421–430 of 503 posts
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Not quite true, in China the government usually tries to compensate you fairly for your house and cannot "force" you to leave (although I'm sure it happens). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/01/chinese-highwa...
> All land in China is state-owned, and residents are typically offered a fraction of their home's original value in compensation.
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I agree with your sentiments overall, so don't take my "it's not all gloom and doom" comment as a disagreement... But there are people out there trying! The project from Texas Central Railways is looking like a sooner bet than California's line, for a number of reasons. An example of a reason is lower price, stemming from geography. The route doesn't require building tunnels through mountains and the like. Although e…
I travel from Dallas to Houston every week for work and have been following this closely. Often after a run of crummy trips by air due to delays and other common air travel issues I take an executive charter bus just to take a break. All the while dreaming of what it would be like transiting via maglev at 1kmph
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
Unfortunately you don’t really get one without tending to get the other.
As fast as a jetliner, and way more efficient. Can be powered without fossil fuels. This is the future. Where is America on HSR?
Not fundamentally more efficient, UNLESS in a Hyperloop-like vacuum tube (as this one is). Let’s consider at near sea level. At near sea level, the drag at those speeds is absolutely brutal. Airplanes win, although they’re harder to electrify. If you extrapolate current Maglev designs to 1000km/h, for energy consumption per passenger mile is about 0.5kWh/(passenger-mile). Airplanes are on the order of 100mpg/passenge…
Most high-speed trains don't carry all their fuel with them. They get it from the network.
This will all change as battery technology improves but at the moment I cannot see it getting better trains.
That being said I expect that the 1000km/h speed will be like the Shanghai to Beijing track that got up to maximum speed a few times for the record and has since been reduced to make it more economical.
Even if this does happen and the train reaches 1,000 for a single trip and then drops back to a safer and more profitable speed of 600km/h or 800km/h it is still faster than what we have now and is a massive improvement.
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
No need to get glossy eyed over China. Yes, there are advantages to a totalitarian regime where the population isn’t allowed to own land. There are also modern day concentration camps and mass organ harvesting. Unfortunately you don’t really get one without tending to get the other.
The USA's rail system is shit because of lack of investment, and misaligned incentives. It's cheaper to fly, or drive, than to invest in rail, even though rail is very efficient (and i suspect, more environmentally friendly than either of the above).
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
No need to get glossy eyed over China. Yes, there are advantages to a totalitarian regime where the population isn’t allowed to own land. There are also modern day concentration camps and mass organ harvesting. Unfortunately you don’t really get one without tending to get the other.
I've tried to dig for references, but it's very difficult to find discussions 2+ years back, let along official news.
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> high speed rail is romanticism from bygone days when rail was the only alternative to long distance travel. air travel pretty much superseded it and is doing so all over the world. This isn't true. High speed rail is alive and well in Europe. Geography, politics and history are all significant factors that you can't explain so easily. > the advent of self driving and electric cars will doom them regardless Highly s…
But there are plenty of chinese infrastructure projects that have languished for lack of use. Look at the olympic venues. Once the novelty of ribbon cutting is over, once the recuring costs start piling up, this project too may slow down.
So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest economy and should be the shining example of amazing infrastructure, high-tech, green cities, and forward thinking policies. California is an especially egregious example in terms of infrastructure investment: If California was a country it would be the world's fifth…
See in Australia how difficult it has been to build a high speed rail between Melbourne - Sydney one of the busiest domestic route in the world.
Edit - I dont mean to imply democracies are bad. It is just that things are hard to get done.
I’m not sure if it’s just lost in translation, but Wuhan to Guangzhou isn’t even 1000 km so I don’t know where they get the 2200 km they’re quoting. That’s likely a figure for GZ to Beijing. I have used the high speed line between Wuhan and GZ (and through to HK) several times. It’s currently a 4.5 hour direct journey (once per day) or a 5 hour journey if you change at GZ or Shenzhen. The HSR is 300ish km/h at the mo…
> only to stop 4-5 times along the way That's the big one. What HSR needs is not even higher top speed but some control breakthrough that allows much higher train frequencies in order to cut down on stops via more trains that can serve more specialized connections (e.g. the local/through etc). No idea what that breakthrough might be, perhaps something as crazy as rocket-assisted emergency braking.
If you go from Shanghai to Suzhou via HSR a train goes roughly every 15 minutes. Most trains going east go through Suzhou (since it is a major hub) and it is roughly 30 minutes away which is a decent distance so worth stopping for. The train only gets to maximum speed for about 15 minutes in the middle.