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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."
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!
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.
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.
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.
Wrong on many levels. The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is forecast to hit capacity soon. In fact, they have had to reduce stops, remove stops etc, to keep the line running with any reasonable frequency. So a new line is needed. If you are building a new line, there is no good reason to not build HSR line. The costs will be fairly similar anyway. The high speed element is something nice, but not the main point of building a new line.
See, who says the US isn't investing in high speed rail! Whose $100B do you think that is?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
"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."