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China's Yearly Budget For High-Speed Rail: $100 Billion
An anonymous reader writes "For all of those wondering about China's massive high speed rail network, it costs some serious cash. Running high speed lines across the nation is expensive — to the tune of $100 billion dollars a year. This covers the cost to maintain the network, build it, and pay all of the staff. The problem is, corruption has reared its ugly head. The network itself has had its share of problems, with people dying as a result. There is also the problem that many of Chinese poor make so little money they can't afford to ride it. The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count."
No, you are right. China is not the president of the US... not yet, but soon!
Where's the scandal?!
$100B divided by 2 million employees equals $50,000 per employee -- high for China, maybe, but matches the MEDIAN male income in the U.S.
Given that the $100B actually includes much more than employee salary, like, uh, the material costs of BUILDING the railroad, and trains, and stations, etc, the figure seems rather like a bargain.
"The problem is, corruption has reared its ugly head." : When does that not happen to some extent?
"The network itself has had its share of problems, with people dying as a result." : This happens everywhere.
"There is also the problem that many of Chinese poor make so little money they can't afford to ride it." : Maybe China is planning for the future, maybe?! You know, like when their middle class is comparable in size to that in other developed nations?
"The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count." : Then what is the "$100 Billion" figure?! Sheesh! Make up your mind!
Wait this train won't carry a 1000 passengers it just launches a VW beetle size projectile at mach 5 into the air.
Rocket Surgeon.
That's is a huge amount of money... can't they do what they did in the West to build the railroads and just hire cheap Chinese workers? [yes, this is a tasteless joke, as circumstances back then were horrendous and many people died]
I don't know what kind of reputation "THE DIPLOMAT" has in the field of journalism, but this article is just pure crap. Despite the title, the article has almost nothing to do with high speed rail in China. Using recent problems that have come to light with the management of China's rail system, the article is actually just a mostly unflattering portrayal of the fiscal situation in China's military. A more accurate title for the article should be something like "Corruption plagues the PLA".
An excerpt for you:
This breakdown suggests that 100% of the PLA’s budget was diverted towards real requirements. But the parable of the railways strongly suggests that this cannot be right. How much of the PLA’s budget has been spent on retirement homes for generals in Florida, or funneled into private business ventures, or used to buy promotions? How much has been wasted on bogus capabilities that the military doesn’t really need, but whose purchase helped to line influential pockets? And how much has been spent on genuine capabilities, but capabilities whose price tag was hugely inflated so that highly-placed officials could skim off the surplus?
There is almost nothing of value on high speed rail that has not been already revealed from other media sources.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
"...The problem is, corruption has reared its ugly head."
No, I'd say the problem is anyone assuming or painting a picture that a project of this magnitude did not have corruption built into it years ago before ground even broke.
Please don't make it sound like "corruption" is some new concept that was magically birthed from a $100 billion dollar program just last week that no one has ever heard of.
the material suppliers are also likely taking there cut as well.
also you need to count up keep and running costs in that 100B
That causes certain people to become obsessed with high speed rail?
In the UK the government is pushing ahead with a high speed rail link between London and Birmingham that will cost tens of billions. It won't reduce travelling time massively and no doubt will be too expensive for the average person to use regularly.
Well, obviously, the extremely poor can't afford to ride the train. American or European poor couldn't afford to ride the train either. I just got back. The cost of a ticket from Fuzhou to Xiamen (around 2 hours at about 200 km/h) was 122 RMB. That converts to just over $20 US dollars. Extremely inexpensive, in my opinion. There are many slower trains that are much cheaper. Many migrant workers travel by train to the cities, and back home during the holidays.
I don't know what kind of reputation "THE DIPLOMAT" has in the field of journalism, but this article is just pure crap. Despite the title, the article has almost nothing to do with high speed rail in China.
Yes, it's a very weird and completely pointless article. It really does start off talking about high speed rail, but then inexplicably jumps to corruption in the PLA (People's Liberation Army) and then proceeds to jump back and forth between the two topics for no apparent reason, making absolutely no worthwhile comments about either.
Why thats nothing! We pissed away tons more money on some useless ceo's!
GO USA! WE'RE #1
What is it with Americans' hatred of passenger rail? It works, it's safe, cost-effective, and requires less government subsidy than highways or airport travel. It's also a hell of a lot more pleasant than flying.
"The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count." Except in the US, guys like this are sending millions in Medicare money to Cuba to give Castro's economy a much-needed boost: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/10/18/2734149/laundering-ring-moved-medicare.html
1 - i don't know where that shift button is when the capital form of myself is needed.
// I had to add a third thought...
2 - 100 million is nothing compared to what that amount was worth 10 years ago
3 - we have sent china a lot of our manufacturing machinery - are we really surprised?
Central Planning does NOT work.
The key to progress in society with as little strife as possible is evolution, not revolution.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection (what some call the "Free Market"), which implies the localization and decentralization of the power structure; centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces. There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
Isn't that about what we pay to China every year just to cover the interest on the money our country has borrowed from them? At least all that interest money is being put to good use.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
"One hundred... BILLION... dollars." Well, now we know what Dr. Evil is doing in his retirement. He's building a high speed rail network in China, with frickin laser beams attached.
