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China Sets Sights On Rail Record
An anonymous reader writes "China is aiming to produce the world's fastest operating conventional train for its new high speed rail link between Shanghai and Beijing, achieving speeds up to 380 km/h and cutting the travel time between the two cities from the current ten hours to under five. The new rail link is scheduled to be completed within four years. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Railways' Deputy Chief Engineer has announced that China will be able to manufacture the new trains within two years."
Wow. Why aren't we in the US trying to do this? We used to be so worried about the Communists beating us. But now it's like we don't even care. Where's the fire?
its incredible to look at projects like these in comparison to the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on war instead. the best comparison I can draw is the relatively "small" investment a few billionaires began in revitalizing downtown Los Angeles. I drive down there and in just a few years there are refurbished buildings and the new nokia center just to start. One can actually walk around downtown (at least a section) without seeing old buildings everywhere. if we could have just invested a fraction of what we have spent on this war our country could be competing in projects like these.
...or there's no profit to be made in something thats more expensive and longer than driving?
From Indianapolis to Chicago, it'd cost me anywhere from $10-20 to take the train. I'd also have to be on the train at 5:30 in the morning. The train takes _at least_ 4 hours.
Or I can drive to Chicago, which takes at least an hour less, for only $10 more (185 miles at 25 miles per gallon, at roughly $4/gallon) and I can leave at my leisure.
Amtrak simply does not have the infrastructure for such an endeavor. A good chunk of Amtrak's routes are owned by freight companies; Amtrak simply pays to use them. So unless you're willing to assume that cost as the passenger to lay thousands of miles of private track, that's not going to happen since that cost would probably make ticket prices compete with airline prices, but to what benefit? Flying would still be faster. The only thing you would save is the hassle of airline security (which is a good enough reason for me, to be honest).
> The trains will be powered by the bodies of dead slave laborers ....
USAtoday says:
North America's four major rail networks -- Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National -- all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/21/slave-railroads.htm
People make the mistake of thinking of the environmental crowd as just the hot earthers but there are many subgroups with different motives and methods. They run the gamut from Sierra Club and other conservation groups, to the odd preservation groups who want to create some natural snow globe with nothing ever changes, to groups like Greenpeace, ELF, and ALF. Any one of these groups can file a lawsuit.
Also, it's not just building the tracks, it's also building the power substations if its an electric train (although a super fast steam engine might be cool), the train stations, and all the other supporting infrastructure. A lawsuit for environmental reasons can be brought against any piece of the infrastructure.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
There is already one of these in operation between Beijing and Tianjin, operating at a top-speed of 350 km/h, which is apparently already a record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing-Tianjin_high-speed_rail
I would also like to point out that many NIMBYs use the environmental laws as grounds for their lawsuits (I don't think not wanting it near you is grounds to sue), financing (lawsuits are expensive, after all and these groups are a great source of funds, and as a cover because, let's face it, no one has any sympathy for someone who just doesn't want a highway, rail road, cement plant, park, etc... in their backyard - it's selfish! Think of the greater good and all that.
Of course, the pundits love to point fingers at the environmentalists! My favourite is blaming them for the lack of refineries in the US (It's not. If an oil co wanted another refinery, they would get it. The truth is that they're operating below capacity as it is and they just don't need more and if they built more, capacity would increase, depress prices, and their margins would further decline. But, it's PC to blame the environmentalists. ).
Between Las Vegas and Disneyland.
It is kinda scary to think that while "Oh_so_EVIL_communist_China" builds an express line between its capitol and its financial center, US is building what is essentially a carnival ride between the Pleasure Island and Sin City.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Speed: There is a very narrow range of trip lengths for which high-speed rail makes sense.
Suppose this train actually achieves the stated 236 miles per hour. Without making any stops at all, you're still looking at about 13 hours to get from New York to San Francisco. With five or six stops (that's not even one per state), it would approach 20 hours. This is a 6-hour flight. Anywhere farther than 600 miles is going to be faster by air.
For trips less than 250 miles, it's just not worth the hassle of getting to a major rail hub, parking your car (or taking transit and transfering), waiting to board the train, arriving at your destination with no ground transport and having to rent a car, etc.. It's easier to just jump in your car and drive there. Cheaper, too.
Those are best-case scenarios. In reality, the Acela takes 8 hours to get from Boston to Washington, DC -- a flight I've made in about an hour and fifteen minutes.
Cost: Anyone with $50 or $100 million can start their own airline, leasing a few planes and plying low-volume routes to make money for expansion.
