In addition to the flaws described yesterday in the Ralph Vartabedian article on high speed rail fares, several people have discovered serious errors in the article’s core assertion: that the proposed fares for the California HSR system are unusually low when compared to other HSR systems around the world. Vartabedian made that charge in order to cast doubt on the notion that California HSR fares would be cheap:

But compared with current average prices on several high-speed rail systems in Asia and Europe, $86 would be a bargain, equating to about 20 cents a mile or less, the Times review found. The analysis was based on a 438-mile route in the mid-range of what state officials expect the final alignment to measure. The average fare on Italy’s 434-mile bullet train from Milan to Salerno was 25 cents a mile. The fare on China’s 809-mile line between Beijing and Shanghai was 22 cents per mile. China discloses little about its high-speed rail finances and many academic and transportation experts say it heavily subsidizes its fares, as do many other foreign operators. The French bullet train from Paris to Lyon is often cited as a line that is profitable, but it has a fare of 52 cents a mile. The German bullet train from Hannover to Wurzburg charges 46 cents a mile. The price comparisons were based on tickets purchased at least one week in advance, averaged over various times of the day and classes of service. On the East Coast, Amtrak’s Acela system, the closest thing to high-speed rail now operating in the U.S., charges an average of about 50 cents a mile for the 454-mile trip between Washington and Boston.

It turns out Vartabedian’s claims for the average fares on those other routes is simply wrong.

Paul Druce from the comments on yesterday’s post:

You missed the best part: They got the fare yields completely wrong for the European HSR systems. As best I can tell, they used RailEurope (which completely rips people off compared to actually purchasing through SNCF or DBahn) and did a 50/50 averaging of first and second class tickets. And of course they’re ignoring the actual average one way fares for air: $140 for 4th quarter 2014 between Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan regions

Taupe Avenger:

Fares for Paris-Lyon HSR range from $42.56 to $68.32 for a 291 mile Journey. $0.15-$0.24/mile. Half @latimes claim. pic.twitter.com/FPT8LoIUxA — Taupe Avenger (@TaupeAvenger) May 11, 2015

And in response to that comes this from Kevin Wang:

You can be sure that if it was the California High Speed Rail Authority that had screwed up this comparison, Vartabedian would never let them hear the end of it. Instead Vartabedian makes the error and he’ll just continue bashing HSR as if nothing had ever happened.