Command economies result is massive misallocations of capital compared to market economies, and this is also true of China. The "Ghost Cities" are the biggest manifestation of economic distortion, but hardly the only one.
On the plus side, communist China is only killing thousands of its own people every year, a vast improvement on the millions (or tens of millions) killed in the past. Progress!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Were you paid to post this? I know the right-wing assault on medicare is underway, but get a grip. You're going to need medicare someday, unless you really want to try to get private insurance at age 65 with the usual random assortment of age-related medical issues.
See, who says the US isn't investing in high speed rail! Whose $100B do you think that is?
Don't be a d-bag. In 2011, a high speed train flew off the tracks. Almost everyone was killed, and those that survived were silenced. It's buried there to this day along with incriminating evidence of negligence and you can go dig it up if you feel like it.
They link to the New Yorker's article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/22/121022fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all Corruption is continuing in China, but it will take a major reform/progressive movement to stop it all. The New Yorker is mainly on the railroad budget and you will have to go elsewhere to find dirt on the PLA's progress/threat.
The total capacity of riders is increasing at a slower rate than their population so technically the "amount" of available high speed rail is going down, lol.
Sorry, dude.
I've worked in the health care field and Medicare and Medicaid are literally a license to print money. These systems are horrifically expensive and do not provide the kind of medical treatment you would want for your parents or grand-parents. We need something, but the existing system is making someone very rich and the elderly and poor are not getting the care they need.
The horrifically expensive part is the American approach to provisioning health care. It costs a third more per capita than other first-world countries and provides worse outcomes. But that does not mean the solution is to dismantle the only single-payer system in the US and replace it with vouchers, making the elderly go to insurance providers that would prefer to place them on an ice floe.
Medicare may suck but it is better than anything else the US is doing in health care.
Remain calm! All is well!
"The network itself has had its share of problems, with people dying as a result." : This happens everywhere.
At least here in France, rail accidents are extremely rare events. A quick search at wikipedia suggests that this is no exception
Better a rail where you can't keep track of how much was spent then a war.
The US was spending twice that a month in Iraq.
You are asking if I was paid to post this? No, but I, like thousands of other fraud examiners, am paid to track down fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. It is an enormous problem - very real. I don't have a right-wing or a left-wing agenda at all - politicians from both sides of the aisle are fully engaged in helping fight Medicare fraud - this is a completely non-partisan issue. The link I copied is to a news story from two days ago involving a real case from Miami - where a fraudster is accused in criminal court of funneling millions in Medicare funds to banks in Cuba. Maybe YOU want to play politics with this issue, but I don't know any serious folks who look at this as a political football at all.
And have some change left over !! And the chinese can also flood the ranks with "interns" and cut that cost waaaaay doooooown !! Or let their citizens have more than one child, so long as those after #1 are given to the military !! Win-Win-Win !! Or okay keep your stinkin rail to North Haverbrook, Northweststadt, Rome, Rimini, and Naples and see where that'll get you !!
Let me break it to you gently: there is fraud in almost every government program. There is even more fraud in the private sector. Suddenly focusing on medicare fraud (instead of defense fraud, banking fraud, construction fraud, etc. etc.) suggests you have an agenda.
Since you're interested in medicaire fraud, would you like to look at health insurance administrative expenses being repackaged as medical costs so they can get around the 85% of premiums limit and get back to the important business of executive bonuses?
Railroad development in the 19th century USA was a cesspool of explicit and implicit corruption. It also created vital infrastructure.
The crash in China reads at first glance like any other Horrible Example from systems safety engineering: lack of redundancy and communication, and poorly interacting emergency procedures.
It is really sad to see the government spend $100bil on making themselves rich, while the poor have to suffer with toxic brown water and no social services. The people of China need to rise up and kick out those self-serving jerks.
I see a bunch of name-calling here. What I don't see is a sane reason to build high speed rail.
As to California, they've already killed their HSR attempt with environmental regulation red tape. The project needs federal funds to work and those federal funds are conditional on California starting the project soon. But that just isn't going to happen due to the several year delay for preparing reports on the environmental impact of the project.
I figure the current leaders picked a face-saving way to back out without appearing to.
yet another article to jump on the china bashing band wagon.
1. I don't have an agenda. Healthcare fraud examination is my job - I don't know about "almost every government program". 2. I was referring to a specific, timely news article about a Miami criminal case involving Medicare funds leaving the US and showing up in Cuban banks 3. What you are saying regarding private insurance admin expenses is very interesting. Do you have some special insight into the problem? I'm like Ross Perot - I'm all ears. Contacting me is simple - my name + gmail.
$100 billion a year? The article's title appears misleading. Likely a lot of that money goes into the infrastructure and materials. And a small percentage goes to bribes and corruption.
Some estimates in 2011 put the entire cost of their High Speed Rail expansion at $400 billion.
The New Yorker's article was a pretty scathing and detailed story about China's development of their High Speed Rail program. They had ambitious goals of crisscrossing their nation with high speed rail to move people around quickly and efficiently.
