pity arriva can’t get trains to run on time ho hum

What a load of guff. £32bn to trim half an hour of a trip to Birmingham, benefiting no one but contractors, is exactly the type of thing this country does not need.

The thing that’s absolutely vital to making the most of this is that we join Schengen, so we can have through trains from cities all over Britain to the continent, without having to queue for hours so some slow working jobsworth can enter our details in the government’s computer.

The approval of High Speed Rail 2 yesterday was a great announcement for Britain. HS2 will deliver more seats, more trains, more jobs and more growth.

Sorry but this is asinine to the point of early brain death. Taking money from the productive people and wasting it on some White Elephant no one wants and no one will travel on does not create jobs or growth. It destroys jobs. It slows growth. The taxes that will be raised to pay for this absurdity mean that small businesses will close, big businesses will lay people off and new businesses won’t get off the ground. It is beyond asinine.

The publication of the consultation brings certainty to an infrastructure investment of massive national importance.

What is the national importance of getting to Birmingham twenty minutes faster?

* This means that around 79 miles (more than half of the route) will be mitigated by tunnel or cutting”. pp. 98-99, High Speed Rail: investing in Britain’s future – Decision and Next steps.

So passengers won’t even get to see anything on the way? Well that means tourists won’t use it. Tunnels and cuttings means that Wi Fi and other forms of internet connection won’t work. Which means business travellers won’t use it. Which means what? You have people popping down to Harrod’s for some quick shopping and who precisely?

We also welcome the work the engineering teams have done to try and bring down the cost of these options.

Irony?

This project won’t get off the ground. Britain can’t afford it.

“What is the national importance of getting to Birmingham twenty minutes faster?”

Some politicians are fixated on infrastructure improvements as the be all and end all. Part of the appeal of HSR to the minister was probably that it is boring to go home and say to your family “I was competent today, and on course for making the department 2% better this year through a series of incremental improvements”. Being able to look back on something physical provides a bigger sense of satisfaction probably.

We get it all the time in Wales with local business leaders pleading for the taxpayer to improve the rail links with london because if Cardiff isn’t within ‘the magic 2 hours’ we’ll lose out – as if businesses thinking of investing look at the 2 hours 4 minutes it currently takes and think “sod that I can’t be arsed to wait another 4 minutes”. Its far easier for local politicans to jump on the bandwagon and support a big construction project than spend time doing the difficult but necessary work of -say- improving skill levels and promoting local entreprenuership.

What I find slightly bizarre is that people are touting HS2 as a way of re-balancing the economy away from London, and towards the Midlands (and presumably eventually the blasted hinterlands to the North). But if you make it quicker to get from Birmingham to London, then more people will just start commuting to London, where the higher paid jobs are.

After all, the cause of the boom in prosperity in the South East was the construction of commuter train lines in the 19th Century.

Colossal waste of money. Or perhaps not as I’ve no doubt some will be kicked back to the Conservative party in donations from contractors and individual politicians will suddenly be in demand as directors.

It’ll be run under the same model of stinking failure that’s left the existing rail network as a rich man’s toy. Huge subsidies from the taxpayer and rail traveller for a system of complexity it makes Fermat’s last theorem look like the Sun crossword.
Is there really demand for 1000 passengers an hour moving from London to Birmingham and vice versa?
It’ll be fantastic if all you do is move from central London to central Birmingham on expenses but it will make no difference at all to the time taken to get into the centre of these cities. Anyone who’s been through the commuter crawl in Small Heath, the middle ring road or the nightmare of Gravelly Hill, any of which can take up to an hour to do a few miles, isn’t going to be materially affected by a twenty minute time saving on the rail journey.
No one seems exactly sure where the new Birmingham station will be. Curzon Street, Fazeley Street, Moor Street? Anyway it won’t be New Street which is at full capacity. So anyone needing connecting services faces a bit of a walk and timing problems.
Its not Maglev. Prestige rail projects in France, Germany, Japan and China are moving to this technology. Its faster and cheaper. Of course the leaders in the tech are German and Japanese, Britian only had the first fully functioning Maglev line at the NEC in 1984. Another technology it pissed away.

Oh dear.

Rational discussion isn’t on the radar of the trolls today, it it?

Current time taken to travel from Euston to Birmingham: 82 to 84 minutes.

HS2 projected time for same journey: 49 minutes.

