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World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens In China
An anonymous reader writes "Today China continued rolling out the future of high speed rail by officially unveiling the world's longest high-speed rail line — a 2,298-kilometer (1,428-mile) stretch of railway that connects Beijing in the north to Guangzhou in the south. The first trains on the new route hit 300 kph (186 mph), cutting travel time between the two cities by more than half."
...the United States has the longest Slow Speed rail lines of the world.
Is that just simple Luddite-speak or are you trying to imply that the Chinese build unsafe systems? Funny, you rely on quite a lot of them, wherever you are...
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China just connects cities with theirs. We connect cornfields with ours.
That's a huge distance, I'm impressed. I wonder why we don't make these kinds of railway advances in the US. Is it because there's no money in it? I'd much rather travel by train, than air. ...unless homeland security set into the railway's checkpoints.
Actually, I do not think the Chinese built it. I believe they contracted european train builders.
For reference, that's about half the width of the U.S., or about the length of Japan.
I guess China has cemented their hold on the card for The Longest Road now...
While I'm here, does anyone care to trade wood for sheep?
You could have hit the airport and been there in far less time. Leaving you time to eat at a nice restaurant and sleep in a hotel.
Do they even have booze on Amtrack?
This new train has an 8 to 10 hour scheduled travel time and covers 2100 km.
That means it averages 210km/h including stops along the way (it's not direct).
Rod Taylor
What would a Train Wreck at 186 MPH in a densely populated area look like?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
There's already a high speed rail connection from Guangzhou to Shenzhen North. The high speed rail connection through to Hong Kong is scheduled for completion in 2014, and will shorten travel time for that last link from 2 hours to 38 minutes. (Except that there's a border control point between Shentzen and Hong Kong that takes longer than the travel time.)
Another step has been taken in tying China more closely together. That's part of the political motivation. Traditionally, China's provinces were not closely connected. Each province was expected to be self-sufficient in food and other essentials. That continued through the Mao era, and it's not completely gone. There are still some inter-provincial trade restrictions.
Of course, the South still speaks Cantonese, while the North speaks Mandarin. This despite half a century of effort by the central government. "The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away".
When you can build a HSR train, not have it subsidized (heavily) by tax payers, have it affordable and convenient (fast) for people to use, THEN and only then will I accept it as an option. Problem is, you can't, as HSR fails on all these accounts. In California, we passed HSR and the costs have already tripled what they proponents claimed it would cost, AND it hasn't even started. The estimated ticket prices are such that is is still cheaper to fly (air rail system). Nobody that is proposing HSR is based on anything in reality, only romantic feelings about trains.
If you remove all the emotionalism from those proposing HSR, you are left holding a big, expensive, "me too" toy that. It boarders upon religious fanaticism.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No. They tied it. China, long a sleeper in technology is now siding with the West in new developments. This will signal a switch to new railroad advances.
So should we get rid of the interstates as well?
What about airports? Should they all be closed for the same reason?
I propose HSR not for any romantic notions, but because I have ridden it in Europe. I have been on the damn things and seen how well they work.
How about you name a method of travel that meets those goals so we can compare it to HSR.
Because their high-speed trains had an accident not so long ago and the goverment tried to cover up.
sigh.
There are hundreds of thousands of miles of train miles covered each day in Europe at speeds like these. Oh, and they have a pretty good safety record. There has been only one fatal crash on High speed lines in Europe and that was in Germany and wasn't down to a track defect.
The completion of the high speed line from London to Paris (including 36km under the Channel) has captured the majority of the passenger traffic between the two capital cities. Two hours and a bit for City-Centre to City-Centre makes most airline travel simply untennable.
Once you travel by high speed train you will be hooked. It is a far better way to travel than by air especially in Cattle Class.
I'm going to Madagascar next April. The Flight to Tana leaves from Paris. I won't be flying to Paris, I'll be taking the train right to the Airport in Paris from London. The wonders of a semi integrated transport system. Something that the USA has never really enjoyed. It is far too 'socialist/commie' for most of the Americans I know. (Oh, I spent three years living in N.H and working in taxacheusetts).
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Yeah I donno about that. "My time" for the train is like 15 minutes to get aboard and literally 5 minutes to cross the street on the NYC side. "My time" for the airplane is a half hour out to the airport in the middle of nowhere and parking, two hours sitting around for security theater playtime, you can't do what you want on a plane so thats about two hours lost during flight time, and finally a nice $50 hour long cab ride on the NYC side, so that's like 5 hours of "my time" if flying.
As for the restaurant, the amtrak food was "nice" sure not a $200 steak house but no worse than a family restaurant, and the cabin was comfortable enough to sleep in. I had a little sleeper cabin with desk, one entire wall is a giant window, and all that.
