), it allows for “fuzziness” around the turning points, that recognize that between individuals, even if they confront a similar combination of variables (a combination of cost, travel time, and other measured attributes), some will simply prefer to drive while some will prefer to take the train.  That is how people are.  But then, while a higher share might prefer to take a train (or the SCMAGLEV) when travel times fall (by close to 45 minutes with the SCMAGLEV when compared to their single “train” option that is 90% MARC, and by variable amounts for those who drive depending on the travel zone pairs), how much higher that share will be will depend on the parameters they selected for their logit.

With certain parameters, the responses can be sensitive to even small reductions in travel times, and the predicted resulting shifts then large.  But are those parameters reasonable?  As noted previously, a test would have been whether the model, with the parameters chosen, would have predicted accurately the number of riders actually observed on the Acela trains in the base year.  But it does not appear such a test was done.  At least no such results were reported to test whether the model was validated or not.

Thus there are a number of possible reasons why the forecast ridership on the SCMAGLEV differs so much from what one currently observes for ridership on the Acela, and from what one might reasonably expect Acela ridership to be in the future.  It is not possible to say whether these are indeed the reasons why the SCMAGLEV forecasts are so incredibly out of line with what one observes for the Acela.  There may be, and indeed likely are, other reasons as well.  But due to issues such as those outlined here, one can understand the possible factors behind SCMAGLEV ridership forecasts that deviate so markedly from plausibility.

D.  Conclusion

The ridership forecasts for the SCMAGLEV are vastly over-estimated.  Predicted ridership on the SCMAGLEV is a minimum of two, and up to three, orders of magnitude higher than what has been observed on, and can reasonably be forecast for, the Acela.  One should not be getting predicted ridership that is more than 100 times what one observes on a comparable, existing (and thus knowable), service.

With ridership on the proposed system far less than what the project sponsors have forecast, the case for building the SCMAGLEV collapses.  Operational and maintenance costs would not be covered, much less any possibility of paying back a portion of the billions of dollars spent to build it, nor will the purported economic benefits follow.

However, the harm to the environment will have been done.  Even if the system is then shut down (due to the forecast ridership never materializing), it will not be possible to reverse much of that environmental damage.

The US very much needs to improve its public transit.  It is far too difficult, with resulting harm both to the economy and to the population, to move around in the Baltimore-Washington region.  But fixing this will require a focus on the basic nuts and bolts of operating, maintaining, and investing in the transit systems we have, including the trains and buses.  This might not look as attractive as a magnetically levitating train, but will be of benefit.  And it will be of benefit to the general public – in particular to those who rely on public transit – and not just to a narrow elite that can afford $120 fares.  Money for public transit is scarce.  It should not be wasted on shiny new toys.