Difference: 33 to 35 minutes.

Troll @4 says this is “20 minutes”.

And of course there is no mention of network capacity, so we don’t get to cover potential constraints on existing commuter traffic into London and the West Midlands, and nobody mentions freight, which makes money for The Railway and which also faces constraints if HS2 or equivalent does not go ahead.

That capacity problem doesn’t just affect the West Coast Main Line: already there is part of the East Coast Main Line where some freight trains are barred because there isn’t capacity to run them. Upgrades to these routes, and also to the Midland Main Line, have been assessed and found to have a worse Benefit/Cost Ratio, and that’s without all the disruption: upgrading existing lines is far more expensive than new build. That’s also true of roads.

Instead, we get the background noise of “White elephant”, “Rich man’s toy”, “destroys jobs”, “no one will travel on it”, “no money”, etc etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseam. A project of this kind might be expected to garner serious analysis and comment, but what the clown at @4 has excreted isn’t it.

@2
£32bn is for the whole ‘Y’ network, which will trim 50 minutes from Manchester and Leeds as well as 30 minutes from Brum. Bear in mind that even with the initial section built (cost £17bn) it will cut 30 minutes from journeys to Bormingham AND beyond. Glasgow will be within 4 hours, instead of 4 and a half hours as at present.

@4
Whether anyone will use HS2 or not, it will create jobs during construction. The £17bn will be spent and like all infrastructure projects, that money will be used to pay people and buy things.

The entire history of rail travel over the last 200 years has shown that decreasing journey times (and its 30 minutes less to Birmingham, not 20) not only increases passenger numbers, but boosts the economy in the areas served. If this wasnt the case, then we would still be using the Rocket travelling at 25mph into Euston.

@7
The terminus is planned to be at Curzon Street, the original terminus of the London & Birmingham Railway in the 1830s. Its actually a very short walk from there to either New Street, Moor Street or Snow Hill. The 4 stations are within 500m of each other.

There is the demand. The current trains on the West Coast are being lengethened from 9 coaches to 11, and even these will be at full capacity in the next few years. The West Coast line has been growing passenger numbers even during the recession. We also need to increase pathways for freight traffic, which is currently very restricted, especially on the southern section into London.

HS2 will not only increase this capacity, but also allow towns and cities along the West Coast line, which currently have a very poor service, to have much faster, and more frequent trains to London and other destinations.

I seem to remember similar debates about the value or otherwise of HS1, the environmental impact and so on. It is now built and running. I can now get from my local station (it stops there) to central London in 35 minutes instead of an hour and a quarter. The result of course is that far more people from my area now commute to London. It hasn’t generated much in the way of local jobs, and arguably the drain of talented people to London makes an already depressed area even worse. The benefits of HS2 to local people really need to be considered in the light of the HS1 experience for North Kent.

The headline report in Wednesday’s FT: Doubts over value of HS2 rail project:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f5735892-3bc4-11e1-82d3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1j9Ahts36

“This shows that the traditional measure of value for money of infrastructure schemes – or the cost-benefit ratio – for the first 140 miles of the route from London to Birmingham has dropped from a gain of of £1.60 for every £1 invested, when last calculated in February 2011, to £1.40.”

Given the sad history that large railway projects usually end up costing several times the original estimate, this drop in the estimated cost-benefit ratio is hardly encouraging.

@ 2 David

“What a load of guff. £32bn to trim half an hour of a trip to Birmingham, benefiting no one but contractors, is exactly the type of thing this country does not need.”

Spoken like a true non-resident of Birmingham!

Do you not think all of the people who travel on this line, plus all the people who would do so if it were quicker, would benefit from this? Or do people not count unless they’re you?

@10 – I’m interested in that – are there any reports or studies done that support that argument? One of the propsals we have here in Wales for regeneration of the valleys is the Cardiff Metro, where spending 2.5 billion in reducing the commute to Cardiff from Merthyr from 55 minutes to 40 minutes will apparently turn the valleys into cities of unimagined prosperity. It’s an idea that doesn’t survive any from of scrutiny, but is being heavily marketed by cardiff business partnership and influential lobbyists – hence it has cross party support. It would be good to see some stuff that examines the impacts of HS1 on commuter towns in Kent, as that experience is being used to support the Cardiff metro here (as if Valley residents commuting for call centre jobs in Cardiff is remotely equivelant to the jobs in the city).

Try this from The Economist of 3 September 2011:

The great train robbery
High-speed rail lines rarely pay their way. Britain’s government should ditch its plan to build one
http://www.economist.com/node/21528263

13 Planeshift

Not to my knowledge, although the local councils might have some figures. North Kent doesn’t tend to be studied much. Londoners seem to think no-one lives there.

I would have thought though that a retrospective cost-benefit analysis of HS1, particularly considering the economic impact on the areas through which it passes, would be an obvious exercise for someone to do in relation to the HS2 proposal. If it can be shown to have benefited the areas through which it passes then HS2 might reasonably be considered to have a similar effect. Conversely, if I am right that the effect of HS1 has mostly been to benefit London at the expense of the outlying areas, then HS2 could also be considered to have a similar effect.

SMFS
“Tunnels and cuttings means that Wi Fi and other forms of internet connection won’t work.”

Good lord, this is a joke, right?

I have to be honest I really don’t accept the premise of this article. The principle of High Speed Rail has not been set by any stretch if the imagination.
There are a great deal of unanswered questions.

How cheap/expensive will the tickets be? If they are to be as expensive as suggested, then how is this going to be of great benefit to us all?

Questions have been raised about HS2 if anything leading to a further draining away of money towards the South East. Have these been conclusively answered and refuted?

Could the sums of money involved not be better invested on the rest of our rail infrastructure?

Are comparisons with other European countries such as France really justified, considering the rather different geography (i.e huge expanses of countryside between the cities)?

I get the feeling that HS2 is a big shiny toy for the government and political class to play with. The latest in a long line of colossally expensive infrastructure and national vanity projects that are rather more to do with politics and the interests of particular lobby groups than actual economic development.

I was watching the Midlands news yesterday and a woman on there who was being forced out of her home to make way for the line is only being offered 10% of the value of her property. If that’s true, (and I can’t honestly believe it is, surely?), then something has gone horribly wrong.

I’d also draw your attention to Pete Waterman’s appalling performance on the news the other day. It was abuse and loud voices in place of actual argument. He likes trains, this is a fast train and therefore it’s a good idea. If that is the best that the HS2 lobby have, then they are in serious trouble

@12 Chaise Guevara

I’m a resident of Birmingham but he’s basically right on this.

I don’t think there is a huge clamour of people desperate to go London from Brum or Birmingham to London who can’t because of the journey time. HS2 will make things easier obviously, but when you factor in the expense and the environmental damage I don’t think it’s a price worth paying.

@ 17

“I don’t think there is a huge clamour of people desperate to go London from Brum or Birmingham to London who can’t because of the journey time.”

I don’t think it’s literally true either; I was thinking more in terms of this opening up job opportunities.

“HS2 will make things easier obviously, but when you factor in the expense and the environmental damage I don’t think it’s a price worth paying.”

It is a big expense, but then infrastructure always is. This country suffers from short-termism, so this seems like a positive change. And are you sure this will add up to environmental damage? How many cars do you think it’ll take off the M40?

” I was thinking more in terms of this opening up job opportunities.”

Surely it is cheaper and easier to explore ways of creating jobs within Birmingham rather than assuming salvation lies within making it possible to commute to london.

Furthermore given commuting times also have to factor in distances between home/work and train station (plus waiting times on platforms) how realistic is it? My guess is that for a well paid job, somebody would simply move closer to the workplace (and nobody is going to spend hours commuting just to be a shop assistant).

Here is an article rubbishing the economic assumptions made in the business case. This makes for shocking reading:

http://www.cityam.com/forum/no-recessions-80-years-the-fanciful-world-high-speed-rail-2-s-business-case

@ 19 Planeshift

“Surely it is cheaper and easier to explore ways of creating jobs within Birmingham rather than assuming salvation lies within making it possible to commute to london.”

Yes – if creating jobs was the only benefit I’d say it was poor use of funds.

“Furthermore given commuting times also have to factor in distances between home/work and train station (plus waiting times on platforms) how realistic is it?”

Well, if the train takes half an hour less, it’s half an hour quicker however you look at it.

“My guess is that for a well paid job, somebody would simply move closer to the workplace (and nobody is going to spend hours commuting just to be a shop assistant).”