Booze? Oh god yes. Some day you should take an observation car out west where the obs car has a bar in the middle of the top floor (the observation area). The west coast trains are double decker two floor and much nicer than the east coast single floor dumpy-trains. None the less booze is booze... Nicotine addicts would have serious issues with Amtrak, but the alkies will be just fine, well lubricated, whatever. Also if you have a cabin unless they're peeking in the windows you can drink or eat whatever you can haul aboard...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Tired of the corporate sycophants on Slashdot.
I know that it is sacrilege in the U.S. to say so, but some things are worth doing even if you can't make a profit on them.
4. 3. 2. 1.
Enjoy your slide into obsolesce. If you remove all the emotionalism from those proposing pure capitalism, your are left holding a big, empty, "I don't want to spend any more" motto. It is religious fanaticism.
Countries thrive when they invest, undertake massive projects, improve themselves. They slide into nothingness when the accountants take over as their infrastructure falls apart and all the bright people find themselves working abroad.
The ultimate failure of religious fantatics like the parent is that they think the race ends. That once you won, that is it. The race never ends. And China right now is winning by default because everyone else has stopped. You can smirk about North-Korea's rocket attempts but at least they are trying. In the west, people worry about the costs to much to do ANYTHING anymore. Great nations were not build by accountants.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When you can build a HSR train, not have it subsidized (heavily) by tax payers, have it affordable and convenient (fast) for people to use, THEN and only then will I accept it as an option.
If it's not subsidized by tax payers, it's none of your business, so making additional demands on top of that is silly.
The interstate highway system is paid for by the federal government. $425 billion. Apparently the largest public works system since the pyramids. Why exactly Americans think of this as "a brilliant economic success" and state funded medicine as "socialist" the FSM only knows.
Well actually we do know. Because that's how lobbyists chose to frame them.
Heck they understand that the roads were worth making even though there wasn't a profit on them.
Their thoughts are formed by what lobbyists tell them to think.
The situation in America is a little bit different. In Europe you typically want to go to the center of a city. In Paris once you are in Gare du Nord, you are quickly anywhere you want provided you are not already where you want to go. And it is pretty much like that for every major city. Also, despite having a good HSR trian system, all trip that do not go toward or away from paris are a nightmare (try a Lyon-Bordeaux or Lyon-Strasbourg for instance).
In the US, you typically do not care about being downtown. I have been living in Columbus, OH (ok not the biggest city) for 4 years and I only went downtown 5 times (once to visit downtown, once to go to a museum, once to drop somebody at a justice court, once to go to social security administration and once for july 4th celebration). There is no point going downtown in the US for most city I believe. And since the cities are so spread out, you'll have to rent a car to go anywhere. So you'll end up needing to drive to and from the train station. So you don't save the overhead of going to/from the airport. That makes the train much less interesting. It would pretty much be a slower plane. And it will not be cheap. Actually if you aim at cheap, you have a bus system that connects major cities. It is much slower than a high speed train. But it is also much cheaper.
So a train would end up being a compromise between the slow/cheap bus and the fast/expensive plane. It is not clear there is a real market.
Playing not by rules is something that US and West did for years, I guess now, it is time for china and east, so get use to it or die
WTF are you talking about?
They are a giant sinkhole of money. The only way they are a success is if you are in the oil, auto or road building business.
The interstate highway system is paid for by the federal government. $425 billion. Apparently the largest public works system since the pyramids. Why exactly Americans think of this as "a brilliant economic success" and state funded medicine as "socialist" the FSM only knows.
Well actually we do know. Because that's how lobbyists chose to frame them.
I bet some of the same people going out and making a stink about the evils of the health care reform bill or teachers unions still call up to complain when there is a pothole on their street.
Everything is wasteful, unless it's for you.
When I am retired I plan to do just that.
I love train travel, I use it all the time in Europe. I wish I could use it here. In the states though we seem to have no trouble subsidizing roads, but for some reason we view trans as some socialist evil. I think it has a lot to do with trains being a more democratic form of travel, I sit in the same seat as the rich. On the road they can show off their cars.
The booze factor may get me to tolerate a 4 hour rid to toronto though. On vacation I like to keep my BAC up.
The GP insists, first and foremost, that it not be subsidized by Government money (tax payers).
That immediately sets an impossibly high barrier. One that can't be met by any transportation system, water system, sewer system, or communication system.
Ignorance of the proper place for government expenditures is an unfortunate trait of ultra-conservative types. When any government involvement with societal life other than national defense is arbitrarily off the table, you have an impossible situation and a recipe for an agrarian society.
Roads, and railroads, necessarily require government money and government powers. If one stubborn farmer can stand in the way of a road or railroad (as would be the case in a purely private development) it would be legally impossible to build anything, not just cost prohibitive.
