Unfortunately, there's a high likelihood many of the more recent railway networks are built using Uyghur forced labour...
[https://etisverige.se/aktuellt/report-high-risk-of-forced-labour-in-the-production-of-trains-and-trams-in-china/](https://etisverige.se/aktuellt/report-high-risk-of-forced-labour-in-the-production-of-trains-and-trams-in-china/)
No you’re not just “sharing knowledge”. you’re being disingenuous in your defense of a government that currently forces slave labor, suppresses religious and cultural rights, forces sterilization, mass surveillance, political persecution, etc. You’re not cute, you’re a hypocritical apologist for a country committing atrocities on its own people. And you have the audacity to phrase this defense as thought it’s coming from a place of intellectual superiority. Shame on you
I think the point trying to be made through this post is "America would be able to see this level of high speed rail construction since China was able to do it". The counter point is "China's construction of high speed rail through the use of slave labor does not prove that America could achieve such construction without slave labor"
Pointing out truths about how rail in America was built in the past is a non sequitur to the question at hand about America's ability to construct new rail, and do so using labor we deem acceptable.
America's problem with HSR in the modern age isn't labor lol, it's expertise (a lot of the ballooning cost of CHSR is due to hiring expensive foreign consultants) , too much bureaucracy in some areas (basically every new purchase of land in California for CHSR involves a new environmental lawsuit), and profiteering (landowners selling their land at 5-10 times the rate once they know it's for CHSR).
And also being happy about the railways built by European colonisers while also hating the fact that it was mainly used to exploit resources for the motherland
We don't need to support the regime in China to support China itself. For example, optimists very appropriately celebrated China's shift toward market capitalism that raised hundreds of millions out of poverty. That didn't mean we were supporting the CCP.
I think this is a very subtle distinction that’s often really hard to make. I’m a typical leftish moderate American and I can honestly say I’m really happy how China has come out of the last century. I know that there are a TON of problems with the government but I am truly rooting for the people of China. I mean their grandparents suffered horribly under Mao and the Japanese before him so it really does my heart good to see all the progress they have made. I truly hope that their society continues to liberalize and that both our countries can work together to shape a better future for everyone.
They're definitely waaaay better off than the Mao era, that's for sure. They've got many hurdles to overcome on their path to liberalization, but I'm optimistic that the information era will naturally pull them in that direction. I'm not sure that a censorship regime can survive VPNs haha
Mao: A massive famine that was made worse by his incompetence and his refusal to take accountability.
Deng: Modernisation, reforms, when the golden age truly began.
China moved from feudalism to capitalism. Hopefully one day it will become socialist. Each economic system improving upon the last. I am optimistic about the authoritarian right-wing regime being replaced with democracy.
You don't have to be a Communist to be pro-infastructure. If anything this map should motivate us as Americans to get our heads out of our ass and actually build up this country.
Sure, but building something like this as fast as China did requires a one-minded beurocratic process and a general disregard of human rights to acquire land and cheap labor. That doesn't work as well in a Democracy. America also has 1/4 the population and very different urban organization, so something resembling passenger rail China's system wouldn't be as useful and well-utilized as people think it would be.
We'll get there with corridors that make sense. People will still fly when going from New York to LA, though.
Bruh, I'm not saying we need to copy and paste what China is doing like an 8th grader who didn't do their math homework.
Your statement that these projects don't work in a Democracy is pure cope. We are the United States. Not only can we do literally whatever we want but we can do it better than any other country, bar none. In terms of wealth and resources we have no peer.
"People will still fly from New York to LA." Shows just how whipped your mentality is. Flights are expensive, inefficient, have a tremendous greenhouse gas effect and with the recent Boeing developments, increasingly unsafe.
The only reason that we, as a developed country do not have a high speed rail that goes from New York to California is because it allows private businesses to skim taxpayer dollars. The airline industry needs their subsidies, the auto industry needs theirs and the existing rail companies want to maintain their monopoly. That's it, that's the only reason.
I don't want to hear that it "doesn't make sense" for the US to build rail infrastructure when a mountainous, barely inhabited country like Spain has a network that connects every no-name village in the country.
https://preview.redd.it/1w8a1p014ivc1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=776b64dc235acdb5fe10e6441f452991aff51689
I get that this is an optimism subreddit, but I think you have some misunderstandings about what high speed rail entails with regards to feasibility, planning, construction, and actual usefulness. I don't work in rail anymore, but I'm a former train nerd who got his degree in transportation engineering (with a primary in rail). I love trains, and I agree that America can absolutely do whatever the fuck we want to set our minds to, and that's why we realize the fantasy of hopping on a train from LA to NYC (and it not being fucking torture) is just that... a fantasy.
The United States is 20x as large as Spain. We have 1/3 the population density. I'm really not sure that's a great example. That's also a map of general passenger rail, not high speed. It might make sense if you compared, say, the US Northeast or any to Spain, in which case even Amtrak also has similarly "no-name" places connected by rail. We just have a \*lot\* of mostly empty space between the major population centers.
https://preview.redd.it/ydeykse53jvc1.png?width=1029&format=png&auto=webp&s=dafe927ed1d281368291d6132e1208e4b17310b9
It's not teleportation. Population density isn't the only factor. Rail has a sweet spot for time efficiency that people will tolerate, which relatively few routes fall into. NYC to LA is, as the crow flies, about 4000 km. Most high speed trains go about 300 km/hr for a dedicated line. That's 13 hours in perfect conditions. Account for the bobbing and weaving, stops, and slowdowns for when you need to go through cities, and realistically you're looking at a 15-20+ hour trip. Have you ever spent over 20 hours on a train? I have. It's not all that much fun, unless you're in a sleeper car. Compared to a hopping on a 6 hour flight for $300. Flying sucks too, but it's fast and easy to adjust to changes in passenger behavior.
