Re: Chinatown bus operator ordered shut down

[Jimmy]

John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
> The problem is that the Reason Foundation has a habit of making up
> "facts" to support the conclusions they started with.  It's certainly
> not worth my time to hunt down all of their sources to figure out what
> they warped or omitted this time.
>
> Nobody seems to deny the cracks and botched repairs that caused Mass.
> to shut down Fung Wah.

Fung Wah's problems are a different issue from the article's claim
about the general safety of "curbside buses". (They couldn't exactly
write an article about companies owned by ethnic Chinese.)

http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/07/government-assault-on-chinatown-bus-indu

I took the article with a grain of salt, considering its source. But
they did make some very good points about the mistakes in the
government report.

It's ridiculous that the NTSB refused to provide the raw accident data
they used to form the conclusion. That alone is reason to refute the
whole report.

The NTSB categorized Greyhound as a curbside carrier, which makes no
sense. They're the antithesis of a low-cost startup competitive bus
company if ever there was one.

They calculated the fatality rate incorrectly. They calculated fatal
accidents per bus for each company, and averaged them together,
*without normalizing for the size of the company*. So when one
company, Sky Horse Bus Tour, had one bus and one accident, it drove up
the entire average.

And there's not enough data for the "seven times more dangerous" claim
to be statistically significant. It's hard to argue with that if you
have any understanding of statistics.

Peer review is a good thing. I hope a respected transportation or
statistics researcher picks up on this flawed report, and makes an
issue out of it.

Jimmy

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 20, 9:48 pm, Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:



> It's ridiculous that the NTSB refused to provide the raw accident data
> they used to form the conclusion.  That alone is reason to refute the
> whole report.

As menitoned, Cato and Reason do not have a great track record.

"Reports" from these advocacy groups sometimes have a great deal of
"poetic license". Do we know with certainty that the NTSB refused to
release the _relevant_ data? Do we know with certainty that this
"report" matched the right data with the conclusions? Other such
advocacy reports failed to do so.

(Like when they claimed a bus operating in rush hour traffic would
make better time than a commuter train.)

[Jimmy]

hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> > It's ridiculous that the NTSB refused to provide the raw accident data
> > they used to form the conclusion.  That alone is reason to refute the
> > whole report.
>
> As menitoned, Cato and Reason do not have a great track record.
>
> "Reports" from these advocacy groups sometimes have a great deal of
> "poetic license".  Do we know with certainty that the NTSB refused to
> release the _relevant_ data?  Do we know with certainty that this
> "report" matched the right data with the conclusions?  Other such
> advocacy reports failed to do so.

The Reason article provides links to its primary sources (unlike the
NTSB report).

Here's the NTSB document categorizing bus companies, which includes
Greyhound in the curbside list: http://reason.com/assets/db/13674378837429.pdf

The Reason author got his accident data from http://mcmiscatalog.fmcsa.dot.gov/
. He made a chart here: https://opendata.socrata.com/Government/NTSB-Curbside-Bus-Fatalities-For-Open-Data/3d5a-68w9
. The number of accidents for curbside and non-curbside buses (as
miscategorized by the NTSB) matched the NTSB's numbers.

Not much wiggle room there. And since you have access to the raw
data, you're also welcome to form your own educated conclusions.

"The National Transportation Safety Board denied my requests for the
study data, even though it was a taxpayer-funded report with an impact
on policy. After my Freedom of Information Act request also failed to
return the information following a six-month wait, I began
reconstructing the study data from other sources."

Since the Reason author didn't post a written FOIA denial letter from
the NTSB (since it appears the NTSB just didn't bother to respond),
it's theoretically possible that he was lying. But why would he? And
it would be easy for the NTSB to refute this, if they wanted to.

For completeness, here's the NTSB report: http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetystudies/SR1101.pdf

> (Like when they claimed a bus operating in rush hour traffic would
> make better time than a commuter train.)

Now there's a claim without a cite.

Jimmy

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On May 21, 12:44 pm, Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:

> Since the Reason author didn't post a written FOIA denial letter from
> the NTSB (since it appears the NTSB just didn't bother to respond),
> it's theoretically possible that he was lying.  But why would he?  And
> it would be easy for the NTSB to refute this, if they wanted to.

Why would he lie?

Advoacy groups, particularly Reason and Cato, are known for selecting
and presenting facts to bolster their case and ignoring facts that
would hurt their case. They might use measures out of context to the
situation at hand.

For example, a recent report by an airline advocacy group charged that
Amtrak isn't responsible for certain expenses when in fact it is.

A former frequent poster to this newsgroup, Merritt Mullen, often
pointed out the B/S in their reports. So does NARP.