They also had corrupt people that got rich along the way. Perhaps the cost of corruption must be factored into getting things done; but they must ultimately get their corruption problems under control.
For all the quantity of people that they shuffle around the country, 40 people were killed as a result of a lightning strike on their signal-controlling computer box. An unfortunate reality, but it's the price of progress.
However, to put other things in perspective.
[1] The United States' Space Shuttle program costed $192 billion, in 2010 dollars, over the life of the program, from 1972 to 2011, or 39 years of technology. It costed a staggering $1.5 billion per launch of each shuttle. At this cost, it would have been cheaper to just stick with the proven Saturn V rockets, and just kept building them. The cost of launching a Saturn V was $1.17 billion (in 2012 dollars).
And the Space Shuttled killed 14 highly-trained Astronauts (meaning 14 very expensive individuals). But, that's a small price to pay for progress. And plus, you get all the fringe benefits that comes with being the high-tech leader.
No one at NASA would have though an O-ring would have doomed the Shuttle on a cold day; nor did anyone think foam would puncture a hole in Columbia's carbon fibre-reinforced carbon wing; even though it struck at 500+ mph. Again, that's just the price of progress. You have to take risks, in order to get ahead. You fall, you pick yourself up, and try again.
[2] With the lifting capabilities of the Saturn V, we could have lifted up an International Space Station in a handful of launches; as opposed to the 40+ flights that the Space Shuttle took to assemble it. NASA budgeted $72.4 billion in 2010 dollars for the ISS.
[3] The California high speed rail was estimated at $10 billion when California voters voted for it in 2008. That seemed a reasonable amount for high speed rail in California. Then it blew up to $68 billion in 2012. This would have failed the vote if we were told it would cost so much. Now, who knows when it will ever be completed. Perhaps in 2028! That's over 16 years from now!
[4] Not to mention, the wasteful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wars that Bush 2 put on the country's high-interest credit card.
$468 billion for Afghanistan.
$845 billion for Iraq.
So, with the cost of other things in perspective - China spending $400 billion on their High Speed Rail system, and dealing with corruption along the way, and the tragic deaths of 40 people as the result of a lightning strike, then the price of their progress and development does appear justified.
However, now that I know of the inner details, I'm not so sure I would want to ride on their high speed rails anymore. But I'll probably just take the risk one day, and ride it, hoping that disaster doesn't strike. =)
Where's the outrage?
You chose to bring up medicare in a discussion of the chinese way of constructing a rail network.
It's the other way around you have all china's money and you spend it on killing terrorists.
"There is also the problem that many of Chinese poor make so little money they can't afford to ride it. The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count."
Shouldn't that read:
The sad fact is many of the Chinese are too poor and make so little money they can't afford to ride it. The problem is that so much money is being spent no one can even keep count.
I love the high speed rail in Germany and use it almost every day. However, every HSR system will have accidents. It's the cost of doing business when you're propelling people at 200mph for hundreds of kms or more at a time. It's almost impossible to police the entire system.
Link to German accident where 101 people died.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the Chinese government's response. And I hate the fact that when you watch the videos of the train cars being buried without investigation that you can see bodies falling out. I also hate the fact that they cancelled the S&R operation and a few people disobeyed and found a living baby. But, stating that deaths due to HSR only happen in China is quite naïve.
And, FWIW, the US doesn't have HSR, so you can't compare rail accidents between China/Germany and the US. The Acela Express is a huge POS (not ever really HSR), and it seems to be getting worse every time I use it :(
1. From the article description: "The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count".
2. From an NPR report dated October 11, 2007: "There's a nationwide crime epidemic going on that rakes in $35 billion or more each year. Exactly how much is being stolen is impossible to say, because the federal government doesn't try to measure it. It's Medicare fraud." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15178883
3. See the similarity? I do.
4. From the Miami Herald newspaper two days ago: "An offshore remittance company called Caribbean Transfers financed a complex money-laundering ring that moved more than $30 million in stolen Medicare money from South Florida into Cuba’s banking system, federal authorities said Thursday." Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/18/3056554/feds-remittance-firm-at-center.html#storylink=cpy
5. Is this so hard to see the relationship? Do you see that I'm not politicking?
You must be fun at the watercooler with your facts and logic and reasonable thinking.
Anyway, the Brits cut costs on their rail network and it resulted in lots of people dying when infrastructure collapsed and years of totally disrupted service around the country. And the US rail system is a joke with also many many deaths thanks to lousy infrastructure.
Corruption is indeed a problem in China but at least they are dealing with it, and not with leisure resort prisons but with death penalties. It ain't perfect but the west is hardly any better. It is one of the reasons health care is such a problem in the west, turns out that the more money you put in, the less the nurses get and the more managers you get with paychecks totally unrelated to the worth of their work. But hey, it ain't in brown envelopes, so everything is alright or so says the party of managers (Tories, VVD, Republicans) and they are trustworthy surely.
Oh wait, no, VVD Senator turns out to be corrupt was in the news yesterday, what a suprise. And this week, top managers of health care insurers in Holland make salaries closing in on the half a million euro's, far more then was agreed upon, not that the right wing government did anything to check of course. Nope it is a total surprise to them...