Good luck getting a high-speed rail built for less than $50 billion. With that kind of money, you could outright buy 40 or 50 brand-new airliners and hire people to fly them. That lets you provide service to a lot more than just two cities.
Capacity: It would take over a decade and untold billions of dollars to build a track. That's ignoring all the right-of-way and environmental headaches. Once built, the track can't exactly be picked up and moved if peoples' travel habits change. Air routes change all the time, based on passenger demand.
Airspace is already there, and it's free. The only real limit on capacity is landing slots, and big airports like LAX can land over a thousand flights a day.
Security: In flight, the only external threat to an airliner would be from ground-to-air missiles. Those aren't exactly easy to come by. You can't make one in your tool shed. Airliners are very delicate, but they're also very hard to reach, six miles above ground and moving along at mach 0.8..
High-speed rails travel a fixed route at predictable times. You could destroy one pretty easily using an IED. Even a small fuel-fertilizer bomb would be sufficient -- moving at hundreds of miles per hour, anything which gets the train slightly off-kilter is going to cause massive casualties. Patrolling thousands and thousands of miles of rail, 24 hours a day, is impractical and expensive.
I'm very glad for China, but at the same time depressed. When I was younger, I used to think of the US as being a place that made THE FUTURE happen. I wanted the Internet come into being and if that wasn't THE FUTURE I didn't know what was. Now it seems feels like the US it focused on stasis. I can only hope now that the Chinese let us have some table scraps from their engineering marvels.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
True, when we spend less than perhaps 5% as much on rail infrastructure as we do on highways, it stands to reason that the roads may win in some instances.
But rail is far more cost-effective to build than roads - one pair of tracks can carry the same traffic as a 6-8 lane highway, which is far more costly to construct and maintain, and requires much more land. (Not to mention all the parking lots and feeder roads.)
Trains can also run much faster (nobody is talking about people driving 100-200mph, and trains can run full speed even during commute hours when highways are slowed to a standstill). Trains use much less energy (less rolling resistance and aerodynamic resistance, for starters), emit far less pollution (using less energy, and often electrically powered), cost less to operate and maintain, and are far safer.
The only thing they lack is door-to-door convenience and arbitrary schedules. (But is there really much benefit if you're stuck in traffic and have to pay $20 for parking? On the other hand, how about letting you read or do work or sleep while on the train?) How much are we willing to pay, in dollars, pollution, wasted time, and reliance on foreign oil, for that (sometimes) convenience?
Trains also have similar benefits over airplanes for relatively short trips (anything less than about 2-4 hours, depending on the situation).
Of course, these are all THEORETICAL benefits, which are only realized if we actually make the proper investments. Since we in the USA have spent the last 75 years trying to kill trains rather than investing in them, we only rarely get to experience these benefits.
The trains we have these days are generally slow, go to only a few places, run on very limited schedules, are not particularly clean or comfortable, and have few on-board ameneties. And since they don't benefit from the same level of taxpayer support as roads do, more of their costs are passed on to the passenger, so they don't seem to have as much cost advantage to the end user.
However, the trains were fueled by coal/diesel.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
This is the maximum speed on a test run.
The first TGVs were running at 260/270 km/h on regular service in 1981. Current TGVs on regular service run at 220 km/h on classic lines, at 300 km/h on fast lines (called LGV) and at 320 km/h on the Paris-Strasbourg line (LGV EST).
Next generation TGV (called AGV and scheduled for 2010) will probably run faster on regular service, around 360 km/h.
The great speed of the TGV is interesting, but what is more remarkable is the density of its high-speed network: check it over here
Jane told the truth. Why mod her -1 Troll? Are you American moderators really that stupid?
Are you foreign posters really that limited in scope? Do you really feel the need to justify everything in military terms? Get a grip. Truth is, if we were on a quest to build an empire and needed lots of guns and tanks and bombs and things, our economy would be booming. Unemployment would be nil. As it happens, we dramatically reduced our force levels since the ending of the Cold War (too far, I'd say.)
America has some serious issues, but economic progress (or otherwise) is dependent upon a myriad of factors having nothing to do with Iraq. I assume that is what Jane Q. is referring, since I'm unaware of any other nations currently being bombed for profit (of course, a good carpet-bombing or two might improve the quality of posts here on Slashdot.)
If we want to start improving our economic outlook there are, at a minimum, going to have to be some serious changes to the patent system and our schools. Proper incentives will have to be made to encourage investment. We'll need real broadband and major telecommunications upgrades. Lots of stuff.
