China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network • Hacker News Board

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#71

Post by ak217 » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #37

crdoconnor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes you do. If the rail goes across any freehold, you'll have to negotiate and compensate for the owners loses. This process takes years if not decades. The only reason China is able to build so quickly is because the government tramples on people rights Actually the Chinese government builds a lot of the high speed rail tracks on elevated tracks in order to avoid interfering with the owner. Which is why most of it…

Perhaps a better photo to make your point: http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0229/c90000-9022441-11.html So it does seem like they're using tracks elevated by concrete pillars pretty widely, but are you sure your image shows a high-speed rail track? To my untrained eye that seems like a really aggressive curve radius for a high speed rail track. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_railway_curve_radius#L...

Yes, it's a high speed track. That's a Siemens ICE train (or a Chinese derivative thereof). A telephoto lens can create this visual effect of depth compression.

I'm flabbergasted by people implying that there's a good excuse for why the Western nations can't build HSR the way China does. China has entire lines like this that don't touch the ground for dozens of miles at a time. These lines are out in the country connecting major city centers, and I'm very skeptical that they disrupt any landowners in between. China has perfected the technqiue of low-cost construction of this elevated track. Meanwhile in California every property owner along the CA HSR right-of-way has the right to sue the state and claim not that they haven't been compensated (they have), but that there will be environmental damage (even though it has already been studied), delaying the construction and making it cost even more.

Many Western countries' ability to build large infrastructure is broken, because they give too much power to the landowners and unions.

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#72

Post by vkou » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 3:44 PM UTC

jarboot wrote: post #67

Currently in China and frequently using the train system here. I really wish something like this could happen in a country as big as the US. What's stopping them? Politicians? Land rights? Lack of resources?

The United States would rather let an oil company build a pipeline on your land, then a rail company build a high speed train track on it.

Oil is prioritized over rail because it immediately creates jobs, tax dollars, and the government doesn't have to pay up front for it. If you're a politician, which one would you want to support?

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#73

Post by drzaiusapelord » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 3:53 PM UTC

jarboot wrote: post #67

Currently in China and frequently using the train system here. I really wish something like this could happen in a country as big as the US. What's stopping them? Politicians? Land rights? Lack of resources?

Gentrified western economies have economic growth of around 2% on average. Developing countries moving from mostly rural or controlled economies to market industrialized economies can, and do, have growth of around 10% or more. That's a fairly big difference in available funds for capital projects.

The same way the US was building trains in NYC, Chicago, etc 100 years ago, China and others are doing so today, but with the advantage of globalization, automation, and mostly solved technical issues for even advanced systems.

Essentially, the point at which your society hits this growth really is going to determine the what kind of infrastructure you're stuck with. The big exception here is being bombed to the point where you have to re-do your infrastructure, which is the case with Europe and why they tend to have newer mass transit infrastructure than the US which saw no bombing on its homeland, and of course has the added problem of a huge homeland which makes more sense to fly around in, than ride around in.

A good example of this in tech is how the US pioneered DSL (Joseph Lechleider at Bellcore) and how quickly the US telcos ran with it. By the time the Europeans and others caught up, DSL had advanced to ADSL2 and ADSL2+ which gave 2x to 5x the bandwidth. Meanwhile, US subscribers were stuck with vanilla DSL for decades because the cost of upgrading was so prohibitive.

There's a problem with innovative countries where they run with revision 1 of some new tech, but then are stuck with rev1 because big infrastructure changes take a long time, and you can expect decades of use before replacement. Or in the case of trains, centuries - the CTA in Chicago is built on tracks originally laid in the 1860's. From a tech perspective its weird to think Chicago was running light rail before homes even had electricity. Waiting until later revisions to build out your infrastructure, either intentionally or not, comes with fairly big dividends. Now is very good time to lay down infrastructure due to all the computing power we have, automation options, lowered costs via globalization, and focus on renewable energy.

That said, infrastructure improvements happens as needed in older economies. The US has an impressive air system, for example, with at least 75,000 flights per day and at relatively low price points. We've probably hit the efficiency and feature maximum with jets as-is, so not much room for innovation here, but its clear for the US, air became the focus instead of trains. You can fly from Chicago to LA in 4 hours. Even a 'fast' bullet train with zero stops would take 10 hours, most likely closer to 15 with stops. Also, air is privatized, so there's no worrying about raising taxes or cutting social programs to pay for a subsidized train expansion, which would take quite a bit political will from taxpayers, most of whom are happy with car ownership for daily commuting and airlines for longer trips.

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#74

Post by blibble » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #31

wyuenho wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you do. If the rail goes across any freehold, you'll have to negotiate and compensate for the owners loses. This process takes years if not decades. The only reason China is able to build so quickly is because the government tramples on people rights (does private ownership of real estate exist in China?) like there's no tomorrow. I attended a seminar in UCL a few months ago where the panelist shared the number o…

>Yes you do. If the rail goes across any freehold, you'll have to negotiate and compensate for the owners loses. This process takes years if not decades. The only reason China is able to build so quickly is because the government tramples on people rights Actually the Chinese government builds a lot of the high speed rail tracks on elevated tracks in order to avoid interfering with the owner. Which is why most of it…

what are the supports built on?