Playing connect the dots between cities is easy between cities is easy. Acquiring land and constructing them isn't. We did it back in the day, and we displaced a lot of primarily poor people to do it. Eminent domain isn't the tool it was when we didn't give a fuck during our industrialization in a century ago. It takes years for a civil rights study and negotiations. I have gone through the process. We still have one land acquisition in negotiation from 6 years ago for about 8 feet of a corner at a gas station to widen an intersection radius.
We'll get there, mostly with existing corridors. They're doing it in Miami with the Brightline, and you can be sure that private companies are taking notes. If it works well, it'll change the calculation, and we'll go gangbusters. That's how it works under capitalism. People still won't be opting for that cross-country train, though. NYC to Boston in an hour though? Absolutely.
Regardless, you want American rail greatness? We have it. Our freight rail is, and has been, the most robust, safest, and efficient passenger rail system, for decades, and it's not even close. Every country models their freight after us. Innovation has kept the cost to ship bulk goods, per ton-mile, the same for about 40 years. Not the same adjusted for inflation... the same damn price. It puts any shiny "high speed rail" passenger network to shame, and it does it without subsidies. Try shuffling around 40,000 railcars in and out of a city in a day.
Also start rallying for Bus Rapid Transit in your city. Fuck the bus haters.
Not for nothing but this map and the us map in the 1800-1900s really show chat can be done without the extreme barriers the US has today.
Ezra Klein (a nyt opinion writer) had a good podcast this week showing how liberals get in their own way a lot of times by requiring a lot of reviews such as environmental/population reviews that drive up the cost of public works.
The crux being that this doesn’t happen in red states and that’s why they can build so much. The downside is this results in worse city planning.(however this doesn’t matter too much in terms of public transit)
We need deregulation for public transit to flourish. Or we will get more highways and more cars by the states that are actually able to build
Not to be a downer but a US rail system just isn't as economical because of population densities and distribution.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1bvy6fs/chinas_high_speed_railway_network_overlaid_on_the/
This is a map that has the Chinese rail system overlaid over the geography of the US. The Chinese rail system is concentrated over a land area roughly equivalent to that of the eastern US and it serves 1.2 of China's 1.4 billion people. If you were to build a similar rail system in the US, it would serve roughly 180 million people. That's roughly 15 percent of the population that China's rail network serves.
Keep in mind that Chinese citizens are also poorer, so likely do not have a car just sitting around. Flight is also just economically inaccessible to many. Rail utilization, with this information in kind, is just going to be higher. Flight over long distances is also just going to be faster. A flight from New York to Chicago is 2 hours vs. a train from Shanghai to Beijing (roughly the same distance) takes 4 hours by high speed rail. The further you have to travel, the worse the numbers get.
So we have to evaluate whether a rail system can actually financially support itself in light of the competition for transportation that we have. Otherwise it's just going to be a big money sink that doesn't really reduce carbon emissions.
Construction is pretty easy when all it takes is a government directive. Property rights, environmental studies, regulation, competitors, economic sense…none of these little things matter.
Let's not forget that the reason China can build so much railroad is because they have no concept of property rights and eminent domain, or environmental regulations.
Plus they'll build anything to prop up economic figures. A lot of these projects are completely impractical for the populations they service, but the CCP does it anyway because it makes the books look good.
Yep. If this post was about the US, every comment would be positive.
But everything here is massively negative.
Ordinarily this sub is so staunchly positive that they will ABUSE you for expressing dissent. But now they're all massive pessimists.
This sub is such a joke.
Then why do you spend time here? Your life is really so shitty you want to spend it pointlessly arguing on a sub in which very few people share your worldview?
I joined this sub because I wanted to see some optimism, why should I have to leave because people are going against what the subs purpose, which is why that argument like so many people like to use is invalid
>Don't these high-speed railways go to nowhere?
Some of them do, yes.
They were trying to stimulate their economy by 'investing in infrastructure' and some of them were poor decisions.
A bigger issue is that they also [built a lot more housing than they needed.](https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/16wcbjj/china_overbuilt_housing_by_100200_of_current/)
There's no downside to overbuilding railways. It's not like it'll cause the transportation system to collapse. It can only improve the economy and offer more freedom of travel.
The overbuilding of housing is kinda a ridiculous idea. But capitalism is a ridiculous system that requires artificial scarcity to continue to function. In any sane society, housing should be overbuilt as to allow more opportunities to travel and live, as well as eliminating homelessness.
Well there is a downside to overbuilding and you can look at chinas empty cities. Some places are crumbling due to no maintenance because people simply don’t live there. Same can be said for overbuilding railway, either your stuck paying maintenance for something that won’t be used or let it rot away and basically spent your money on nothing.
The only way I see overbuilding as good is if it’s in big cities that are highly sought after and there’s no way you can overbuild since demand will go up if supply goes up
I would agree. But the majority of resource use in capitalism is already frivolous and eventually ends up trashed anyways. At least the infrastructure is there. It may have even helped move people to big cities and helped them stay connected. It should be the government's job to keep as much of its country connected as possible.
Overbuilding is only bad for the environment if it comes at the expense of it. Otherwise, any economy that doesn't require endless growth would thrive from it
I honestly rather see people waste resources building yachts or computers for just games that will be used then a city in the middle of nowhere where neither jobs or plumbing exist.
I get where you’re coming from, cities have to make themselves naturally or if you noticed you have a very sizable rural population and need them to move. Something many nations don’t suffer from except nations with high population growth.