I suspect the GP never thinks about that while driving to work on that government road, or flushing his toilet to that government sewer while surfing the web on that government bandwidth.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You could have hit the airport and been there in far less time. Leaving you time to eat at a nice restaurant and sleep in a hotel.
Do they even have booze on Amtrack?
Yes they do, and they also have a pretty good restaurant, and the hotel rooms, while small, are quite nice.
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It is nice traveling, but unless you can catch specials or book four months out, it isn't very cheap. 100 - 150 euro per person, one way.
For the initial units, yes. The railway and cars were then duplicated, including the processes and tools needed. At least that's what they did on the Shanghai-Nanjing leg (which I've ridden way too many times).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This new train has an 8 to 10 hour scheduled travel time and covers 2100 km.
That means it averages 210km/h including stops along the way (it's not direct).
If there are any stops along the way you will need much greater speeds than 210km/h.
I suggest the route is undoable in 10 hours if there is even a few stops unless the train spends a great deal of time at 300km/h.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sounds like either you are a liar or France needs to fix that. In Germany you can get from just about anywhere to anywhere else on the train. To go from Frankfurt to my Uncles home, you can take a plane or train to Stuttgart then another train to a nearby train and in good weather walk or in poor weather take a taxi or bus the last couple miles. I know shocking that an American would consider walking an acceptable method of transportation.
What we actually need is better public transit in the cities as well. I go downtown all the time, that is where the non-chain good restaurants are, the interesting shops and the arts/museums. As I live in Buffalo I would consider that pretty comparable to Columbus size wise.
Busses are only cheaper because they get to ride on the road that tax dollars provides.
I know I'm trolling a bit by making this statement but I actually feel strongly about it. I'm sick of hearing about China this and China that. China does not play by a fair set of economic, safety, and environmental rules. I have a hard time lauding any Chinese progress. They artificially manipulate their currency and sell goods at below market value which hinders the world's economy. I wonde how safe this train really is!
The US didn't play by the book either during the 19th century up until the 1960s. You know all those progressive legislations, the clean air act, the establishment of the EPA etc.. all came about in the 1970s. People forget that the US while a major industrial powerhouse for most of the 20th century was from the standpoint of enviromental sageguard a cesspool.
The 21st century belongs to China my friend. Nothing the US can do will reverse this trend.
Slashdot, get a fucking edit button.
To go from Frankfurt to my Uncles home, you can take a plane or train to Stuttgart then another train to a nearby small city Goppingen and in good weather walk or in poor weather take a taxi or bus the last couple miles.
It allows you pigs in Southern California to own 4 cars and drive 70 miles to work each way wasting huge amounts of fuel, and still only pay the same taxes as me who gets jobs where I can telecommute. I worked in LA for 6 months and saw miles and miles of traffic jams every day going into the city -- one person per car. The HOV lanes were sitting empty.
In most cities on Europe there is a comprehensive network of public transport. This negates the need to drive for a lot of us.
I don't drive all the way to work. I drive 4km to the station and take the train. Then it is a sub 5 minute walk to the office.
Only when I got to the USA do I have to drive everywhere. I have a ticket for jaywalking between shopping malls in Fla. when I should have driven the 200yds.
That takes us into another whole argument/debate
For the N.E of the US and certainly for SF/Sac->LA->SanDiego and Van->Sea->Portland there should be IMHO a high speed rail link. It will cut the gas miles/Jet-A miles between the cities at a stroke. Proper park/Ride stations coupled with swiss style interval services would tranform the daily commue for many thousands if not millions of Americans.
Don't forget that it was big oil that bribed the local Gov in LA to get rid of its extensive tram network in the late 1940's/early 1950's. If they had kept it then there would be a need for far less miles of freeway in LA than we have today.
Oh, I have travelled around the US by Grehound Bus. I always remember getting on a Bus to Elizabeth City in NYC and being the only whie face on it. I was introduced to the delight that is 'grits' at a stop in Dover De. I met someone really special to me whilst waiting for a bus in Butte. Two years later we rode coast to coast on my Triumph. 48 States down two to go.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
So I have to pay taxes to fund that shit, even though my commute is under 5 miles?
Sounds like you are the fatty eating bonbons here.
That they build unsafe systems.
You are going to have hiccups with any new system – that’s a given. Combine that with tight deadlines & budgets imposed from above, the regulators and safety inspectors are not independent from the organization running the train, the mandatory use of state contractors, and graft from below – well serious accidents will occur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision#Investigation
As far as I know successful shopping malls and office buildings don't run their elevator and escalator systems as profit centres (same goes for their toilets).