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I can't comment about California, but the Chineese goal is quite good. HSR to connect South East Asia to the Middle East and Europe. There is lots of trade between those regions, that right now goes over the sea. Slow and limited. HSR that could traverse the continents in 2 ro 3 days, would be great for trade, and much more economical. The goal is a lofty one. How it is being carried out may be a different situation.
China may not be the president of the US, but the Prime minister of Canada is currently setting up special trade deals with China, so that Chineese corporations will have more legal clout in Canada than our provinces and municipalities. If they say our eco-friendly, decomcratically chosen laws are harming their revenues and profits, they can sue us, and at that is is not even public. The new laws state that it has to be kept from the people.
Rail can only take you to fixed destinations. It cannot match the convenience of cars for short-distance travel (including moving stuff and shopping), especially with the upcoming advent of safer-at-faster-speeds self-driving cars. Rail also cannot match the long-distance advantages of helicopter and airplane flight (especially if government security theater, regulations, and other barriers against new technologies are lifted). But rail does have one advantage: it can be a stop-gap solution for countries where too many people are too poor to afford cars or flights.
USA has abandoned trains a long time ago. It should be looking toward the future, not the past. Socialist planners would love rail for all the new powers it gives them over people's lives, coordinating them around centralized points, but that is not in anyone else's interest. We need private investment in new technologies that set people free to go where they want: cheap energy and flight.
--libman
The issue for China is there isn't enough high quality fly ash around to make the cement needed to build its railway network in a sustainable manner. Without the proper ash, rail tracks have a lifespan of a dozen years vs the usual century, and thus need to be constantly maintained and rebuilt. The whole adventure reeks of money wastage...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/is-china-overreaching-on-high-speed-rail/69490/
The issue is the "distrust" of government. Rather than government death panels, we have private death panels who are (sometimes literally) paid to deny treatment, when the government ones don't have a vested interest in your death.
But for some reason, the private ones are fine and the government ones are evil.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, and I had an FBI friend that was paid to track down FEMA fraud. There's millions of that as well. You would be the worst person to ask about medicare fraud. It's like asking prison guards about crime statistics. Everyone they see all day long is a criminal, that's what they do. It's also why they'll have no grasp on crime in general. You can't see the forest when you are inside a tree.
Learn to love Alaska
This should be stomped on. It's a shill response from the cretins doing this criminal activity. They should be executed as so many are considering the moral turpitude of Chinese culture.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I don't see the relationship. You live medicare fraud, so you see it relevant to everything. Nobody else does. Sorry.
Learn to love Alaska
China has $3.2 Trillion of foreign reserves.
US foreign reserves are a piddly $150 Billion.
Most of China's reserves are in the form of dollar-denominated bonds, so really - who is lending money to who?
I see a bunch of name-calling here. What I don't see is a sane reason to build high speed rail.
That is probably just because your american and you whole way of life and cultural identity revolves around car use. It makes it far more difficult to see a world where cars simply cease to exist in their current form.
Sorry, but every other developed country recognises that us all having our own, incredibly energy hungry tin box that goes where we tell it is just not sustainable after the oil runs out and even before then is just not the most efficient way of doing things. It might take 100 years for us to run out of oil completely but how long is it before it simply becomes too expensive for a large part of the population to afford to drive to work every day?
You guys in the states have spent decades building cities that are just too spread out for their own good. Sooner or later you are going to have to build more cities like New York where you have an incredibly high population density. Then you can build a decent mass transit system that takes people most of the way, then lets them walk the remaining few hundred yards.
The alternative is to cope with fuel costs that constantly spiral upward until it runs out, this has already started. Even if you build an entire countries worth of electric cars in order to power them all you would need a nuclear plant on every street corner to generate that much power.
The simple fact is that in the decades to come mass transit and densely populated cities where most of the population live is simply going to become more and more like the only option unless someone cracks a way of getting energy for nothing without drilling it up out of the ground like we do currently.
China might be throwing money at their high speed rail industry now, but sooner or later they might end up selling the expertise they gain to every other country in the world.
I dont read
You don't understand what T-Bucket is saying. He's saying that when a Chinese worker assembles a phone for $17/day, in a shift of 14-16 hours, living in a dorm with 15 beds in a 12x12 box, and then that phone is sold for $400 in America, netting China $8 of that $400... that that $8 is stolen from the US. That, really, that $8 belongs to America... and it was produced by overcharging Americans for Chinese goods.
China then takes those unjustly earned funds, and loans them back to America.
T-Bucket would never personally work for $1/hr, nor would he consider that a fair wage for his work. But when someone in China works for $1, that is $1 stolen from America.
In other words, T-Bucket is a fucking moron.
Because the ability to move people and goods around very quickly efficiently and with minimal pollution is a good thing?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
seriously, isn't it way better to have the money run into infrastructure projects instead of bullcrap like an army nobody needs to fight wars nobody wants?
