China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#2This is great for China. Hopefully, US will be working in implementing this soon too.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#3Not trying to be funny, but I am kind of surprised they didn't just buy a few and make copies of them.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#4This reminds me of an article I read awhile ago (in wired?) that said something to the effect that China could very well leap-frog petroleum and go straight to a 'green' transportation model. Seems dictators don't have to wage petty battles over who-gets-what-when-where-why-and-how.
Given the number of dedicated, high speed rail lines in the U.S. (uhm, 0? as far as I know...), it looks like China could beat us.
Note: Not advocating communism or anything here, it just makes me angry that rail transit is so crappy in this country. It's a great way to travel, at least in Europe.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#5Totalitarianism has its efficiencies.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#6Not trying to be funny, but I am kind of surprised they didn't just buy a few and make copies of them.
Construction will happen in China (Qingdao), with project management and components(?) split between China and Europe offices.
And not that funny; I know of heavy manufacturing companies that multiply their selling prices by 10 for equipment that is destined for China just for that reason.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#7This is great for China. Hopefully, US will be working in implementing this soon too.
I hope not. The shinkansen is lovely, don't get me wrong (+), but they estimate $40+ billion (which is likely about 40% of what it would actually cost given the persistent cost overruns in infrastructure projects) just to connect Sacramento through San Diego.
The only thing that would come close to making trains economical in the US is a massive firebombing campaign of every city you hope they're going to run through, and even that would be pushing it, since even with cheap right-of-ways you'd still have to string them across the country.
See, in general, http://green.venturebeat.com/2008/04/11/why-the-california-h...
+ If you priced US high speed rail like Japan prices the shinkansen, it would cost you about $250 for a round-trip ticket from New York to Boston. I do the Nagoya to Tokyo circuit every once in a while for work. The system is one of the wonders of the modern world but, holy cow, is it expensive. (Its expensive to ride, its expensive to subsidize, and HOLY COW was it expensive to build. Shinkansen-related debt hit nearly 30 trillion yen -- that's in the general vicinity of $300 billion, folks. And that is for a country that would fit in California, with room to spare.)
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#8High-speed train competition is a fascinating topic (if you're a.. uh.. trainspotter :))
For about a decade, Germany has been trying to sell the 'Transrapid' mag-lev trains and tech to China. Transrapid was sponsored by various German governments (both federal and state) for well over two decades, with the occasional state PM or federal minister turning it into their pet project (e.g. to link an airport to a city, or to link two big cities), etc. The Transrapid patent is from 1934 and the first test track was completed in Germany in 1987, almost twenty years after planning first started.
Unfortunately (for the Transrapid guys), 'normal' train technology started catching up, and the technological hurdles to implementing long-distance mag-lev trains remain prohibitively expensive, despite vast sums being sunk into it by the German government (not only is the actual technology quite sensitive, but the tranches that need to be built tend to be elevated and very straight - which doesn't work well in densely populated areas like Europe).
In the late 90s and early 00s, the only way forward seemed to be selling it to a place needing fast trains and having no scruples about building the tranches wherever they damn well please. Enter China. A few years ago, a German-Chinese joint venture built a single 19-mile track to connect Shanghai to its airport.
The real kicker? The German companies behind Transrapid continue to allege that the Chinese are stealing the technology and implementation details from the German side of the joint-venture so they can build their own -- much cheaper. Or as China Daily reported, the State Council is 'encouraging engineers to "learn and absorb foreign advanced technologies while making further innovations."'
The cost for the aforementioned 19-mile Transrapid track was $1.4 billion dollars. The cost of 80 high-speed Bombardier trains (running on presumably standard rail lines)? $4 billion.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#9Totalitarianism has its efficiencies.
Totalitarianism is very efficient until the people realize material wealth without political freedom is hollow.
Re: China Buys 80 Very High Speed Trains (236 mph) for $4 Billion
#10Not trying to be funny, but I am kind of surprised they didn't just buy a few and make copies of them.
They tend to do that in a more subtle way:
Bombardier Transportation announced today that its Chinese joint venture, Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation Ltd., has been selected by the Chinese Ministry of Railways ...
I imagine that the cars will be manufactured in China and the joint venture company will gain a lot of experience from the effort.