Slashdot Mirror
China's High-Speed Trains Coming Off the Rails
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that China's expanding network of ultramodern high-speed trains is coming under growing scrutiny over costs and because of concerns that builders ignored safety standards in the quest to build faster trains in record time as new leadership at the Railways Ministry announced that to enhance safety, the top speed of all trains was being decreased from about 218 mph to 186. Without elaborating, the ministry called the safety situation 'severe' and said it was launching safety checks along the entire network of tracks. Meanwhile China's Finance Ministry announced that the Railways Ministry continues to lose money as the ministry's debt stands at $276 billion, almost all borrowed from Chinese banks. 'In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,' says Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and longtime critic of high-speed rail who worries that the cost of the project might have created a hidden debt bomb that threatens China's banking system. 'I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.'"
Oh really? You mean there are existing safety standards for new technology?
And here I thought it was just the engineer's conservative estimates...
Well since the train designs are stolen^H^H^H similar to the Japanese and German high speed trains, there must be relevent safety standards.
It looks like China is heading for an enormous debt crisis. Add the creation of ghost cities as covered earlier this month and it looks pretty scary! It'll make US's debt crunch look like a drop in a bucket.
Straw man argument.
No one really believes we won't run out. Some of us just don't care much. When commodities run out, they subsidize their replacements via outrageous cost. Besides, the momentum is unstoppable, anyway. Usually, we learn not to tilt at windmills.
What you're really calling for is to artificially decrease demand for oil, which isn't going to happen in a sane world. Any attempt to do so will simply create a gray or black market in oil to those who refuse to cooperate with the regimen. Those who produce will be all too willing to sell, and those who consume will be all too willing to continue, while paying lip service to the goal. It likely would even increase demand for oil until it is all gone. Then the solution summarized in the previous paragraph will happen in any event.
About the only way to subvert the whole process before oil runs out would be to create a renewable organic fuel with limited negatives vis a vis fossilized plant matter. Something that burns in current engines with limited modification. Arrange for it to be cheaper than extraction of said fossilized plant matter. That would work, but it's a tall order. However, if one wanted to 'save the earth' to the extent that CO2 is a danger, that seems to be the most promising path.
As for why organic - the economic dislocation of changing every ICE in the world over to something else would eliminate any cost advantage in the fuel in any reasonable time frame. That's why hydrogen always sounded like a nonstarter to me. It depended on too many immature or nonexistent technologies to prosper.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Yeah, China is about due. Japan and the USA (along with Greece, Ireland, Spain, and others) ignored basic economic principles and are paying the price. (I'm NOT talking about the Tsunami tragedy in Japan, but the stagnation of the economy.) "Stimulus" money has to come from the places where it's produced, and is a by-product of productivity. If you loan money to people or projects, those recipients need to have the means to pay it back. Governments do not produce anything, so they must get their money from those who are productive. To "stimulate" the economy, they are taking it from productive projects (Exports), skimming expenses off the top and then sending it back as "stimulus" funds. The other alternative is to create money out of thin air, which causes inflation. Either way, the so-called "stimulus" loses its effectiveness the more often it is used. Japan's last big stimulus attempts created almost no movement in their economy; not even short-term.
China's rail problem is not the cause of the bank problems: The cause is that banks were forced to loan money to unsound projects at unrealistic rates. China has huge amounts of "Sovereign Wealth" due to their absolute and competitive advantages over their Western customers, but they have no place to put it, internal to China. Distributing it to unsound projects wastes resources and unbalances the internal economy. Some infrastructure development could bolster the economy (like toll roads in the USA). However, the implication derived from the banker's statements is that the "tolls" from operating the railway are not sufficient to service the debts. Banks don't get their money back and the government gets to subsidize a losing project. (Sound familiar?)
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
The US is almost entirely a heavy rail system, made for freight. It is an extremely efficient way of moving lots of cargo, costs 0.5-1% of what it does by truck energy wise. It is also heavily used. It isn't like only a little stuff goes by rail, tons does. In Flagstaff, AZ which is bisected by a major east-west rail line you have a large train go through about once every 15-20 minutes, 24 hours a day.
You'll notice that there are not catastrophes involving trains all the time. Accidents happen, but they are not that common. The rules for what works with a train weighing thousands of tons and traveling at 20-70mph depending on the area are different than one weighing on a couple hundred and traveling at 100+mph.
The US system is not designed for high speed passenger transit, but it works great for moving freight.