I live 10 minutes from work, 5 minutes from my wife's school, 3 minutes from my son's school, 2 minutes from the grocery store and 5 minutes from church. I live 20 minutes from a major airport and 25 from another one. I am positive that you have heard of the city I live in. This year I ate grapes from my own grape vines, peaches from my own peach trees, asian pears from my own trees, and citrus from my own tree and a vegetable garden. It isn't huge, but I can see the sky above my head.
My wife is from Europe, and I have lived in two European capital cities for a year and half, and pretty much lived a month in New York City. Living in a shoe box surrounded by other shoe boxes is hell. I don't know what is going to happen 10-15 years from now, let alone 100, but what you describe sounds awful, like one of the worst types of dystopia. The funny thing is that the first thing most Europeans do when they get here is buy the biggest Buick or Mercury Grand Marquis they can find.
Because the ability to move people and goods around very quickly efficiently and with minimal pollution is a good thing?
And what does that have to do with high speed rail? Keep in mind that the high speed rail projects of which California was the last hold out, were remarkably inefficient in their construction. Aside from the high cost, two of the lines, in Florida and California, would have started with particularly low demand routes that would have guaranteed low ridership for years in the beginning.
Second, no one bothered to connect any of these routes. There were a bunch of disconnected routes. You'd have to hop on an Amtrak or something else to connect between systems.
Even by the low standards of urban transportation systems, the US examples were remarkably inefficient and poorly thought out.
It's also worth noting that the US already has an efficient rail system for transporting goods. So there's no need for high speed rail for that purpose.
Frankly, I think the automobile system in conjunction with bikes and walking for short distances is the best system for point to point travel at minimum pollution. High speed rail might be useful, but it's got a remarkably poor business case for it.
Perhaps the cities in the US are too far apart for high speed rail to make sense, but if you want to for example get from London to Paris, I can't really think of any reason why you won't go by Euro Star (the high speed rail service between those two cities).
The New Yorker is a magazine. That's the date of release of the issue the article will be appearing in.
Please help metamoderate.
That is probably just because your american and you whole way of life and cultural identity revolves around car use. It makes it far more difficult to see a world where cars simply cease to exist in their current form.
We've had a number of disaster movies where this happens. One merely needs to watch an alien invasion or zombie apocalypse movie to easily see a world without the car. So it's not hard at all.
What is hard is to come up with a competitive system that we'd voluntarily forego the car for. High speed rail just doesn't cut it as a rival.
The simple fact is that in the decades to come mass transit and densely populated cities where most of the population live is simply going to become more and more like the only option unless someone cracks a way of getting energy for nothing without drilling it up out of the ground like we do currently.
And there are already a number of ways to do that (biofuels as replacement for petroleum and electric cars, for example). So it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
You asked about High Speed Rail, not the specific (apparently extremely brain dead) plans in the United States. Perhaps a better question is why is the USA now failing to implement major infrastructure projects?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
We've had a number of disaster movies where this happens.
Soylent Green comes to mind. Heavy population density, people living in cars with no gas and they could not even afford to cut their massive sideburns. Horrible.
It's the 3rd post and you're complaining about ad hominem already? Kind of a reflex action you're showing, eh?
"For all of those wondering about America's massive interstate highway network, it costs some serious cash. Running roads across the nation is expensive - to the tune of $50 billion dollars a year. This covers the cost to maintain the network, build it, and pay all of the staff. The problem is, corruption has reared its ugly head. The network itself has had its share of problems, with people dying as a result. There is also the problem that many of America's poor make so little money they can't afford to ride it. The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count."
Don't blame environmental regulation for the delay in HSR. The EIR is the weapon of choice used by people who either were upset that the HSR wasn't coming through their town, were uneasy that it was coming through their town or didn't want the thing built in the first place.
Kind of a reflex action you're showing, eh?
Perhaps, though a commonly (and in this case poorly) employed fallacy is a justifiable reason to have a rhetorical reflex.
I watched that documentary. Terrible situation, but at least they were able to work out a solution in the end. Not every tale has such a happy ending.
if you want to for example get from London to Paris, I can't really think of any reason why you won't go by Euro Star (the high speed rail service between those two cities).
Well, it looks to be about the same cost as the airlines, but takes longer. Perhaps it is more comfortable. I haven't been on it. I am sure that the security is, for now, less obnoxious than the airlines, but it's only a matter of time.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Perhaps a better question is why is the USA now failing to implement major infrastructure projects?
Because we are in a constant battle between trying to decide whether to spend all our money on the military or spend all our money on making everybody dependent on the government for sustenance.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The terrorists would just blow up the HSR trains, there's too many groups that have an interest in screwing it up.
So that's about 15% of the US MIC pork budget. Which country gets the better return?
The funniest thing about the OP is the whining about corruption. I guess the US has all the prior art on that.
Why would it be "a matter of time"? Are terrorists going to figure out how to hijack a high speed train and fly it into a building?
"if someone criticizes what I hold dear, he/she must be a conservative"
this why Slashdot is such a hostile environment for the non-partisan people
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
> "The problem is, corruption has reared its ugly head."