There are jobs other than “well paid” and “shop assistant”. And people might spend an hour, say, commuting to be a shop assistant (8 years ago I used to drive for almost an hour each way to a job that paid about £4.50/hr), but not an hour and a half.

Also bear in mind that people often have reasons not for moving – what if your partner still works nearby, or all your friends live near you and you’re loath to leave them? If the commute isn’t bearable, this puts people off pursuing the job.

I live in Manchester, which is just over 2 hours from London by train. I don’t imagine many people commute from one to the other as anything other than a temporary solution. If you could cut this down to, say, 1 1/4 hours, you’d probably see far more people working in London but living in Manchester.

Whatever the exact numbers, the longer the commute, the more it puts people off the job. Improving commute times will always make changing/getting jobs easier.

And here is more from the FT rubbishing the case for HS2.

Sorry Tim Fenton, they have used the phrase “white elephant” as well!

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5fc20cfc-3b8e-11e1-bb39-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1j9vP2pAO

I think this project should be a privately financed venture so that the shareholders and not taxpayers take the hit from the predictable cost over-runs.

It happens I knew the GES economists in the Department for Transport who advised the then Labour government in the late 1970s on a proposed project for the Channel Tunnel – they said it wouldn’t pay and the Labour government duly and sensibly backed off.

There was a change of government in May 1979 and Mrs T and President Mitterrand ageed in 1987 after protracted negotiations to approve the channel tunnel project providing, and only providing, the construction work was privately financed in a private venture. This is what happened:

“Shares in Eurotunnel were issued at £3.50 per share on 9 December 1987. By mid-1989 the price had risen to £11.00. Delays and cost overruns led to the share price dropping; during demonstration runs in October 1994 the share price reached an all-time low value. Eurotunnel suspended payment on its debt in September 1995 to avoid bankruptcy. . . A cost benefit analysis of the Channel Tunnel indicated that there were few impacts on the wider economy and few developments associated with the project, and that the British economy would have been better off if the tunnel had not been constructed.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel

In the end, the tunnel got built but the shares in Eurotunnel turned out to be worthless – the conclusions of the economic appraisal of those GES economists in the 1970s was spot on. A privately financed venture for building HS2 would be a good financial model for much the same reasons as it was appropriate for the Channel Tunnel – shareholders will take the hit if the reservations in those leaders in the FT and The Economist turn out to be correct.

@15. Frances_coppola: “Not to my knowledge, although the local councils might have some figures. North Kent doesn’t tend to be studied much. Londoners seem to think no-one lives there.”

That comment, plus arguments that HS2 will make it easier for London-based people to visit “the provinces” make me uneasy. There are arguments why “the provinces” might benefit from HS2 but nobody is putting them forward; is it that people outside London think that the metropolis will be the only beneficiary?

I am aware that if London generates more wealth, we (excluding Scots, imminently ) are all better off. Somehow, and I assume that HS2 will be delivered, we all have to feel a little bit richer, a little bit better.

I am not convinced for or against HS2. I am not convinced that there is a consensus for it on current arguments.

By reports, major hubs tend to benefit the most from new railway links and the biggest hub in the case of the HS2 will be London because of the greater ease of access. Little reflection seems to have gone into the possibility that the outcome of the HS2 may be to increase the north-south divide. If anything, the Bullet Train network in Japan seems to have boosted the size and commercial importance of Tokyo.

Bob, that certainly fits with my – admittedly anecdotal – experience of HS1. I really would like to see some proper studies done into the regional benefits (or otherwise) of high-speed links. The business case for HS2 is lamentably short of evidence.

I am a bondholder in Eurotunnel – inherited the bonds from my uncle. They generate no return at all and there is no prospect of ever getting the money back as far as I can see. I opposed the Channel Tunnel at the time because I didn’t think it would generate the economic benefits that the business case suggested that it would, and so far I have been right. The main beneficiaries of the Channel Tunnel seem to have been the French.

Frances: “Bob, that certainly fits with my – admittedly anecdotal – experience of HS1. I really would like to see some proper studies done into the regional benefits (or otherwise) of high-speed links. The business case for HS2 is lamentably short of evidence.”

Exercises in anticipating the “regional benefits” of extending transport networks, whether road, rail or air, tend to be highly speculative IME and usually relate to invoking the sort of models that economists use to motivate and assess international trade flows such as: (a) Ricardian theory of the benefits from greater specialisation in ‘comparative advantage’ from differences in relative prices/costs; (b) ‘gravity models’ where trade flows depend on relative populations or measures of regional GDP.