Something China had lost when it implemented the 1 child policy
I agree. But let's be honest. A lot of those resources are being completely wasted on the equivalent of a dead city or much worse. Have you heard of bullshit jobs? There's some industries and occupations practically designed to waste people's time. Then there's harmful products, like drugs and junk food. Resources wasted just to ruin people's lives. Then there's the military. An organization designed to destroy the world. But nothing turns the economic gears like endless bloody conflict does.
Yes. China is imperfect. But it really has proven to get a lot done. With a GDP rate of 9%, it's very impressive. I think they're the best equipped for dealing with a declining population than neoliberal capitalist states, who also have had low birthrates without even a policy intended to do so. China can still open the doors to immigration, which the western world has had to do for over half a century just to keep their volatile economies from imploding.
> There's no downside to overbuilding railways.
It consumes resources that could have gone elsewhere.
>...capitalism is a ridiculous system...
Maybe the People's Republic of China should try something other than capitalism!
>!/s!<
Resource scarcity is real, and is a constant in all of human history. You can't make more of one thing without making less of another thing, as a direct result. By dedicating too many resources towards building railways and skyscrapers that there is little use for, that means there are less resources going towards things people actually need or want.
What looks like "artificial scarcity" to the economically illiterate is really the market economy efficiently distributing scarce resources to where they are most valued, using prices as a guide.
In capitalism, all resources go towards money interests. Money is not people, and very few people actually have a substantial amount of it. Homeless people are most in need of resources but receive the least amount of them because they have no money.
If you can produce an abundance of food but choose to restrict access to it or even destroy excess to maintain high food prices, you are creating artificial scarcity. You can also create this scarcity by inflicting violence through the use of violent state forces like they do with intellectual property enforcement. This can also be represented by restricting access of goods that can be provided for free, like software that can be endlessly downloaded or by poisoning a free water supply so that everyone is forced to buy from your clean water supply.
The "free" market is the most inefficient way to distribute resources ever devised. As we can see, China is the most impressive economy in the world by heavily restricting its market, having many state owned industries, and building sectors of the economy that better serve society. America's economy and infrastructure are seriously in decline. It's also built upon useless sectors of an economy, such as finance. The majority of the American economy is composed of bullshit jobs that recirculate more bullshit in the economy. America builds builds useless infrastructure just to break it down and build it back up again all the time. As the third world starts to liberate themselves from western exploitation, which the western economies heavily rely upon to supplement their own, the great western decline will continue to happen. Neoliberalism and, more broadly, capitalism has failed the west.
The one I was one went from Shanghai to Ningbo and it was great.
China is awesome, their government probably not, but we can say the same about everywhere, except maybe Ireland. They seem chill.
No. They connect major cities. The only line that is arguably "to nowhere" is the Lanzhou to Urumqi. It does go somewhere, but the Urumqi is so far from the rest of China that a high-speed rail really doesn't make much sense.
There was so much pessimism to my comment! I’m just so happy millions of people get to ride affordable, electric, high speed train. This is a great thing! Then I get a bunch of anti-China BS. Reddit sucks.
It's just that often times, ppl say America/China bad and then overlook the good they do.
The same people also think that all Chinese/American citizens are 100% aligned with their own government, which we know is both impossible and unrealistic.
Yes, the infrastructural hellscape that is most of the US is inexcusable, but it's not as if nothing works. Individualism and a degree of self-sustainment has always been a thing in the US all the way back to its founding, and despite all the drawbacks that come with it, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Yes, the hate directed at the Chinese government is justified in the context that makes sense, but it's also the same flawed government that played a part in bringing near a whole billion of the human population out of abject poverty, which is an achievement few if any can claim.
My point is, I've learned long ago to not assume everyone is the same based on the miniscule samples of people that I encounter daily.
I don't hate China; it's my Ancestral home. I hate its governing body.
I don't hate the US; it's my birthplace. I hate the lack of accountability.
This dude is an S-tier troll and he’s not even trying. He’s just repeating communist talking points over and over without making any sense. And the worst part is I think he genuinely believes it.
Yes, but I will say they're not really cheap from my understanding. The tickets range from $80-$250 one way. This is pretty similar to Japan, but Chinese wages aren't as high as Japanese wages from I've heard.
The process of creating the infrastructure and extracting the resources necessary to make the parts.
Also, it cuts through the wild landscape, disrupts animal movement, and goes to nowhere.
This subreddit is about optimism and you’ve been nothing but pessimistic. These trains took tens of millions of polluting cars off the road and now travel is emission free. Air quality in China is better than ever. It’s affordable, safe, and allows millions of people excellent travel options. This is a good thing.
This is China. What they'll do is build a city in the middle of nowhere where people can't live in because the apartment complexs there are made out of cardboard
Monetary returns should not be the only goal of public infrastructure.
I believe it to be quite inspiring that China can do these mega projects to serve everyone.
Also, keep in mind that the returns may come later. Some things take time to bear fruit.
True but a lot of this infrastructure has become dick measuring. They're in an issue rn of low public demand from there own population and instead of making people's lives better they just want to invest into ai and "new" industry.
It's not my point the high speed rail was bad it's that they built far to much of it
Noooo you can’t invest in useful public infrastructure that makes people’s lives better you have to triple the defense budget and bail out private banks noooooo you can’t do that we need less public transport and less housing there’s no enough homeless people this is bad for business nooo
They’re not useless. China is still a developing country and massive amounts of rural people continue to migrate to cities. Those cities and lines that go to unpopulated areas end up getting populated at some point as people migrate. Hope this helps
Chinese railways are an economic timebomb:
Chinese Railway’s debt has been growing due to the expansion of the world’s largest high-speed rail network. As of the end of 2021, the state-owned operator’s total liabilities reached 5.91 trillion yuan ($882 billion), which is around 5% of China’s gross domestic product. This debt is expected to continue growing.
That's nothing though. That's what you call an "economic time bomb"?