Reared? Corruption is why these projects are being done to begin with. Go read the sordid details of the Three Gorges Dam. "Useful Idiots" trumpeted it as a model of a government project while decrying its environmental impact. Meanwhile the officials pocketed billions, which was the acual point of the project all along.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Cars are more convenient than public transportation, even if its a good transportation system. This is true everywhere except where there are too many traffic jams.
In America, we're working on alternatives, we keep building electric cars, and they get cheaper and cheaper. The world will have electric cars available long before oil runs out, and we'll have fusion power plants long before coal runs out. Energy is not our problem (although cheaper electricity always makes things better).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So, China is investing $100 billion/year into a program that will boost their economy by employing 2 million people and building major infrastructure that will give them a huge boost for the next several decades.
Meanwhile, the US is spending how much each year boosting their economy with games like bond bailouts, cutting checks to tax payers, etc. Not to mention money blown on security theater, propping up the **AA groups? There may be corruption in China's rail system, but does anyone believe there's no corruption with the US lobbying system, the senators/congressmen, the HSA, and the **AA?
I know the US school system is pathetic garbage, but does anyone know enough US history to know what the railbuilding days were like in the US? And how much the railraods did in terms of making the US a superpower?
Basically this article makes me think I need to go out and learn Mandarin if I want to have any sort of future.
You wouldn't need a nuclear plant on every street. One in every county (about 30 miles or so between them) would be fine to supply all the US power needs, including transportation.
If you don't invest in your future because of the boogeyman, your country has already lost.
Slashdot is rapidly becoming the eternal September of "Dog Bites Man". Read any story submission. Does it continue to explain how emotional outrage of the moment is any different today than yesterday?
Why yes, it does, and it's a catastrophe: there hasn't been 600 slashdot comments extactly the same as last week's posted since midnight.
Fact 1: China has a *lot* of money, especially the US dollar.
Fact 2: United States is diluting the US dollar.
If you are in this situation, what would you do?
So China need to spend them. Let's see where can they spend such massive amount of money:
1. Military. Obviously the amount they can spend depends on whether they want their "defense" budget to actually go toward defending the country, which is cheaper, or toward invading other country, which is much more expensive.
2. Infrastructure.
I see a clear winner here.
My friends just took *five hours* to get off the plane at JFK where they think two members of staff is enough to process all non US citizens at one of the world's busiest airports. I could get to France by boat in that time, let alone by high speed train. Eurostar is far more comfortable than any airline due to the lack of noise and dry air and low air pressure that all jets have, but the seats in economy are not as nice as those on standard trains, since they insist on "airline style" seating (cram em in) instead of proper train style seats (facing each other) (which you might find only on airforce one or a business jet, with better upholstery of course).
Once you take travel to airports vs travel to centre of town into account and all the queueing at security, it is faster by train than by plane. Possibly london city airport is faster though (than gatwick heathrow stanstead or luton) cos that is a selling point for business travelers.
$100 billion/year is a STEAL compared to what the US spends on travel. Consider our highway system, which already costs billions a year, and then EVERYONE needs a car for it, and all the GAS for those cars (which alone probably costs more than that whole high-speed rail system), and most people will be using a GPS so they don't get lost. And then for those people who don't want to sit in a car and stare at the road for 5-10 hours or more, just consider the upkeep costs on our air travel and airports. $100 billion is nothing compared to all that.
There's also the little fact that high-speed rail is by far the safest form of travel available. Accidents almost never happen, it's actually faster than air travel up until the 4-hour mark, AND most trains have wifi service (at least in the EU).
The reason our cities are generally low-density is that there's just so God damned much empty space in the U.S. I'm guessing you're from Europe, as it seems common for Europeans to not appreciate just how far apart the cities are in the U.S. Heck, I've watched the sun rise and set before I finished crossing Texas alone...
Mass transit is not sensible for 95% of the U.S. There are areas it does make sense (the megalopolises on the east and west coasts, for instance) but it would never work in the spaces between them. And those megalopolises are losing population as people move to less densely populated, less authoritarian, more economically active states.
There are alternatives to fossil fuels to power personal transportation, and with fossil fuel costs going up and the alternatives becoming cheaper, eventually they will be widely deployed. The car isn't going away anytime soon in the U.S, and probably not in my lifetime.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
It might take 100 years for us to run out of oil completely but how long is it before it simply becomes too expensive for a large part of the population to afford to drive to work every day?
At least for vast groups of employees today I would say the answer is telecommuting, not moving downtown which is crazy expensive and while you have mass transit you also have congestion and many other issues. More automation, more self-service, more telepresence of knowledge workers and more robots and remote control for physical labor. Both the culture and the tools for it are a work in progress but ultimately it'll come down to economics - if travel costs become a huge burden both on salary requirements and finding the right people employers will adapt. In fact it's already started with quite a few people I know working on virtual teams, where they have the physical facilities and social environment of an office but the people they actually work with are located somewhere else.