None of which has anything to do with bombing anyone.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
While what you say is true, I would further point out that most people make the mistake of thinking that the "environmentalists" they see on TV and who want constant donations are the real environmentalists.
Real environmentalists work behind the scenes with government and especially industry, helping them find ways to make industrial processes more efficient, less environmentally harmful, and in a surprising number of cases more profitable. Such people may be outsiders who devote their lives to making all of our lives better, they may be in-house scientists and engineers who tirelessly promote a better way to their bosses, they may be enlightened bureaucrats who work to find some balance between environmental concerns, and the needs of We the People.
Those are the people I respect, unfortunately you never see their faces on the tube, so they don't really get credit for their work. I couldn't care less about the media hounds.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You are missing the point. It's not that anyone isn't sure that as far as energy use and carbon emissions goes the train will be better, the point of the environmental impact study is to determine if their are any especially environmentally sensitive areas that should be routed around.
Exactly. Trains in the long run may be more environmentally sensitive than other transit modes, but rail lines to have real environmental effects that need to be considered: noise & vibration, drainage, impervious surfaces (at the stations), wildlife disruption, fire danger from sparks off the rail or electrical components, defoliants used to kill weeds along the ROW, construction disruptions, exhaust soot (for diesel-powered locos), lubricant leakage from the vehicles, grade crossings, toxic soils that may be unearthed for ROW cuts and/or tunnels, and etc.
All of these things can be overcome, but it has to be done right, otherwise you'll wind up getting sued and have to rip up your project and rebuild it again to meet the appropriate standards.
Between Seattle and Portland, 180 miles apart, there are 4 trains each way each day and the trip is 3 hours 10 minutes to 3 hours 30 minutes. There are six stops during the trip. It can be longer if the drawbridge on the Columbia happens to go up and your train has to wait for it, or if there is some freight rail traffic that impedes the passenger train. In the USA, boat traffic has the right of way over rail and if a cargo ship carrying woodchips or cow dung or whatever wants to go under the bridge when a scheduled passenger train would cross, the bridge opens and the scheduled passenger train must wait. This can take 20 to 30 minutes. One time when this happened the bridge got stuck open and it took nearly an hour to get it closed again.
Between Hakata (Fukuoka) and Hiroshima, Japan, 175 miles apart, and cities of similar size to Seattle and Portland, there nearly 100 high-speed trains going each way every day and the trip takes as little as an hour and five minutes. Depending on the train there can be as little as one stop in between.
The trains provide city center to city center service. In Japan it is feasible to plan business trips between cities this far apart that take place in as little over three hours; a bit over an hour there, an hour meeting, a bit over an hour back. In the US such a trip is impossible. Even if you fly, by the time you drive or take a cab out to the airport, go through security, fly the short distance and then get into town from the airport, you've wasted far more time.
I use this example from time to time as most people who live in the US have no idea how backward the US can be in certain areas.
For example, one can take a 6AM train from Hakata (Fukuoka) and be in Hiroshima at 7:05AM. The earliest train out of Seattle leaves at 7:30 and doesn't arrive until 11AM (if the train is on time, which it usually isn't). The next train out of Seattle for Portland doesn't leave until 11:20AM. Between 6AM and 11:20AM, there are 28 trains leaving Hakata (Fukuoka) for Hiroshima.
Want to meet for a business lunch in Hiroshima? Take the 10:30AM train and you'll be there at 11:36AM, take the 10:39AM train and be there at 11:49AM, or take the 11:00AM train and get there are 12:05PM.
High speed rail makes a world of difference and is so convenient. There are many distances between cities in the US where having such service would radically change how business is done and how people travel.
Alaska Air offers 20 flights between Seattle and Portland. The travel time is 50 minutes, not much better than the train time between Fukuoka and Hiroshima. The difference is that when you step off the train you are downtown. When you get off the plane, you still have a long trip into town. Having fast, dependable train service between cities would make life much easier in the US.
Our current economic situation has EVERYTHING to do with Iraq. Do you even realize how much it is costing us? Do you even know where the money is going?
Heck, that measly 9 Billion in cash that was mysteriously "misplaced" in Iraq last year would sure as hell do this part of my state a lot of good. And that is only a veritable drop in the bucket.
Saying that the Iraq military action is not negatively affecting our economy is simply false. I agree with you about the patent and school systems... but if you want to fix those, right now you would have to talk to the same people who are responsible for Iraq... and the patent situation, and the schools.