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China Begins To Extend High Speed Rail Across Asia
MikeChino writes "Last year we learned that China planned to expand its high-speed rail network all the way to Europe and now the nation has launched the first step of the project with plans to extend tracks into northern Laos. The nation has also set goals of expanding the high-speed rail line into Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore."
Their existing high speed rail lines are racking up serious debt. This plan to expand it is difficult to believe.
It pains me to read where China is doing this and that, while everyone in USA talks about how great we once were. Although there are articles discussing woes of some of the Chinese high speed rail systems but systems here in USA are being torpedoed for one reason or another (i.e. Calif highspeed rail project).
This talk of high speed rail is too expensive, doesn't go everywhere, etc. Dammit you gotta start someplace and somewhere. If you don't maintain and update country's commerce then it will choke into a third world country.
mfwright@batnet.com
Funny, you could say the same thing about America and its wars...
Show me how your car makes a profit.
Bruce Perens.
Some things aren't economic on a small scale but only become so on a large scale. Rail is something you have to roll out on a large scale, the larger the better. The countries they plan to move into don't have the greatest road systems in the world, giving the Chinese an advantage. Plus, rail is much less polluting and requires less fossil fuel, meeting international obligations (this matters to the Chinese government only because it's PR they can use against other nations) and freeing them from oil dependencies in nations potentially hostile to them.
In the event of conflict in the region, the Chinese will have greater mobility and reduced troop movement times, which basically means that they'll be able to dominate the region in a way America is no longer capable of within the Americas.
From the Chinese perspective, it's cheaper to build rail than to build a fleet of giant troop transport planes and it has none of the PR damage involved in the latter.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There are two HSR lines that have paid off all their construction costs, Paris-Lyon and Tokyo-Osaka.
Taiwan's is the only HSR line in the world right now that is falling behind on the loan payment, but it still covers all of its operating costs through fares. Every other HSR line in the world is making positive progress toward paying off the construction costs.
So what this all boils down to is, what is your definition of "profitable"? I've given three possible definitions from which you may choose.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
That's fantastic! Hey, let's get rid of all profit-less things like fire departments and freeways too!
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
People choose cars over railways because they see a better cost/benefit tradeoff. That's why railways lose many and car manufacturers make money.
Automakers bought profitable bus and rail lines and shut them down to get us where we are today. People did NOT choose cars, they chose trains, and then the trains went away.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We need to build one of these to the United States! We cannot allow a hot foreign bride gap!
China's highspeed rail is great. Not as great as the Japanese bullet train, the attendants are not nearly as hot and the snack cart only has the usual spicy chicken feet and instant Nescafe. But you can get a ticket for not much more than a bus, it's much faster, there's no traffic, and even the second class seats are comfortable. The first time I saw a Chinese hexie hao pull into the station, I immediately thought, "Ah, it's a shinkansen!" Indeed, the trains in my area are license-built copies of the Kawasaki Heavy Industries E2-1000 Series Shinkansen. I always liked taking the train in China, but the main problem was that the bus was always more frequent and sometimes you get some old stinky train full of redneck farmers if you don't know what to watch for when buying your tickets. With the new highspeed rail, the choice is easy.
Who cares if it loses money? That's not the point. The Chinese are loaded with cash right now. The point is to make China, and the world, a smaller place. There's a city south of here that I like to visit. However, the bus trip was 3 1/2 hours of bumpy highways (they never connect the road to abutments correctly so you always get two lurches going over every bridge)...IF there was no traffic or wrecks on the road. I never got down there as often as I liked, and my reluctance was purely due to the unpleasant journey. Now, it's 90 minutes of comfort. The last time I returned from there, I discovered that there are express trains that only take 65 minutes for the trip. Think about it: this city to the south used to be "far". Now, it is "near". I can go there in the morning and be back in the evening. A shopping trip isn't out of the question. Business is easier to conduct. Commuting to work from smaller cities outside is now an option. How's that for change the world, eh?
The black cloud in all of this is construction quality. The head of China's highspeed rail was fired, and either him or someone else highranking said he would under no circumstances ride the train himself. Oh well, I suppose I'll play the lottery on that one, and hope it isn't my train that derails at 161mph.
Connecting the rest of Asia to China's highspeed network will be pricey, but when it's finished Chinese business and influence will spread. That's the whole idea, isn't it? Invest now, pay off later. I tell you, it's weird living under a government that actually acts in its own national interest, unlike my own government.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The U.S. transcontinental railroads were built terribly poorly. That's how they were able to lay 10 miles of rail in one day. The assumption was that once there was an operating railroad, that it would be very much less expensive to lay good track. It worked, we still have an intercontinental railroad through the same route that was originally laid.
It might be true that large portions of the China route are similarly without good roads.
Bruce Perens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal
Bruce Perens.
You weren't alive 10 years ago, were you :-)
Bruce Perens.
As the GP I agree completely. For example, Ottawa, my nation's capital, has beautiful dedicated transit lanes. The buses speed past stopped traffic on the highways on their own private roadways, bringing public transit users to and from major stations with speed and efficiency. Last I checked, NYC is also an excellent example of a city that understands the need for at least decent public transit.
Unfortunately, too many people look at transit as a private for-profit opportunity, instead of a public good.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Why does it have to make a profit? Other transportation modalities, like your personal automobile, are not required to operate at a profit. The police don't make a profit for the community. Some things are infrastructure, and are costs rather than profits.
Bruce Perens.
Bullshit! The price for going to Beijing from Shanghai with this fast train is from 400 to 1700 Yuan, which is expensive, but far from being twice the price. On my last trip to Beijing (from Shanghai), the cheapest air ticket I could find was 1200 Yuan.
Now for this Wuhan to GuangZhou, I've just check on http://english.ctrip.com/ (which gets you the lowest fairs). What you find is 280 yuan for the ticket, plus 190 of airport taxes, which makes it 470 Yuan in total, or just 1 yuan more than your above price. That is without counting the cost of traveling from city center to airport. Frankly, don't trust US journalist, I'm quite sure that they can't even read what's on http://www.huochepiao.com./ Because doing a quick check, the price is 490 Yuan, not 469!
Except in the end they'll have something to show for it. A piece of hardware.
Kind of like we did back in the day when the CCC built all those bridges, roads, rail lines, parks, etc.
Right now, the United States (including governments at all levels) spends a total of between 50 and 60 billion dollars per year on mass transit infrastructure and operations. Funding for Amtrak has averaged around $2 billion per year the last decade or so.
If a quarter of spending on automobiles were diverted into public transit infrastructure and operations, it would quadruple the mass transit subsidy. (Note that that would still leave the United States ahead of European countries - many by a significant margin - in terms of fraction of household expenditures on car ownership.) Your bus stop probably wouldn't be a mile away any more. Your bus wouldn't take 45 minutes to get to the train station; it would run in a dedicated lane or on its own right-of-way, if it weren't replaced outright with light rail. It wouldn't have to stop for traffic lights, because signals would automatically clear the road ahead. The train station would probably be closer, anyway--and you'd probably be connected to an express or even high-speed line. There would be a unified fare system, so you could ride the entire system with one smart card. You can rent a car by the hour for those trips to IKEA.
Your forty-minute commute by car might, under ideal circumstances, be the same length, or even shorter. Or it might stretch out to forty-five or fifty minutes, during which time you can have a nap, read a book, catch up on the news, or connect to the onboard wifi. And the four or five grand per year you're saving turns into an annual two-week vacation in Switzerland, where you can see just how good public transit can get if it's funded properly.
The problem, of course, is that there's always a delay between when you start putting money into infrastructure and when it starts making a difference to a large number of people on the ground. And that interval between the investment and the return frightens the living daylights out of politicians. Even projects that will save their constituents money in the long term are a tough sell, because they're up against candidates who will promise to cut taxes now.
~Idarubicin
You have obviously never been to Europe.
Their favourite means of transportation is train. You can go through high-speed rail to almost anywhere in western Europe. I've been to the central bus station in Berlin. It's so desert it's scary.
The rail system in the US is archaic. It's slow and expensive. Of course no one wants to use it. I grant you that, bus is cheaper than train in Europe as well, but the difference in comfort and speed is worth it.
entropy happens