I would also argue that a lot of people can't actually save that much by not commuting, because they want/need the car for other reasons so they're still seeing value loss and maintenance and repairs and insurance and taxes and whatnot - it's only the marginal cost of miles driven in fuel and wear that they save. The big savings you only get if you can skip the car altogether and manage on some combination of mass transit, taxis, rentals, car pools and such. Because there will always be exceptions where mass transit just isn't going to go from where you are to where you want when you want it. And I don't think people are willing to give up that freedom easily.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Exactly right. HSR is a waste of time, because terrorists could blow it up.
Similarly, airports and air travel is a waste of time, because terrorists could blow it up. We need to just shut down all the airports.
Similarly, bridges are a waste of time and money, because terrorists could blow up these critical points in the highway infrastructure. We need to just not have any bridges and transport people and cargo across rivers using rafts.
Similarly, government buildings, like courts and administrative offices, are all a waste of time, because terrorists could blow them up. We need to just shut down the government altogether so we can avoid terrorist attacks on these places.
Similarly, farms are a waste of time because terrorists could blow them up and eliminate our food supply. We should just shut down all farms and make everyone responsible for growing their own food individually.
Thanks! Now, THAT article is worth reading.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
The EuroStar takes 2:16 from (central) London to (central) Paris. It's unlikely that you can beat that on any aircraft, if you take times to and from the airport, check-in and check-out times, and waiting time into account. The Eurostar is not only international, but also leaves the Schengen area, which complicates travel a bit. But for national trains, I just go to the station with 5 minutes to spare and walk onto a train with an open ticket (although some discount options require the use of fixed connections).
Stephan
Let's see, $100 billion divided by 1.4 billion people. Hmm, how much did you pay for gas last year? Pizza? Cosmetics? Text messaging? Season tickets? Advertising? Superbowl advertising?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Why would it be "a matter of time"? Are terrorists going to figure out how to hijack a high speed train and fly it into a building?
I was talking about obnoxious security, which will eventually find its way into the train stations. You're talking about actual terrorist acts, which are almost completely irrelevant when talking about security.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
trade doesn't go by high speed rail, it costs too much. An ocean going cargo ship is very cheap. The only way rail can compete with that is if it is a much shorter path or if oil prices go really high.
Well, a land route is shorter than a marine route, and oil prices have been rising over the long term. I do not expect either to change, so in 20 years or so, the rail lines may be able to compete, and China will be there.
With terrorists going to blow up the HSR, and all the other reasons not to do anything, maybe we can just save them the trouble and not wake up tomorrow. Sleep through life, and just stop living. Now that will really piss off those terrorists, when there is no one left for them to terrorize, they won't know what to do either!
Sorry, but every other developed country recognises that us all having our own, incredibly energy hungry tin box that goes where we tell it is just not sustainable
I'm Australian, you insensitive clod!
I think traveling by flight is better/safer than traveling by high-speed trains
Casteism
Not quite sure how you figure that: energy-wise, rail is more efficient than sea (IIRC), and it's a shorter route, both in terms of time and distance. Certainly at the moment the trade doesn't go that way, but there's no decent route, so why would it?
I still reckon we should build partially-evacuated tunnels containing maglevs with linear electric motors to accelerate them... but maybe I'm still dreaming. :-)
the citizens defence force makes you impenetrable from the start and they seem to have it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJlPr2KHSFo
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Yeah, it does tend to go that way. The problem of course is that the private car is a horribly inefficient mode of transport, both in terms of energy and capacity. A single light rail line that's designed well can take more passengers at peak than a multi-lane highway, for less energy and without congestion, meaning it's much quicker too. If we were to design a city from scratch now, we'd build electric public transport infrastructure (rail plus PRT or similar for the infill, pedestrian-friendly bits in between, etc) and fewer roads. And everyone would love living there - you'd only own cars if you had to go outside the city. Pity it's so hard to fit that into an existing city though. :-/
Also, I disagree with you on the comment "energy is not our problem" - energy is always the problem: solve that and you solve almost every other problem we have (water, transport, cheap manufacturing, etc). The reason for most wars is resources, and we have already had at least two wars I can think of in recent history about oil, both involving your country. :-) I really do hope that you are right about fusion, because it's one of the few really good options that we have, but it's still a good way off (and the end of oil is probably closer than most realise)... though I think solar has merits too.
If we were to design a city from scratch now, we'd build electric public transport infrastructure (rail plus PRT or similar for the infill, pedestrian-friendly bits in between, etc) and fewer roads. And everyone would love living there - you'd only own cars if you had to go outside the city.
Doubtful. Cars are still more convenient. If people can afford them (and find parking) they will prefer them. The goal isn't to be 100% energy efficient, the goal is to have a good life.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Southwest Airlines lobbying efforts succeed in continuously preventing any high speed rail to connect Austin, Houston and Dallas so that by the time middle class Chinese can afford to use their high speed rail, we Americans will be having to squander time and money to get from city to city.