I thought you guys were optimists?
If you said something about US debt levels you would be siting at -69696969696969 downvotes by now.
Virtually 100% of roads built are money losers. Sustainable infrastructure is always a good investment for a region as a whole. Plus this helps the environment compared to cars.
What does "money loser" mean? Like the line produces less income than it costs to operate? Because that isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's a government service.
In a lot of ways the job of public infrastructure is to lose money in order to generate economic growth. It's a bet that we'll make the money back through the business it generates
“Money loser” is a crude way to put it but you are absolutely right that ROI should be considered with infrastructure investment, public or private. t. Development team at a private infrastructure company
Faster cheaper further and more comfortable, in addition to more available are accomplishments, they are the cornerstones of development particularly in transport/connectivity
Cheaper?
Rail is the most expensive form of transportation. You need to have full capacity at all times and as a level of convenience you need to hope the train is going exactly where you want. Which in most cases it isn’t so you need further transportation such as cars, buss or taxis.
21st century technology should give us flying cars, which if the drone tech gets better may be possible but who knows.
Are you drunk?
https://seattletransitblog.com/2009/10/26/the-highway-vs-fixed-transit-debate/#:~:text=The%20average%20light%2Drail%20line,about%20%245%20to%20%2410%20million.
“Freeways cannot exceed a flow of 2,000 automobiles per hour per lane without inducing congestion. Light rail, on the other hand, can serve up to 12,000 passengers per hour on single tracks, depending on headway frequencies and the number of rail cars being coupled together. Marginally, the dollars are put to much better use in fixed transit investment, particularly when considering the next point.”
“The ADC avoids using “average” or “overall” with good reason. They could very well be arguing that a packed commuter bus is cheaper to operate than a lightly-used train at 1am, which it is.”
“But when it comes down to the average costs-per-boarding between all rail and bus service in any given system and not just between “comparable corridors,” the latter is almost always more expensive.”
This all supports my view? What did you think I said?
It litetally argues against this??? “Rail opponents love using this argument because the assumption is that fixed transit is just not cost-effective. But when you take a good look at the numbers, it’s easy to find that the comparison being made with highways just isn’t an equitable one. The third sentence in the “reality” rebuttal makes mention of an “average lane mile,” but doesn’t really expound. Well, a highway lane mile is exactly as it sounds: one mile of one lane in one direction. But the ADC makes it sound like the cost-per-lane mile is the actual cost-per-mile of a freeway, which it is not. The number doesn’t figure in the total number of lanes that are being paved down in each direction for a complete freeway segment.”
It’s crazy how much more freedom they had in 2008
Now with their social credit scores, you can be denied access to travel if you insult someone
Source: made it up
No, what's crazy is how over built their high-speed rail is.
hey bro wanna get boba in ghost town city #48?
No joke, I would pay to do a rail tour of the ghost towns
Let’s not support totalitarian regimes as optimists
I can be anti Xi, and pro Chinese rail lines at the same time
Unfortunately, there's a high likelihood many of the more recent railway networks are built using Uyghur forced labour... [https://etisverige.se/aktuellt/report-high-risk-of-forced-labour-in-the-production-of-trains-and-trams-in-china/](https://etisverige.se/aktuellt/report-high-risk-of-forced-labour-in-the-production-of-trains-and-trams-in-china/)
I have bad news for you about railways in general
Railways in the US and EU are constructed using forced labor?
To build the original US rail system, there were a lot of exploited workers.
No but this commy will say they were
In the US, absolutely
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So this means it’s ok to do now? You’re not smart. What point are you trying to make?
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No you’re not just “sharing knowledge”. you’re being disingenuous in your defense of a government that currently forces slave labor, suppresses religious and cultural rights, forces sterilization, mass surveillance, political persecution, etc. You’re not cute, you’re a hypocritical apologist for a country committing atrocities on its own people. And you have the audacity to phrase this defense as thought it’s coming from a place of intellectual superiority. Shame on you
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Dumb fuck response. Not your bro
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I think the point trying to be made through this post is "America would be able to see this level of high speed rail construction since China was able to do it". The counter point is "China's construction of high speed rail through the use of slave labor does not prove that America could achieve such construction without slave labor" Pointing out truths about how rail in America was built in the past is a non sequitur to the question at hand about America's ability to construct new rail, and do so using labor we deem acceptable.
America's problem with HSR in the modern age isn't labor lol, it's expertise (a lot of the ballooning cost of CHSR is due to hiring expensive foreign consultants) , too much bureaucracy in some areas (basically every new purchase of land in California for CHSR involves a new environmental lawsuit), and profiteering (landowners selling their land at 5-10 times the rate once they know it's for CHSR).
More than one thing can be bad
So is your phone
And the battery in your smartphone was probably made with cobalt mined in Congo using child labor
And terrorists used airplanes for 9/11, are we going to shut down airports?
The government didn’t run the airlines in order to funnel terrorists into the side of skyscrapers?
Can you though? That’s like being happy about the autobahn and hating Hitler while he’s alive.
And also being happy about the railways built by European colonisers while also hating the fact that it was mainly used to exploit resources for the motherland
Exactly. Thanks for proving my point and agreeing with me.
We should start building railways for the right reasons
You can suck one more dick
We don't need to support the regime in China to support China itself. For example, optimists very appropriately celebrated China's shift toward market capitalism that raised hundreds of millions out of poverty. That didn't mean we were supporting the CCP.
I think this is a very subtle distinction that’s often really hard to make. I’m a typical leftish moderate American and I can honestly say I’m really happy how China has come out of the last century. I know that there are a TON of problems with the government but I am truly rooting for the people of China. I mean their grandparents suffered horribly under Mao and the Japanese before him so it really does my heart good to see all the progress they have made. I truly hope that their society continues to liberalize and that both our countries can work together to shape a better future for everyone.
