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

economist.com

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

#151

Post by adventured »

dmix wrote: post #144
ytruytr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the political pushback in the US is two major factors: 1) Rail systems are almost never profitable. The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. An investment in high speed rail entails paying taxes for it for many years or perhaps forever. 2) The US is much more rural than other developed countries. The land area compared to the population is huge compared to Europe/China/Japan. You almost…

> The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. The US gives $0.6 trillion / yr in energy subsidies, about 70% of which goes to oil. Which reduces the cost of cars and trucks.

Where are you getting the $420 billion per year in oil subsidies? US oil companies pay among the highest corporate income tax rates on the planet. Their taxes far exceed subsidies they receive.

$600 billion by comparison is the size of the US military and $420 billion is larger than the sales of Exxon + Chevron + Conoco + Occidental + EOG + Anadarko combined. It's an absurd claim.

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

#152

Post by ghaff »

xbeta wrote: post #135

(Being a Chinese grew up in Canada, and now working/living in the Bay) In my opinion, most people in the valley or in North America still refuse to give up their lifestyle. They look for something like self-driving cars, all electric-powered "personal" vehicle to invest. And those still drive on the same road/interstates/highway infrastructure and don't give you the benefits compare with high-speed rails. They don't…

Many people do indeed want to get from Point A to point B quickly. That's why there are around 75,000 plane flights per day. There are very few city pairs in the US with the potential volume to justify high speed rail.

There already is high speed-ish rail travel in the Northeast and it's very popular. But, for example, even if you could magically offer 6-8 hour train service between New York and Chicago, relatively few people would take it given that flying would be significantly faster.

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

#153

Post by mozumder »

derefr wrote: post #89
sandworm101 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what percentage of the population actually uses a bullet train in a given week/month/year? (Not trips/population, the percentage of people who take one or more journies in a given timeframe.) Is this just a service for the urban elite? Or do farmers also use them? The 747 and like jets made air travel affordable and now air travel is cheaper than by boat/rail over long distances (for people, taking into account f…

This is a similar question to what percentage of people use all those empty condo-cities being built in China. The answer is: a perhaps-negligible number now (except around existing metropolitan centres, where there's respectable usage), but with projected growth toward capacity as GDP rises. Because Chinese civil-planning policy isn't a matter of election promises, it isn't constrained to showing benefits within fou…

Those empty condos are unmarketable. As people become wealthier, they're going to change tastes. Even the middle class is going to seek out individual single family homes, instead of the concrete jungle of repetitive jail cells that are those new condos.

They're the poor mans idea of what the middle class wants.

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

#154

Post by dmix »

adventured wrote: post #151
dmix wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. The US gives $0.6 trillion / yr in energy subsidies, about 70% of which goes to oil. Which reduces the cost of cars and trucks.

Where are you getting the $420 billion per year in oil subsidies? US oil companies pay among the highest corporate income tax rates on the planet. Their taxes far exceed subsidies they receive. $600 billion by comparison is the size of the US military and $420 billion is larger than the sales of Exxon + Chevron + Conoco + Occidental + EOG + Anadarko combined. It's an absurd claim.

I was quoting Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies

> The study found that "China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion)."

> The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period.

Apologies, it seems fossil fuels get 70%. Not just oil.

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

#155

Post by nialv7 »

ytruytr wrote: post #142
xbeta wrote: post #135

(Being a Chinese grew up in Canada, and now working/living in the Bay) In my opinion, most people in the valley or in North America still refuse to give up their lifestyle. They look for something like self-driving cars, all electric-powered "personal" vehicle to invest. And those still drive on the same road/interstates/highway infrastructure and don't give you the benefits compare with high-speed rails. They don't…

A lot of the political pushback in the US is two major factors: 1) Rail systems are almost never profitable. The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. An investment in high speed rail entails paying taxes for it for many years or perhaps forever. 2) The US is much more rural than other developed countries. The land area compared to the population is huge compared to Europe/China/Japan. You almost…

If you've been to Tokyo or Shanghai/Beijing, you would know the New York public transport system is not well developed at all.