Not always - for example, the city I live in is seeing a trend towards growing use of public transport (as the public transport systems improve and traffic demand grows). Certainly, if it costs $3 and takes 30 minutes to get to work by PT and the same by car, you're going to take the car, but if it's $2 and 20 minutes by PT but $8 and 50 minutes by car, the car is no longer more convenient and people start to change. Spending 2+ hours a day communiting isn't fun. The ideal transport system (I think) is one where you only have to walk a max of about a couple of hundred metres or so at each end, have no wait times, and don't have to drive the vehicle (so can read, relax, check Facebook, browse /. headlines, whatever while travelling), and PT systems like this are actually achieveable, and more convenient than a car-based system (and a better quality of life). It's just a matter of convincing people. :-)
However, you do have a point that people have this (sometimes irrational) love for their cars: when doing traffic modelling, correction factors for this have to be included as people will still use their cars even if they are more costly and less convenient... (This from a University lecture on traffic engineering).
With the train, there is a half hour check-in time to get through border control and security, and at the other end, you walk off the train straight onto a city centre street.
I recently flew from Nice (south coast of France) to London. It took 9 hours from boarding the bus at Nice Gare Routière (bus station) to arriving at the waiting area at Heathrow Central Bus Station. The actual flying time was only about 2 hours. Even for that journey, the train would have taken pretty much the exact same time, except I would be arriving at St Pancras rather than Heathrow Central. The entire door to door journey in my case would have been 10 minutes longer, but I wouldn't have to worry about luggage restrictions.
If you compare the London to Paris journey, about 1 hour of flying, 7 hours of not flying, the 2h 16m Eurostar trip beats it hands down.
In America, we're working on alternatives, we keep building electric cars, and they get cheaper and cheaper. The world will have electric cars available long before oil runs out, and we'll have fusion power plants long before coal runs out. Energy is not our problem (although cheaper electricity always makes things better).
Are you sure enough to bet the entire future of your nation on it?
Fusion has been talked about for decades and it still isn't here. Even when it gets here think how many people will object to having a fusion plant anywhere near them, they will simply associate it with fission anyway.
As to coal you are living in a dream world. If you try generating enough electricity to power an electric car for everyone using coal you will generate a stupendous amount of CO2. You guys may not believe in global warming but everyone else in the world does. It really does exist and if you even try that you can be fairly sure you can kiss Florida and every other low lieing area of the country good bye.
This would also involve building a huge number of coal fired power plants and nobody will want one of those next door either so unless you can solve nimbyism somehow your plan has a few flaws.
I dont read
"the private car is a horribly inefficient mode of transport..."
Saying this over and over again doesn't make it true. If our entire Internet backbone was 100 GB/s unobtanium fiber cables and switches it still wouldn't be the most efficient Internet in the universe (in energy use or capacity) if everyone had to access it with an old-school 33.6Kb/s dial-up modem.
When it comes to the US, this is exactly what you're proposing: a big expensive central transportation network that would be completely _in-efficient_ because of all the time you'd waste getting to and from it (probably in your much hated-car). The utopian solution to the access problem is that we're all going to voluntarily cram into ultra-high density cities. In the US, that's just not going to happen.
Urban utopia types continue to cling to some deranged fantasy that Americans (the US kind at least) have somehow been tricked into living in the suburbs and relying on automobiles for our primary mode of transportation. Here's a pro tip for that crowd: you're wrong. We like our big back yards and houses. We like our quiet neighborhoods, the low crime, and the good schools. We like our cars and don't mind driving them places. We like living like this and we chose it: ON PURPOSE. (Side note: we also think your urban utopia dream sounds like a fucking dystopian nightmare.)
And given that we like all the rest of that stuff, when it comes time to get our 2.5 kids to school, soccer, dance, scouts, or whatever, it turns out a private automobile is VASTLY more efficient, at least in terms of time, which is the world's only truly limited resource.
No, the STATE will seize on any opportunity to expand its power and after taking over air travel, rail is the next most logical from their point of view.
Ho ho ho! Biting but painfully true!
Yes, if your city is so congested that driving by car is slower, then people will start preferring public transportation. That is not exactly ideal.
I've lived in a place that had a transportation system like you described (the max wait was 5 minutes, which is ok). People still preferred cars if they could afford them, because they were more convenient (you can carry your kids or groceries or old people in them easily), and because they were faster. The car is going to win over the bus every time because the bus has to stop frequently to let people off. Of course you can have express trains that will go direct without stopping, and those are nice, but still not as convenient because they don't go directly to your destination.
Finally commuting 2+hours a day isn't the norm, I personally live close to work so I can avoid commuting. Alternately you can listen to books on tape, etc, to improve your 'quality of life.' I knew a guy who used to lament that he didn't have a long commute he could use to learn Greek while he was sitting in traffic. So that's kind of a matter of opinion, although I probably agree with your opinion in that case.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Please go educate yourself.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When the politicians gave us a referendum on California's high speed rail, it was for a $10B bond issue, which was going to cover about 1/3 of the $30B cost, and the rest was going to be paid for by train tickets and Magic Money Falling Out Of The Sky. Then after the bond issue passed, they noticed it was really $40B, because they'd forgotten that they'd have to pay interest on the money. Now it's up to about $80-100B, depending on who's giving the speech. Also, the voter guide statements with the original bond issue said that train tickets from SF to LA would cost about $55, which is a bit cheaper than buying Southwest Airlines tickets in advance on a good sale; when they re-evaluated the costs, they started saying $110.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks