Background to Passenger Demand Forecasting

Because existing levels of transport are limited by both the difficulty of travel and low levels of social interactions between the different areas of the country, it is difficult to undertake demand forecasting to assess the long‐term potential for inter‐urban passenger travel. However, any plausible rail operating speeds are likely to be better than the bus/coach alternatives, so a basic level of passenger service is likely to be of social benefit and economic value.

As even the longest distances are not much more than 700km, it should be possible to offer a daily daytime train in each direction. The benefits of these services would be enhanced if integrated connections were made possible at nodes such as Mojo, Shashemene and Konso.

On the busier and longer corridors (e.g. Addis – Moyale, and Addis ‐ Djibouti) it might also be worth offering a night‐time service, since these typically have higher costs (staff costs, enhanced rolling stock facilities, impacts on track maintenance etc.). But for both daytime and overnight traffic, long‐distance trains do not primarily serve the end‐to‐end market (for which air will usually be quicker); rather, they serve flows between one end of the line and those smaller centres on the line near the other end.

In the short‐term, however, road traffic data from the Ethiopian Roads Authority enables a first-cut estimation of possible demand. However, it must be recognised that inter‐urban road data will inevitably include:

• Some trips which do not reach one and/or the other node.

• Some trips which extend beyond the nodes at each end to places which are off the proposed network (this is the key reason why, for passenger traffic, extending the line from Gelan to La Gare is absolutely essential);

• ‘Linked’ trips made as part of a trip chain, in which rail is not available for other elements of that chain;

• Some trips which are made at times of day/night when there is no proposed rail service;

• Trips made by groups of passengers by car for whom a public transport solution will always be more expensive;

• Trips made by private vehicle where too much luggage is being carried for public transport to offer a realistic alternative;

• Trips for which the destination and/or origin are particularly close to bus/coach pickup/set‐down points;

• Longer‐distance trips for which rail is not likely to be able to better the alternative by air.

All these trips are effectively unavailable for transfer to rail and, between them, they constitute a very significant proportion of all trips.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20