Economics "Expert" reviews T21

[Mark Hennessy]

From the Irish Times

Transport 21 plan flawed, says expert

Ciarán Brennan

Transport 21, the Government's capital investment programme for the transport system over the next 10 years, is a flawed document which lacks published economic analysis to support the large public expenditure it envisages, according to Dr Seán Barrett of the economics department of Trinity College.

"Individual projects are not costed, but bundled to cost €34.4 billion," said Dr Barrett.

"There is no cost benefit analysis. It ignores all the market alternatives, such as how much cheaper bus fares are where you have competition, and it is remarkably sanguine about the huge cost of over-runs on all the construction projects. There is no mechanism in there to get value for money."

It does not take into account the Comptroller and Auditor General's analysis of the large cost over-runs on national road investment between 2000 and 2006, which had a €10.8 billion over-run on an initial cost estimate of €5.6 billion, he said.

In a review of Transport 21, Dr Barrett, said it shows the lack of any evaluation culture in the Department of Transport and its spending agencies.

"You've got to break it into individual projects and say what they will cost and you've got to have much stricter monitoring," he said.

"It misses the criteria for economic effectiveness and efficiency pretty well at every stage, and it is not the kind of thinking that should underpin the new national development plan to be launched next month."

The rail emphasis in Transport 21 lacks economic appraisals of projects such as the Airport-Swords metro, the Tallaght-Ballymun metro, the Lucan Luas and the Dublin interconnector, he said.

Dr Barrett also said that it had no consumer focus. Competitive bus services are invariably cheaper and more frequent than railways, but Transport 21 ignores the unused capacity of quality bus corridors in Dublin but opts for rail-based solutions for 155 million of the 175 million extra passengers it seeks to attract to public transport, he said.

It ignores the low market shares, high costs, declining productivity and declining yields from rail transport, he said.
© 2006 The Irish Times

[TomB]

I have to admit I never thought Sean Barrett was the best bloke in the world after he fined me £50 as Junior Dean for having an unauthorised party on Trinity campus years ago.

But that prejudice aside, I do wish he would stop talking like one of those 18 year-olds with bad haircuts who have just joined the young PDs because their leaving cert economics teacher told them that prices tend to drop under perfect competition.

The important word here is *perfect* competition. Bus services can never be subject to perfect competition because it would be a mess. Sure we need more stringent economic analysis for T21 projects. And we need publication of the analyses that have already been done. But stop saying that buses and competition are a panacea for public transport in Dublin because there's no precedent for that anywhere in the world.

And spare us the leaving cert economics lecture. And if you really don't realise that public transport is a far more complex economic situation than widgets, then maybe you'd better get back to telling students off for having fun. I hear that a certain Mr. Gleeson might have a banned set of fairy lights which you might want to look in to...

[Thomas J Stamp]

Is this his take on the ESRI report I heard about this morning?

Why didnt he look at our costings? It may have saved him some effort.

I mean he could have looked here:

http://platform11.org/transport21/costs.php

[Mark Gleeson]

I'm sick of Sean Barrett

Remember this is the guy who wants to close the entire rail network and sell it off to developers

Of course Dr Barrett gets the train

Of course passenger numbers are up 10% per annum but costs are increasing at a lower rate so the yield is increasing while the cost to the state is reducing. The 70 million extra rail passengers are cost neutral

There is a solid ecomomic evaluation for the Swords metro, I know you can download it off the dail website

[Derek Wheeler]

The producer of the Last Word on Today Fm rang me about this today. I wasn't happy with the comments in relation to rail. Apparently Barry Kenny wasn't happy with it either. The last I heard was that Sean Barret couldn't be contacted to go on air and the piece fell apart.

How a person who condemned the DART as a waste of money, can still get space in a newspaper with irresponsible and blatantly biasedcomments is beyond me. Oh...sorry its not...its the letters after your name that lend credance. In that case Im am hereby known as .......

Derek Wheeler. S.O.T.S.O.S.F.S.C.E.E.

(Sick Of The Same Old ****e From So Called Experts, EXPERT.)

[Mark Hennessy]

The thing is Barrett must have so much time on his hands because he's not producing much material of academic interest to his international peers.
Looking at his publications, it has been over 3 years since he has had work published in an international journal.
So he knows he can drum up a bit of local publicity by a bit of tried and trusted rail bashing.

[Dave]

What age is he? Any chance of him retiring soon?