They're definitely waaaay better off than the Mao era, that's for sure. They've got many hurdles to overcome on their path to liberalization, but I'm optimistic that the information era will naturally pull them in that direction. I'm not sure that a censorship regime can survive VPNs haha
Mao: A massive famine that was made worse by his incompetence and his refusal to take accountability. Deng: Modernisation, reforms, when the golden age truly began.
China moved from feudalism to capitalism. Hopefully one day it will become socialist. Each economic system improving upon the last. I am optimistic about the authoritarian right-wing regime being replaced with democracy.
Yes the many thriving socialist economies that add up to 0 with even less human rights than autocratic authoritarian regimes
If China was never socialist, may I ask are there any examples of socialist states across history?
Any socialist democracy?
For example?
Paris 1871, Spain 1936, Hungary 1956 (this was a socialist revolution against the Soviet Union) and Zapatista today
Weak scorecard is weak
You don't have to be a Communist to be pro-infastructure. If anything this map should motivate us as Americans to get our heads out of our ass and actually build up this country.
Sure, but building something like this as fast as China did requires a one-minded beurocratic process and a general disregard of human rights to acquire land and cheap labor. That doesn't work as well in a Democracy. America also has 1/4 the population and very different urban organization, so something resembling passenger rail China's system wouldn't be as useful and well-utilized as people think it would be. We'll get there with corridors that make sense. People will still fly when going from New York to LA, though.
Bruh, I'm not saying we need to copy and paste what China is doing like an 8th grader who didn't do their math homework. Your statement that these projects don't work in a Democracy is pure cope. We are the United States. Not only can we do literally whatever we want but we can do it better than any other country, bar none. In terms of wealth and resources we have no peer. "People will still fly from New York to LA." Shows just how whipped your mentality is. Flights are expensive, inefficient, have a tremendous greenhouse gas effect and with the recent Boeing developments, increasingly unsafe. The only reason that we, as a developed country do not have a high speed rail that goes from New York to California is because it allows private businesses to skim taxpayer dollars. The airline industry needs their subsidies, the auto industry needs theirs and the existing rail companies want to maintain their monopoly. That's it, that's the only reason. I don't want to hear that it "doesn't make sense" for the US to build rail infrastructure when a mountainous, barely inhabited country like Spain has a network that connects every no-name village in the country. https://preview.redd.it/1w8a1p014ivc1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=776b64dc235acdb5fe10e6441f452991aff51689
I get that this is an optimism subreddit, but I think you have some misunderstandings about what high speed rail entails with regards to feasibility, planning, construction, and actual usefulness. I don't work in rail anymore, but I'm a former train nerd who got his degree in transportation engineering (with a primary in rail). I love trains, and I agree that America can absolutely do whatever the fuck we want to set our minds to, and that's why we realize the fantasy of hopping on a train from LA to NYC (and it not being fucking torture) is just that... a fantasy. The United States is 20x as large as Spain. We have 1/3 the population density. I'm really not sure that's a great example. That's also a map of general passenger rail, not high speed. It might make sense if you compared, say, the US Northeast or any to Spain, in which case even Amtrak also has similarly "no-name" places connected by rail. We just have a \*lot\* of mostly empty space between the major population centers. https://preview.redd.it/ydeykse53jvc1.png?width=1029&format=png&auto=webp&s=dafe927ed1d281368291d6132e1208e4b17310b9 It's not teleportation. Population density isn't the only factor. Rail has a sweet spot for time efficiency that people will tolerate, which relatively few routes fall into. NYC to LA is, as the crow flies, about 4000 km. Most high speed trains go about 300 km/hr for a dedicated line. That's 13 hours in perfect conditions. Account for the bobbing and weaving, stops, and slowdowns for when you need to go through cities, and realistically you're looking at a 15-20+ hour trip. Have you ever spent over 20 hours on a train? I have. It's not all that much fun, unless you're in a sleeper car. Compared to a hopping on a 6 hour flight for $300. Flying sucks too, but it's fast and easy to adjust to changes in passenger behavior. Playing connect the dots between cities is easy between cities is easy. Acquiring land and constructing them isn't. We did it back in the day, and we displaced a lot of primarily poor people to do it. Eminent domain isn't the tool it was when we didn't give a fuck during our industrialization in a century ago. It takes years for a civil rights study and negotiations. I have gone through the process. We still have one land acquisition in negotiation from 6 years ago for about 8 feet of a corner at a gas station to widen an intersection radius. We'll get there, mostly with existing corridors. They're doing it in Miami with the Brightline, and you can be sure that private companies are taking notes. If it works well, it'll change the calculation, and we'll go gangbusters. That's how it works under capitalism. People still won't be opting for that cross-country train, though. NYC to Boston in an hour though? Absolutely. Regardless, you want American rail greatness? We have it. Our freight rail is, and has been, the most robust, safest, and efficient passenger rail system, for decades, and it's not even close. Every country models their freight after us. Innovation has kept the cost to ship bulk goods, per ton-mile, the same for about 40 years. Not the same adjusted for inflation... the same damn price. It puts any shiny "high speed rail" passenger network to shame, and it does it without subsidies. Try shuffling around 40,000 railcars in and out of a city in a day. Also start rallying for Bus Rapid Transit in your city. Fuck the bus haters.