In principle, cutting the costs for travelling between two business centres, including the imputed cost of travel time, corresponds to the potential benefits from increased trade flows between countries to be gained by reducing mutual trade barriers such as tariffs.

Some sensible scepticism about supposed regional benefits would be appropriate in this case. If London is so much more accessible as the result of HS2 then maybe more businesses in the regions would come to London for their financial and business services rather than look to regional financial centres, which is what they have tended to do so far because of the travel costs from coming to London. After all, London is reckoned to be one of the premier global financial centres, partly or mainly because of the agglomeration of skills clustered here, so businesses in the regions could see HS2 as creating an opportunity to meet with the “real” experts in London.

It is not self-evident that the economic benefits of HS2 will necessarily accrue to the regions – a perspective which is akin to the reasons that the current Dohar trade round of the WTO has ground to a halt. Governments in emerging market economies are far from convinced that their economies would benefit from greater trade liberalisation.

What those sceptical leaders in the FT and The Economist are suggesting is that the huge costs of implementing HS2 will tend to crowd out many smaller local rail and road projects in the regions which have far better benefit to cost ratios.

@26. Frances_coppola: “I opposed the Channel Tunnel at the time because I didn’t think it would generate the economic benefits that the business case suggested that it would, and so far I have been right.”

Why? The Channel Tunnel was a build to own investment, funded by private capital (including your uncle’s). By its nature, it required parliamentary approval — but that was for the technical exercise, not for the economic venture. If company X wants to drill a hole between Dover and Calais, the French and British governments need to approve it; governments do not guarantee investments in companies who are licensed to drill holes (cf oil drilling).

Incidentally, though, there are now enough Channel Runnel travellers for the initial gamble to work. The initial gamble didn’t work — construction costs were unrealistic — but if I had shares I would keep them for the very, very long term.

8. Tim Fenton

Rational discussion isn’t on the radar of the trolls today, it it?

I don’t know. I don’t notice any here.

Troll @4 says this is “20 minutes”.

Wow. An extra thirteen minutes. Well you got me there Timbo. Amazing.

And of course there is no mention of network capacity, so we don’t get to cover potential constraints on existing commuter traffic into London and the West Midlands, and nobody mentions freight, which makes money for The Railway and which also faces constraints if HS2 or equivalent does not go ahead.

Because the original article did not mention network capacity? I also did not mention the impact it will have on La Nina. Anything else you would like to throw in that was also not mentioned in the original article? No? Sure?

If we want to have a discussion of the impact on network capacity you would have to show this will have an impact and then if it does, that it is a rational way to use our limited funds to reduce that capacity. It might be more sensible to expand more conventional rail options. In fact it is virtually certainly so. But sensible discussions? Who needs them, right Tim?

That capacity problem doesn’t just affect the West Coast Main Line: already there is part of the East Coast Main Line where some freight trains are barred because there isn’t capacity to run them. Upgrades to these routes, and also to the Midland Main Line, have been assessed and found to have a worse Benefit/Cost Ratio, and that’s without all the disruption: upgrading existing lines is far more expensive than new build. That’s also true of roads.

Yes but assessments depends on assumptions. The assumptions used for this as rubbery as hell. You would have to show the same methodology was used.

Instead, we get the background noise of “White elephant”, “Rich man’s toy”, “destroys jobs”, “no one will travel on it”, “no money”, etc etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseam. A project of this kind might be expected to garner serious analysis and comment, but what the clown at @4 has excreted isn’t it.

Entirely reasonably. Given that virtually every project of this sort has turned into a White Elephant. If you think that is background noise, well, we all know and love you Tim. We don’t expect anything else. It is not my job to provide serious analysis is it Timmy? It is my job to reply to the OP. Which I did. If that went above your head, well, as I said, we all know and love you for the person you are Tim.

John Ruddy

Whether anyone will use HS2 or not, it will create jobs during construction. The £17bn will be spent and like all infrastructure projects, that money will be used to pay people and buy things.

Yes but by destroying jobs elsewhere. Money does not grow on trees. If we spend it on this idiocy, it means that other people will not be borrowing to to expand their factories, other people will not be able to start up their own businesses by mortgaging their houses and employers all over the country will not be hiring because of higher taxes or the threat of the same.

You get nothing for free. So if we want to waste money in this way, we will destroy something of value somewhere else.

The entire history of rail travel over the last 200 years has shown that decreasing journey times (and its 30 minutes less to Birmingham, not 20) not only increases passenger numbers, but boosts the economy in the areas served. If this wasnt the case, then we would still be using the Rocket travelling at 25mph into Euston.

The first 100 years perhaps. The last 50? Not so much. In fact fast railways have very little in the way of evidence that they pay back their investments. They are nice. I love Spain’s fast trains. I like being able to pop over to Paris. But the fact is they are a waste of money. Which we can no longer afford.

Its hardly the Autobahn scheme is it.
Spend the money on working the unemployed oh no sorry cant do that. You must be liberal.
Like Ron Paul says emphasise values not compramise them.

27 Bob

I meant studies into realised costs and benefits from existing schemes, not yet more speculation based upon unrealistic economic models and unjustified assumptions. Some actual figures and metrics, you know?

28 Charlieman

Well, I still have my bonds…..still not convinced they will ever pay out though!

Yes, the Chunnel was funded by private finance, so there was no reason to oppose it on financial grounds alone if private financiers like my uncle were prepared to cough up. I had other concerns as well, but I was right about the unrealistic financial assumptions. I wouldn’t have invested in it, personally.

In my view HS2 similarly lacks financial justification, because of the likely overrun of construction costs and the very long time period for benefits to be realised. The difference is that it uses taxpayers’ money. For the life of me I can’t see why. If it is that good a prospect why not get private finance to pay for it – as with the Chunnel?

@29. So Much For Subtlety: “I love Spain’s fast trains.”

But if you love train journeys, you have to hate them.

Should you wish to argue, I am happy to wave fists at Antequera station.

32. Charlieman

But if you love train journeys, you have to hate them.

Oh no. I really love ‘em. Every single trip is a nail-biting, tension-building, nervous roller coaster ride of emotions. Because if they are late, they offer to give me my money back. They never have been late, but it makes every trip an exciting journey with the added bonus of a lottery win should they be late.

Should you wish to argue, I am happy to wave fists at Antequera station.

Happy to see you there. Although Spanish Train Stations. Now there’s something I hate. The trains are great and I know why the train stations are always in the middle of nowhere, especially in the South, but it is a pain. It is usually better to fly if the train station is not actually in the city centre itself.

Frances: “I meant studies into realised costs and benefits from existing schemes, not yet more speculation based upon unrealistic economic models and unjustified assumptions. Some actual figures and metrics, you know?”

Evidence on HS2 submitted to HoC select committee on Transport:

13. Where is the hard evidence that HS2 can be nationally transformational?

13.1 Massive regional benefits are assumed by bodies like Centro, Northern Way (now defunct) and Greengauge 21. Professor Graham (Imperial College) notes that we cannot be certain whether rail drives productivity or if rail is built to serve areas of high productivity. Benefits claimed by regional transport lobby groups could be illusory. Using Graham’s estimates, HS2 Stage 1 might deliver £8 million per annum of benefits. Even scaling up and adding GDP growth, this is only £266 million PV, c £19 million per annum in 2043.

13.2 Professor Banister (Oxford Transport Unit notes that the only extra measurable benefits are higher land prices and housing. This is very localised near new stations. Most Stage 1 jobs are in west London.

13.3 Greenfield development in the east Birmingham greenbelt, in Wilmslow outside Manchester (assuming an airport station), at any external Leeds-York station and
between Derby and Nottingham could drive the relocation of businesses, pressurising the local infrastructure. These businesses will often relocate from local areas made less-favourable by HS2, so net job creation may be minimal.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmtran/1185/1185vw150.htm

Which is pretty damp as the estimated benefits are relatively small beer and subject to wide error margins.

As for general academic paper on the benefits of transport projects by Prof Graham referred to in above:

Graham + Dender: Estimating the agglomeration benefits of transport investments – OECD discussion paper December 2009
http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/DiscussionPapers/jtrcpapers.html

Btw don’t knock trade flow models as those are taken seriously in assessing the scope of benefits from trade rounds – the presently stalled Doha Trade Round is the 9th since WW2 so trade rounds to reduce trading barriers have been regarded as worth while.