Demand & Revenue Forecasting for Private-Public Partnering Initiatives in China: Experiences from Shenyang

The public transport sector in mainland China is increasingly opening up to private and foreign investment, with many new projects being based on joint ventures between Chinese government agencies and foreign private investors. To encourage this growth there is an increasing need to provide reliable "bankable" demand and revenue forecasts that are acceptable to the international investment community. This paper addresses some of the issues involved in producing such forecasts and uses a recent project by Booz Allen in Shenyang to highlight some of the new forecasting methods and some of the drawbacks to be avoided. Booz Allen Hamilton reviewed the Line 1 forecasts for Shenyang and identified a number of issues that could worry the investment community. As a result of this review, Booz Allen Hamilton provided a two-stage approach to the "bankable" demand forecast assignment: 1) Stage 1 - Develop a new. demand model using Stated Preference techniques for mode diversion and 2) Stage 2 - Complete the calibration of a multi-modal network model for Shenyang and produce final forecasts using the EMME/2 transport model. The project was undertaken in cooperation with Shenyang Research Institute staff and an additional aim of the project was to effect a `knowledge transfer' to the Research Institute staff.