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A report issued last week by the Reason Foundation — which describes itself as a “nonprofit think tank” — states that if Florida’s proposed Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed rail project goes over budget or fails to meet ridership expectations, Florida taxpayers would have to provide up to $3 billion. But the accuracy of that figure depends on who’s doing the estimating — and why.

The report findings have gotten a lot of media attention during the past few days, especially as new Florida Gov. Rick Scott continues to assess whether or not to advance work on the high-speed project. Scott has said he’s not opposed to the project, but needs to learn more about it to ensure taxpayers won’t be responsible for contributing the dollars. (By the way, the report was co-written by Robert Poole, who serves on Scott’s transition team.)

According to the report, planners underestimate costs for large-scale passenger-rail projects nine times out of 10. If that holds true for Florida, the high-speed project could cost about $1.2 billion more than expected, the report states.

The Reason Foundation also compares Florida’s and California’s high-speed rail projects. In California, planners estimate it would cost about $67.8 million per mile to build the high-speed line; in Florida, planners have estimated the cost at $32.1 million per mile. If Florida’s high-speed costs matched California’s, the project could cost $3 billion more than expected, the report states.

Meanwhile, the report also questions the Florida Department of Transportation’s annual ridership projections, which are estimated at 2.4 million passengers. That’s about two-thirds of current ridership on Amtrak’s Acela Express service, which serves metropolitan areas such as New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The population in those cities is about eight times the population of the Tampa and Orlando metropolitan areas, the report states.

But the report findings — and methods used by the Reason Foundation to reach its conclusions — are misleading, according to information HSRupdates.com received from the Florida Rail Enterprise (FRE), which is charged with overseeing the state’s high-speed rail project.

In 2003, the Florida DOT received bids from a Flour/Bombardier consortium and the Global Rail Consortium that set project costs at slightly more than $2 billion. However, at the time, the state didn’t have funds to advance project construction. When the Florida DOT went back to those firms in 2009 to reexamine project costs, both firms said that because of the economic recession, the bids offered in 2003 were still fairly accurate for the Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed rail project, according to FRE.

And if the project were to exceed cost estimates, those overruns would fall on the shoulders of the contractor, not Florida taxpayers. FRE is seeking a contractor to design, build, operate, maintain and finance the high-speed rail project. During a forum hosted by FRE in November 2010, state officials met with representatives from eight consortiums that had formed to bid on the project. Among the discussion points: FRE officials told consortium members the state would require the contractor to accept project risks associated with costs and ridership.

Those risks weren’t a concern to potential bidders, as FRE Chief Operating Officer Nazih Haddad told HSRupdates.com in mid-November. Consortia members said they were confident the Florida project would move forward and were anxious to proceed with a public-private partnership, even though at that point, FRE was short on project funding by about $300 million. Since then, the U.S. Department of Transportation has committed to provide FRE with the additional $300 million it needs by redirecting high-speed funds originally intended for Wisconsin and Ohio.

In terms of ridership and revenue estimates, Florida DOT’s 2002 high-speed rail report indicated there was sufficient revenue to cover all operations and maintenance costs associated with the Tampa-Orlando line. In addition, FRE has said its ridership estimates are conservative, because the estimates don’t include potential ridership from area businesses such as Disney and Universal Studios that provide transportation to and from Orlando International Airport as part of some packages they offer visitors.

More food for thought: You can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison between Florida’s high-speed cost per mile with California’s, as the two states have very different geography; California’s high-speed system would run through mountainous terrain and will require the construction of several tunnels. In addition, the state of Florida already owns the majority of the Interstate 4 right of way between Tampa and Orlando along which the high-speed rail line would be built; California still needs to acquire much of the right of way to build its high-speed line.

— Angela Cotey