Pro major public works happening, anti dystopian surveillance state. can't think of a catchy slogan to express the sentiment
Words mean things
>unironically using buzzwords Lol
I agree. We really shouldn't support any capitalist regimes
Including China
Not for nothing but this map and the us map in the 1800-1900s really show chat can be done without the extreme barriers the US has today. Ezra Klein (a nyt opinion writer) had a good podcast this week showing how liberals get in their own way a lot of times by requiring a lot of reviews such as environmental/population reviews that drive up the cost of public works. The crux being that this doesn’t happen in red states and that’s why they can build so much. The downside is this results in worse city planning.(however this doesn’t matter too much in terms of public transit) We need deregulation for public transit to flourish. Or we will get more highways and more cars by the states that are actually able to build
Not to be a downer but a US rail system just isn't as economical because of population densities and distribution. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1bvy6fs/chinas_high_speed_railway_network_overlaid_on_the/ This is a map that has the Chinese rail system overlaid over the geography of the US. The Chinese rail system is concentrated over a land area roughly equivalent to that of the eastern US and it serves 1.2 of China's 1.4 billion people. If you were to build a similar rail system in the US, it would serve roughly 180 million people. That's roughly 15 percent of the population that China's rail network serves. Keep in mind that Chinese citizens are also poorer, so likely do not have a car just sitting around. Flight is also just economically inaccessible to many. Rail utilization, with this information in kind, is just going to be higher. Flight over long distances is also just going to be faster. A flight from New York to Chicago is 2 hours vs. a train from Shanghai to Beijing (roughly the same distance) takes 4 hours by high speed rail. The further you have to travel, the worse the numbers get. So we have to evaluate whether a rail system can actually financially support itself in light of the competition for transportation that we have. Otherwise it's just going to be a big money sink that doesn't really reduce carbon emissions.
I live in LA and go to SF for work. I can't imagine two worse planned cities.
God I wish the US had good raillines.
Construction is pretty easy when all it takes is a government directive. Property rights, environmental studies, regulation, competitors, economic sense…none of these little things matter.
Let's not forget that the reason China can build so much railroad is because they have no concept of property rights and eminent domain, or environmental regulations. Plus they'll build anything to prop up economic figures. A lot of these projects are completely impractical for the populations they service, but the CCP does it anyway because it makes the books look good.
First thing that this sub does when seeing this post is to be a pessimist about china
Yep. If this post was about the US, every comment would be positive. But everything here is massively negative. Ordinarily this sub is so staunchly positive that they will ABUSE you for expressing dissent. But now they're all massive pessimists. This sub is such a joke.
Then why do you spend time here? Your life is really so shitty you want to spend it pointlessly arguing on a sub in which very few people share your worldview?
>hop back on your Peloton, pal
If you think we aren’t optimistic, then leave, nobody is stopping you.
I joined this sub because I wanted to see some optimism, why should I have to leave because people are going against what the subs purpose, which is why that argument like so many people like to use is invalid
^ this
The most optimist take about China is that they are currently in the middle of economic collapse.
Don't these high-speed railways go to nowhere?
>Don't these high-speed railways go to nowhere? Some of them do, yes. They were trying to stimulate their economy by 'investing in infrastructure' and some of them were poor decisions. A bigger issue is that they also [built a lot more housing than they needed.](https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/16wcbjj/china_overbuilt_housing_by_100200_of_current/)
There's no downside to overbuilding railways. It's not like it'll cause the transportation system to collapse. It can only improve the economy and offer more freedom of travel. The overbuilding of housing is kinda a ridiculous idea. But capitalism is a ridiculous system that requires artificial scarcity to continue to function. In any sane society, housing should be overbuilt as to allow more opportunities to travel and live, as well as eliminating homelessness.
Well there is a downside to overbuilding and you can look at chinas empty cities. Some places are crumbling due to no maintenance because people simply don’t live there. Same can be said for overbuilding railway, either your stuck paying maintenance for something that won’t be used or let it rot away and basically spent your money on nothing. The only way I see overbuilding as good is if it’s in big cities that are highly sought after and there’s no way you can overbuild since demand will go up if supply goes up
I would agree. But the majority of resource use in capitalism is already frivolous and eventually ends up trashed anyways. At least the infrastructure is there. It may have even helped move people to big cities and helped them stay connected. It should be the government's job to keep as much of its country connected as possible. Overbuilding is only bad for the environment if it comes at the expense of it. Otherwise, any economy that doesn't require endless growth would thrive from it
I honestly rather see people waste resources building yachts or computers for just games that will be used then a city in the middle of nowhere where neither jobs or plumbing exist. I get where you’re coming from, cities have to make themselves naturally or if you noticed you have a very sizable rural population and need them to move. Something many nations don’t suffer from except nations with high population growth. Something China had lost when it implemented the 1 child policy
I agree. But let's be honest. A lot of those resources are being completely wasted on the equivalent of a dead city or much worse. Have you heard of bullshit jobs? There's some industries and occupations practically designed to waste people's time. Then there's harmful products, like drugs and junk food. Resources wasted just to ruin people's lives. Then there's the military. An organization designed to destroy the world. But nothing turns the economic gears like endless bloody conflict does. Yes. China is imperfect. But it really has proven to get a lot done. With a GDP rate of 9%, it's very impressive. I think they're the best equipped for dealing with a declining population than neoliberal capitalist states, who also have had low birthrates without even a policy intended to do so. China can still open the doors to immigration, which the western world has had to do for over half a century just to keep their volatile economies from imploding.
> There's no downside to overbuilding railways. It consumes resources that could have gone elsewhere. >...capitalism is a ridiculous system... Maybe the People's Republic of China should try something other than capitalism! >!/s!<
Since Deng China is very much a capitalist country. (largely State Capitalist if you want to get into it)
Based
Resource scarcity is real, and is a constant in all of human history. You can't make more of one thing without making less of another thing, as a direct result. By dedicating too many resources towards building railways and skyscrapers that there is little use for, that means there are less resources going towards things people actually need or want. What looks like "artificial scarcity" to the economically illiterate is really the market economy efficiently distributing scarce resources to where they are most valued, using prices as a guide.