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#75

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

ak217 wrote: post #71

avar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a better photo to make your point: http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0229/c90000-9022441-11.html So it does seem like they're using tracks elevated by concrete pillars pretty widely, but are you sure your image shows a high-speed rail track? To my untrained eye that seems like a really aggressive curve radius for a high speed rail track. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_railway_curve_radius#L...

Yes, it's a high speed track. That's a Siemens ICE train (or a Chinese derivative thereof). A telephoto lens can create this visual effect of depth compression. I'm flabbergasted by people implying that there's a good excuse for why the Western nations can't build HSR the way China does. China has entire lines like this that don't touch the ground for dozens of miles at a time. These lines are out in the country conn…

The unions don't have enough power. They're trying to make HS2 happen.

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#76

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

wyuenho wrote: post #38

crdoconnor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes you do. If the rail goes across any freehold, you'll have to negotiate and compensate for the owners loses. This process takes years if not decades. The only reason China is able to build so quickly is because the government tramples on people rights Actually the Chinese government builds a lot of the high speed rail tracks on elevated tracks in order to avoid interfering with the owner. Which is why most of it…

That's true. I've seen them all over north western China. although I know what the true purpose of them are. The pillar look pretty dense to me, so I'm not what to think about "avoid interfering". I suspect they are used to keep the rails level since the network goes thru a pretty wide range of elevation.

This is correct. Much of china is mountainous, so pillaring and tunneling are quite common to get the straightness needed for HSR. They also need to skip over urban areas sometimes, but that is more about traffic.

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#77

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

wyuenho wrote: post #38

crdoconnor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes you do. If the rail goes across any freehold, you'll have to negotiate and compensate for the owners loses. This process takes years if not decades. The only reason China is able to build so quickly is because the government tramples on people rights Actually the Chinese government builds a lot of the high speed rail tracks on elevated tracks in order to avoid interfering with the owner. Which is why most of it…

That's true. I've seen them all over north western China. although I know what the true purpose of them are. The pillar look pretty dense to me, so I'm not what to think about "avoid interfering". I suspect they are used to keep the rails level since the network goes thru a pretty wide range of elevation.

[deleted]

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#78

Post by nacc » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

As someone who grew in China, I just want to point out that besides the engineering, it is a political wonder as well.

Before the bullet train network was built, China already has an extensive railway network. The first step is to run the bullet train on traditional railways, with a peak speed of 180km/h. People think it's great. No objections.

But to raise the speed further, a new network has to be built, almost side-by-side to traditional railways. This idea horrored almost everybody: new railways for 10s of thousands kms, new train stations (yes for most of the place it needs a separate station), just to be a bit faster? Of course it got a constant concensual blaze from both the citizens and all the official and unofficial media. This state maintains from the beginning of the project all the way a couple years into it operates (which spans many years).

The head of the project, Liu Zhijun had to be in jail of course. Then everything changes, 180 degree. People took the trains and realize it's great. What I (and probably many people too) didn't know before was with the speed increase, the perception of distance changes. The trains run like buses: between major cities, the train runs across in every several minutes. You can just get a ticket, go to the station, an hour later you are on the subway of another city. Many times when we were holding a meeting, people from other cities actually took less time to arrive than someone driving from suburbs.

Then the new railway network gets praise from both national and overseas. The official media shut up about Liu. People start to think Liu as a fanatically great engineer.

I cannot imagine how this project can even get started, and what Liu had to do to get this to work. There must have been a great story, but we may never know.

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#79

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:26 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #27

mseebach wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am left with a feeling of awe at China's development, and frustration at the UK's stagnancy. While the UK does feel particularly stagnated on several fronts, I'm not sure abandoning the rule of law, protection of private property, labour protections, at least an attempt at the appearance of corruption-free tenders, high safety standards and the principle that people who are affected should be consulted is worthy…

>I'm not sure abandoning the rule of law, protection of private property, labour protections All 100% unnecessary in order to build a lot of high speed rail. Except possibly the protection of private property (it would require eminent domain). But, since most British homeowners have been subject to one of the largest handouts in history (in the form of house price appreciation directed by the state), I think the a li…

They don't use stilts because of property ownership, but because of terrain and traffic. There are hardly any stilts between Beijing and GZ, for example, because it is easier to just tunnel under hills rather than do both.

I assume the U.K. is rather flat and you wouldn't use stilts at all.

Re: China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network

#80

Post by drawkbox » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #62

What a pathetic Debbie Downer article -- quintessential modern America. Most of the article just keeps beating the cost drum -- trains don't generate enough ticket revenue to cover their cost. Meanwhile the U.S. taxpayer givers $41.0 billion a year to the Federal Highway Administration, and most roads don't generate a single dime of revenue.

Roads, originally an Eisenhower idea [1] as car culture was 'railroaded' in so to speak to win over trains, generate tons of indirect revenue.

People and businesses on either side and up and down every road generate revenue because of it. Same with the internet, trains etc.

You don't have to generate revenue directly from the thing for it to be a great idea. Bean counting away from indirect benefits seems to be overly-existent in our short-term planning modern US culture (not focusing on true investments enough like infrastructure, i.e. broadband etc).

Our interstate systems have been huge benefits even though trains would be nice as well, Amtrak is not competitive.

The interstate system is probably the best thing Ike ever did, good infrastructure projects leave a great legacy and are overlooked. It fueled economic growth across the nation as well as served as helping with defense.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/finalmap.cfm