Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio... fiasco
China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
51–60 of 251 posts
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly the reason; people own land, buildings are protected, etc. China has less of this problem (benefits of an oppressive or at least assertive regime that puts economic progress first). I'd compare what China is doing with the high speed trains now with what the US did with the regular train tracks. Look at what it did to the US in terms of economy, and the cost for the native people and nature.
Britain had a similar pace of progress in the Victorian era (to present day China), and we still had property rights then.
I don't think British society in Victorian times had the same level of education and basic income/living standards as they do today (my perspective is mostly from Dickens' writing though; I haven't done much research into this area personally).
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#53If USA cuts the military budget just in half (~$500bil/2=$250bil/year) then using those funds in 5 years we could connect Washington to Philadelphia to New York to Boston to Portland. In another 5 years the rail could reach Chicago or Carolinas.
Traveling at 186mph on passenger speed train i could easily work in New York City (dirty city, median home price $750,000) and live in the burbs near the ocean near New Heaven CT (25min commute, beautiful nature and median home price 161,000$).
Teachers could finally afford homes... while working in the expensive cities.
But this is not going to happen. Instead we are going to build more sophisticated weapon systems... enrich military contractors, financial sector and pharmaceutical industries.
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#54"High-speed rail (HSR) is best suited for journeys of 1 to 4½ hours (about 150–900 km or 93–559 mi)" https://www.travelstatsman.com/08082016/high-speed-rail-trai...
... perfectly suited to link China's smaller cities, but not direct connections to it's major cities.
Maybe driven more by environmental reasons (arguably fewer emissions than plane travel) rather than economic reasons (besides job creation, etc).
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Britain had a similar pace of progress in the Victorian era (to present day China), and we still had property rights then.
I don't think British society in Victorian times had the same level of education and basic income/living standards as they do today (my perspective is mostly from Dickens' writing though; I haven't done much research into this area personally).
"Progress" is generally considered to be the first derivative of societal wealth, not the zeroth, and generally measured logarithmically rather than linearly. So, basically, "percentage annual increase in GDP" (or other similar measure, ignoring the questionability of any one of them for now). I don't have proof as to which of modern China and Victorian England is progressing more quickly, but the claim at least passes the smell test. (Personally I wouldn't trust either number I could get, as I think China is probably lying about their growth percentages and Victorian growth percentages would be a historical estimate only, so comparing two numbers I consider unreliable would not produce much information.)
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huge, and authoritarian. They move whole cities worth of people when it comes time to build a hydroelectric dam, by force if need be. The west in comparison gets bogged down in NIMBYism and haggling over land value pr CM of track/road. Never mind multiple rounds in court if one of the would be contractors can find any reason to claim the government was biased...
the USA moved towns to dam rivers too.
And the UK used to do things too. Your past tense is correct.
Whether this is a good or bad thing, well, see debates in other comments.
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I've always thought it was completely ridiculous. What's the 'justification' for it ?
Guess: when originally built those carriages didn't have door locking. It was felt it would be unsafe to have a handle on the inside that could be accidentally opened while the train was moving at high speed. So the handle is on the outside so that it takes a very deliberate effort to open the door (and hopefully people know better than to reach out of a window at high speed).
Another guess: a handle on the outside costs less than one on both sides and there is a window to access the outside handle.
Or: passengers were not supposed to operate those doors, there was railway personnel for that (this assumes very old trains)
Check: there is something about that issue here https://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/horrible-door...
"they firstly removed the interior door handles as a dirt-cheap “safety” measure to discourage people from getting out of the train before it stopped, then realised that they hadn’t actually discouraged everyone and had instead made jumping early even more dangerous, so they added a central locking system to keep the doors locked until the train stopped. Of course, in a quintessential piece of British train-related incompetence, they didn’t bother to put the handles back on once they had central locking."
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#58"Less than a decade ago China had yet to connect any of its cities by bullet train. Today, it has 20,000km (12,500 miles) of high-speed rail lines, more than the rest of the world combined. It is planning to lay another 15,000km by 2025" The contrast to the UK, where we might someday build the HS2 line London-Birmingham-Manchester, is massive. I am left with a feeling of awe at China's development, and frustration at…
There's also, I guess, a diminishing return for infrastructure investments in a highly-developed country like the UK, especially when it's much smaller than China. That said though, it's a shame Heathrow still can't get the extra runway it desperately needs...
It's a shame Heathrow's terminal buildings have been rebuilt in the last 15 years, rather than shut down with an airport in a sensible place constructed to replace it.
The noise of flights landing over London for 17 hours a day, pretty much every 90-120 seconds, is miserable.
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rail is typically never profitable unless the increase in land value around stations is captured. In the UK they typically leave those spoils to private land owners. Japanese rail companies manage this: they run the trains at cost - or even a loss - and make profits back from (for example), building malls around the stations and leasing space to retailers. The UK could really use high speed rail around the London com…
Road-building is also not profitable unless you capture the increase in land value around roads. Curiously, most people are okay with tax-funded roads and streets but strongly oppose spending public funds on trains. Of course, ideally both would be run exactly at cost via user fees (i.e. train tickets, tolls etc.), but this is not an often-shared opinion.
>Curiously, most people are okay with tax-funded roads and streets but strongly oppose spending public funds on trains.
Actually the public is strongly in favor of spending public funds on trains, but the British oligarchy (reflected by the media's default opinion - which some people confuse for the public's), is vehemently against it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11867259/What-J...
Note the Telegraph accusing the general public of being communists:
"the majority of the electorate who have no love for bankers and are positively Trotskyist when it comes to trains and utilities"
"A recent YouGov poll showed that the majority of people support the renationalisation of railways, including those who identified themselves as Conservative or UKIP voters."
>Of course, ideally both would be run exactly at cost via user fees
Why are you against capturing the increased land value like Japan does?
Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network
#60Whenever I hear talk of bullet trains coming to the US, I hear people say things like "Americans could easily build better trains than the Chinese." Then I remind people that they have 20,000km of track, 150 trains and how much operating experience? That's a huge head start.
Actually, that existing track is part of the problem, not the solution. A new high-speed train is much easier to justify economically when you're looking at (total benefit of high-speed rail) - (cost of high speed rail) than when you're looking at ((total benefit of high-speed rail) - (total benefit of current rail)) - ((cost of high-speed rail) + (cost of removing current rail if necessary)).
There's a name for this effect, but I can't remember it. Another example in the real world is the effectiveness of putting up cell towers in developing countries rather than running wires for landlines.