In capitalism, all resources go towards money interests. Money is not people, and very few people actually have a substantial amount of it. Homeless people are most in need of resources but receive the least amount of them because they have no money. If you can produce an abundance of food but choose to restrict access to it or even destroy excess to maintain high food prices, you are creating artificial scarcity. You can also create this scarcity by inflicting violence through the use of violent state forces like they do with intellectual property enforcement. This can also be represented by restricting access of goods that can be provided for free, like software that can be endlessly downloaded or by poisoning a free water supply so that everyone is forced to buy from your clean water supply. The "free" market is the most inefficient way to distribute resources ever devised. As we can see, China is the most impressive economy in the world by heavily restricting its market, having many state owned industries, and building sectors of the economy that better serve society. America's economy and infrastructure are seriously in decline. It's also built upon useless sectors of an economy, such as finance. The majority of the American economy is composed of bullshit jobs that recirculate more bullshit in the economy. America builds builds useless infrastructure just to break it down and build it back up again all the time. As the third world starts to liberate themselves from western exploitation, which the western economies heavily rely upon to supplement their own, the great western decline will continue to happen. Neoliberalism and, more broadly, capitalism has failed the west.
Incredibly based comment
>China is the most impressive economy in the world Jesus fucking Christ.
The Nowheresville in China that no one has heard of is a little backwater city of only 5-6 million.
The one I was one went from Shanghai to Ningbo and it was great. China is awesome, their government probably not, but we can say the same about everywhere, except maybe Ireland. They seem chill.
China has a pretty bad government probably second to North Korea
No way haha A ton of African governments, Afghanistan and even Russia are worse.
No. They connect major cities. The only line that is arguably "to nowhere" is the Lanzhou to Urumqi. It does go somewhere, but the Urumqi is so far from the rest of China that a high-speed rail really doesn't make much sense.
No no no. They go to empty crumbling cities
No, I took one to a mountain but a hundred people got off to go climbing. Chinese infrastructure is so well made, it makes North America feel shameful
>Chinese infrastructure is so well made, That's an interesting take.
Have you ridden these trains? The purpose of this post?
\+300 social credits
I beg to differ at times. And yes, I am Chinese so I know what I'm referring to.
I put a coin on edge in a train and it stayed upright while I was going 400km/h. Just try that on any North American train.
It's a maglev train; if it wasn't stable you'd be dead. And frankly that's a minimum requirement.
No it’s not maglev at all. There is actually very little maglev in China.
I see. Still, I have little desire to prolong this on an optimism subreddit despite my disagreements, so I shall continue no further.
There was so much pessimism to my comment! I’m just so happy millions of people get to ride affordable, electric, high speed train. This is a great thing! Then I get a bunch of anti-China BS. Reddit sucks.
It's just that often times, ppl say America/China bad and then overlook the good they do. The same people also think that all Chinese/American citizens are 100% aligned with their own government, which we know is both impossible and unrealistic. Yes, the infrastructural hellscape that is most of the US is inexcusable, but it's not as if nothing works. Individualism and a degree of self-sustainment has always been a thing in the US all the way back to its founding, and despite all the drawbacks that come with it, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yes, the hate directed at the Chinese government is justified in the context that makes sense, but it's also the same flawed government that played a part in bringing near a whole billion of the human population out of abject poverty, which is an achievement few if any can claim. My point is, I've learned long ago to not assume everyone is the same based on the miniscule samples of people that I encounter daily. I don't hate China; it's my Ancestral home. I hate its governing body. I don't hate the US; it's my birthplace. I hate the lack of accountability.
I am American, so I know how bad America is
I live in both places, and I am familiar.
There's westerners who moved to China and love it there. Just because you're a capitalist psychopath doesn't mean everyone has the same ideals as you.
It's exactly this sort of wording that starts arguments. Also, capitalist psychopath? Where'd that come from?
Bro. You started it.
What part of this screamed capitalist psychopath to you?
This dude is an S-tier troll and he’s not even trying. He’s just repeating communist talking points over and over without making any sense. And the worst part is I think he genuinely believes it.
That's nowhere lmao
Isn’t it good that thousands of people every day can take a cheap environmentally friendly train to a famous national nature preserve?
Yes, but I will say they're not really cheap from my understanding. The tickets range from $80-$250 one way. This is pretty similar to Japan, but Chinese wages aren't as high as Japanese wages from I've heard.
What? I just rode one for cheaper than that! What are you on about?
That's just what I find online whenever I cross reference different countries' ticket prices.
1. It's China those trains aren't environmentally friendly 2. Doesn't matter it's still going to nowhere.
They are all electric and many of them are powered by nuclear power. What’s not environmentally friendly about that?
The process of creating the infrastructure and extracting the resources necessary to make the parts. Also, it cuts through the wild landscape, disrupts animal movement, and goes to nowhere.
This subreddit is about optimism and you’ve been nothing but pessimistic. These trains took tens of millions of polluting cars off the road and now travel is emission free. Air quality in China is better than ever. It’s affordable, safe, and allows millions of people excellent travel options. This is a good thing.
This is literal propaganda lmao
What did I say that is not accurate? Be specific. If you can’t, take your anti-China propaganda to a pessimistic subreddit.
Trains are pretty much always better than planes and cars
Yes, when they go somewhere. It's wasteful to drive cars and fly planes to nowhere same with trains.
And now there infrastructure in place to be able to ship out labor and materials to turn nowheres into somewhere.
This is China. What they'll do is build a city in the middle of nowhere where people can't live in because the apartment complexs there are made out of cardboard
That doesn't make the rails bad, that's a different problem.
很好!