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

#156

Post by joering2 »

_jgdh wrote: post #143
joering2 wrote: post #140

This looks great but I honestly wonder - if China is under heavy communism oppression and noone can make enough fuzz about their lifestyle before eventually disappearing... why would Chinese government care about spending money and time building such vast (and beautiful!) network? Serious question...

> This looks great but I honestly wonder - if China is under heavy communism oppression and noone can make enough fuzz about their lifestyle before eventually disappearing... why would Chinese government care about spending money and time building such vast (and beautiful!) network? Serious question... China isn't under heavy communist oppression, not the kind that you're thinking. Their style of oppression is differ…

+1 - but:

> The Social Contract that the Party offers the People is this - you will not get political choice

then

> Projects such as high speed rail help the Party deliver on its promise.

Ain't that contradiction? Why do they need to deliver on that promise? In other words -- if they don't, what will happen, if as you say "you will not get political choice, you will always be ruled by us".

Further you describe China like some sort of wonderland. In such case, why is it so that the reality is far different?

Or is it just american propaganda I'm being fed, and I should immediately abandon my always "bills gotta get paid" worries and migrate to PRC?

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

#157

Post by crdoconnor »

grw_ wrote: post #130
crdoconnor wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

It's quite rare to see people advocating high-speed rail for such short journeys as typical London commuter belt. Could you elaborate how you see this working? Remember you're accelerating 1000 tonnes of steel to 200mph at each station you need to stop at.

Actually I have a coworker who commutes on HSR1 from Ashford meaning he lives closer to France than he does to the office and he still has a less painful commute than half of my coworkers.

Building high speed rail in London would alleviate a lot of commuter stress and pain and it could be used to regenerate a lot of the more run down areas on the outskirts of London if they suddenly had a ~12-15 minute commute to the center.

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

#158

Post by aninhumer »

skybrian wrote: post #147
adventured wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is in fact ascendant, not in decline. You're using the rail example to imply downfall, and yet the US economy has embarrassed the Japanese economy the last 25 years. In the mid 1980s, the US and Japan nearly had the same GDP per capita; very soon the US will have twice the GDP per capita of Japan. You're implying rail is so beneficial to economic growth, and let's say I agree with that: and yet the US has been…

I'm not sure GDP per capita makes sense for this comparison when ownership is distributed so unequally in the US. Taking the mean is basically dividing up wealth equally and that's not what happens. What is there about the German standard of living for typical citizens that compares unfavorably to the US? How can this be measured? No single number works, but I would suggest looking at medians ahead of means.

There are some Median Wealth figures on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

The US apparently has about half the median wealth of many European countries, although notably not Germany, which is comparable to the US on this metric.

But I'm not sure how meaningful this is or what factors might be affecting the numbers. (And I'm not even exactly sure what's being measured.)

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

#159

Post by zachwood »

adventured wrote: post #151
dmix wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. The US gives $0.6 trillion / yr in energy subsidies, about 70% of which goes to oil. Which reduces the cost of cars and trucks.

Where are you getting the $420 billion per year in oil subsidies? US oil companies pay among the highest corporate income tax rates on the planet. Their taxes far exceed subsidies they receive. $600 billion by comparison is the size of the US military and $420 billion is larger than the sales of Exxon + Chevron + Conoco + Occidental + EOG + Anadarko combined. It's an absurd claim.

Looks like they found that number here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Impact_of_fos...

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

#160

Post by nialv7 »

neolefty wrote: post #92
nacc wrote: post #78

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 sid…

I have ridden those trains (spent 2011-2016 in China), and they're pretty great, but they're hard to justify economically: > The overall bill is already high. China Railway Corporation, the state-owned operator of the train system, has debts of more than 4trn yuan, equal to about 6% of GDP. Strains were evident last year when China Railway Materials, an equipment-maker, was forced to restructure part of its debts. Si…

The rail doesn't have to be profitable itself (which is a benefit of being state-owned). The more important thing is the bigger picture, is how much economic advantage it generates.
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