House of Lords written question – answered at on 13 November 2012.
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Earl Attlee on 30 October (WA 128), what assessment they have made of the accuracy of the forecasts made using the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook over the past 10 years.
The Department for Transport's approach to passenger rail demand forecasting is set out in its guidance WebTAG. This is largely based around the contents of the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook (PDFH), but does not adopt into its guidance the entirety of new versions of PDFH as they are released. The department has not, therefore, assessed the accuracy of forecasts based on particular versions of PDFH.
The department does monitor the performance of its own passenger demand forecasting guidance by carrying out back-casting exercises. A recent exercise compared forecast rail revenue with actual revenue over the period 1995-96 to 2009-10. These results show that the department's approach tended to overforecast revenue during the first half of the last decade and to underforecast during the second half. Overall, no evidence was found of systematic under- or overforecasting revenue in the long term.
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