No idea what that says lol
"very good"
Chinese overinvestment in infrastructure is now a major issue in there economy
Sounds like cope. Trains are based.
They were based but they started building projects to boost "GDP" instead of for actual returns. Like high speed rail in the desert
Monetary returns should not be the only goal of public infrastructure. I believe it to be quite inspiring that China can do these mega projects to serve everyone. Also, keep in mind that the returns may come later. Some things take time to bear fruit.
True but a lot of this infrastructure has become dick measuring. They're in an issue rn of low public demand from there own population and instead of making people's lives better they just want to invest into ai and "new" industry. It's not my point the high speed rail was bad it's that they built far to much of it
Noooo you can’t invest in useful public infrastructure that makes people’s lives better you have to triple the defense budget and bail out private banks noooooo you can’t do that we need less public transport and less housing there’s no enough homeless people this is bad for business nooo
I love useless megaprojects instead of investing in useful training.
They’re not useless. China is still a developing country and massive amounts of rural people continue to migrate to cities. Those cities and lines that go to unpopulated areas end up getting populated at some point as people migrate. Hope this helps
They did but they've reached the point they don't
Hell yeah we love Chinese development in these parts.
Welp while they did that and planned ahead, America was able to… finance a few genocides on a couple different continents so I guess we’re even 😎👍🏼
Wow you all sure get pessimistic when it’s about China
Chinese railways are an economic timebomb: Chinese Railway’s debt has been growing due to the expansion of the world’s largest high-speed rail network. As of the end of 2021, the state-owned operator’s total liabilities reached 5.91 trillion yuan ($882 billion), which is around 5% of China’s gross domestic product. This debt is expected to continue growing.
That's nothing though. That's what you call an "economic time bomb"? I thought you guys were optimists? If you said something about US debt levels you would be siting at -69696969696969 downvotes by now.
中国铁路总公司负债 9,000 亿美元，拥有超过 42,000 公里的高铁。 2023年美国国债增加2.4万亿美元，高铁新增0公里。 [美国唯一能做的就是花1亿多美元在3个地铁站安装如此丑陋的护栏](https://nypost.com/2024/01/22/metro/ugly-mta-subway-safety-rails-at-nyc-station-dont-impress-straphangers-whats-the-point/)。 https://preview.redd.it/31d20ea33lvc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ca37303660a641c80043a4926266187020e00ca
I want some
Huh almost reminds me of something, like a facist regime that revolutionized roads.
Facist
Why yes Timmy that is how you spell facist. A+ for you.
Try again, you got this
Most of those lines are money losers and should not have been built though
Virtually 100% of roads built are money losers. Sustainable infrastructure is always a good investment for a region as a whole. Plus this helps the environment compared to cars.
What does "money loser" mean? Like the line produces less income than it costs to operate? Because that isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's a government service.
In a lot of ways the job of public infrastructure is to lose money in order to generate economic growth. It's a bet that we'll make the money back through the business it generates
Except the CCP likes to do things to pump up gdp numbers without actually boosting their economy
“Money loser” is a crude way to put it but you are absolutely right that ROI should be considered with infrastructure investment, public or private. t. Development team at a private infrastructure company
The better critic is China is authoritarian, public infrastructure doesn't need to make money
Yay for 19th century technology!
High speed rail is not 19th century technology.
Trains are. Going faster isn’t much of an accomplishment. lol
Faster cheaper further and more comfortable, in addition to more available are accomplishments, they are the cornerstones of development particularly in transport/connectivity
Cheaper? Rail is the most expensive form of transportation. You need to have full capacity at all times and as a level of convenience you need to hope the train is going exactly where you want. Which in most cases it isn’t so you need further transportation such as cars, buss or taxis. 21st century technology should give us flying cars, which if the drone tech gets better may be possible but who knows.
I meant cheaper as in the cheapification of rail/ it’s the most (cost, and otherwise) effective mode of transportation on land.
Are you drunk? https://seattletransitblog.com/2009/10/26/the-highway-vs-fixed-transit-debate/#:~:text=The%20average%20light%2Drail%20line,about%20%245%20to%20%2410%20million.
“Freeways cannot exceed a flow of 2,000 automobiles per hour per lane without inducing congestion. Light rail, on the other hand, can serve up to 12,000 passengers per hour on single tracks, depending on headway frequencies and the number of rail cars being coupled together. Marginally, the dollars are put to much better use in fixed transit investment, particularly when considering the next point.” “The ADC avoids using “average” or “overall” with good reason. They could very well be arguing that a packed commuter bus is cheaper to operate than a lightly-used train at 1am, which it is.” “But when it comes down to the average costs-per-boarding between all rail and bus service in any given system and not just between “comparable corridors,” the latter is almost always more expensive.” This all supports my view? What did you think I said?
You are really dumb. It literal gives dollar amounts. Railings 25 million a mile. Highway is 5-10 million.
It litetally argues against this??? “Rail opponents love using this argument because the assumption is that fixed transit is just not cost-effective. But when you take a good look at the numbers, it’s easy to find that the comparison being made with highways just isn’t an equitable one. The third sentence in the “reality” rebuttal makes mention of an “average lane mile,” but doesn’t really expound. Well, a highway lane mile is exactly as it sounds: one mile of one lane in one direction. But the ADC makes it sound like the cost-per-lane mile is the actual cost-per-mile of a freeway, which it is not. The number doesn’t figure in the total number of lanes that are being paved down in each direction for a complete freeway segment.”
Did you unironically just suggest flying cars as a possibly cheap alternative to rail transport?
This is what you use to show optimism? This shows how much the west has fallen behind
Why wouldn't that be positive? I find the US' downfall to be a comedic blast of the highest caliber.
The west isn’t just the US, have you seen the Northern Irish rail network? Me either