web site for asihttp://www.bcsunitholders.com.authe following...

web site for asi

http://www.bcsunitholders.com.au

the following link is interesting - maybe it has been posted previously. indeed, after reading the following link, for unit holders, it might be in their best interests to wind up the trust


http://business.smh.com.au/business/bad-connections-20090224-8ggl.html?page=2

some bits and pieces from the link


The traffic forecaster Arup, which was paid a fee of $4.69 million for its advice,

The Arup modelling for the BrisCon business case (as laid out in the BrisCon PDS) used 2004 data as a baseline (conveniently ignoring the successive three years) and extrapolated from there.

In fact the Arup numbers could do with some further investigation themselves. The Transport Fact Report provides historical data which invalidates the assumptions used by Arup as inputs to the modelling. Its authors found that vehicle use started to decline in 2004 whereas Arup assumes perpetual growth.




As the failed Cross City Tunnel and Lane Cove Tunnel projects in Sydney and the foundering performance of Connect East in Melbourne attest, forecasting is critical to the viability of a project.

For some time the critics such as Sydney University's Dr John Goldberg have claimed that the traffic forecasts on many toll-road projects appear constructed to fit the financial model, not the other way around.

The recent traffic numbers for Transurban, Macquarie Infrastructure Group and other players in the space, and indeed the research from broking analysts who follow these stocks, would indicate that the assumption of perpetual growth is now flawed.

Toll roads around the world are proving susceptible to recession and oil prices. Toll revenue is, contrary to former assumptions, elastic.

Now it would seem BrisCon faces more serious issues than its financial model.

Peter Newman, a member of the Infrastructure Australia board, recently noted falling traffic was ''part of a worldwide trend. In the United States there has been a significant drop in vehicle miles travelled, which began before the fuel price rises.

''I am predicting reductions in car use from here on. It's the death knell for toll roads and indeed makes any new road capacity increases highly questionable."

The economic downturn has also seen a migration to public transport. Sydneysiders took 22 million more train and bus journeys last year than they did the year before. CityRail experienced a 5.7% increase in patronage - about 17 million individual journeys - from December 2007 to December 2008.

And State Transit buses provided 5.6 million more trips last year even though many in the inner city and eastern suburbs are already operating at capacity.