For similar reasons I think public transport (and many similar) systems shouldn't be run as profit centres. There should be safety, quality, availability and reliability standards, and good regulation. Cost should also be considered but mainly to see if someone is screwing up badly, or corrupt. Anyone not too stupid can figure out how much such things should roughly cost after a while. So why bother having some private corp skim off the profit? I can understand Californians not wanting to help pay for stuff in New York and vice versa (because they'd hardly use it) if they don't consider themselves part of the same country.
You don't go building roads and rail to nowhere all the time, BUT sometimes it makes sense to have a particular nowhere become a new somewhere. You don't want the decision to be based mainly on the opinions of bean counters that only count the profitability of that small section of the road/rail. You'd want it based on a proper independent economic study (or three) of the entire thing.
Hmm where have I heard this somewhere before, oh yeah a bit further down on the page where Lockheed was crying that SpaceX couldn't possibly be doing anything this much cheaper and better than them without compromising safety. Sure, if you go look at the crap they deliver to Wal-Mart your idea of Chinese quality might be low but they also do rocket science putting men in space and probes orbiting the moon and I'm pretty sure they do brain surgery too. That they often ignore emissions is not the same as being ignorant of them, unless it's say the Olympics in Beijing where they make a huge temporary clean-up effort. They might be more willing to trample the individual's rights than in other countries but the progress they make is very much real. Real income has more than tripled for over a billion people in the last decade:
GDP per capita measured in purchasing power terms more than tripled from $2,800 in 2002 to a forecast $9,100 in 2012 according to the International Monetary Fund.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hint: The cost of NOT providing health care to even the "lazy" and "crap eating" people is far FAR more than it would be to simply give it to them for free to begin with. If it was free there would be no barrier to going and getting many of the conditions that result or reinforce their apathy taken care of. Instead we treat health like a commodity as though people had a realistic choice of "gee, heart surgeries are expensive this year, maybe I'll wait for the new model next year".
And the road system has massive hidden costs on top of the huge amount invested in it directly. Part of that cost is the reinforcement of the mentality you're crying about in the first paragraph. Other costs include the utter pillaging of our environment and resources (oil, arable land, minerals), mental health deterioration from the fucking awful way we treat people when we can't see them as people (just asshole drivers!) and insulate ourselves from each other in our single occupant garage to garage isolation zones. Additionally, you act like having a strong, open and properly regulated rail infrastructure would not also be a huge economic benefit, if not bigger. When you actually build it right and don't let private interests dictate silly terms on usage, rail is a vastly more efficient use of resources for both cargo and people transportation, and also much, much faster than driving, never mind safer.
You're right, comparing the road systems to state funded medicine is false and misleading, state funded medicine would be a massively better use of money.
Have you considered that living in the So. Cal. desert is both a useless and completely unsustainable waste? Why should be subsidize your grossly inefficient way of life? You can't say we have to and not also accept the same for others. (FYI, it'd be faster and cheaper if it was done by train)
1428 miles in 8 hours. I officially call BS on the claims that "HSR isn't feasible in the USA due to the very long distances between cities."
Let's take a look at Amtrak's long-distance timetables:
NYC to Miami: 1389 miles in 27:40. While a direct flight takes 3:38, you have to factor in arrival two hours early plus an hour on arrival to get your checked bag, so we're up to roughly 7 hours. China is now doing this trip in 8 hours, during which time you can use your laptop, tablet, and cell phone without skipping a beat.
New Orleans to LA: 1995 miles in 46:35. Via HSR, this would take 11 hours; the current flight, 4:23. While this is getting less competitive, I would still take the train over the flight any day. An 11-hour trip can be overnight, leaving at 1900 and arriving at 0600 having gotten a night of sleep and eliminated the need for an additional night in a hotel. (Note: this route used to go from Orlando to LA, but Katrina "temporarily" suspended the portion east of New Orleans...).
Bias alert: I never liked flying, and when the TSA was a nonissue, I still didn't like the discomfort/hours waiting issues. After using the Madrid-Sevilla HSR in 1999, I told myself "We need this back at home!"
They artificially manipulate their currency and sell goods at below market value which hinders the world's economy. I wonde how safe this train really is!
Manipulating currency is not the problem, it is when USA and other countries sold to China (it was not stolen) the industrial capability to build things. See "Winner Take All" by Richard Elkus http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Competitiveness-Nations/dp/B002KAOSPG
Anyway, argue what everyone is doing on this forum, China is building HSR instead PPT like rest of us.
mfwright@batnet.com
I am french you know. :) There are trains from Lyon to Bordeaux, but not high speed trains and because of Massif Central the track is not straight. The same goes between Lyon and Strasbourg you can go there but you have a stupid slow train that stops eveywhere and it might be faster to go through Paris. If you want to go from Lyon to Bordeaux, I believe you have a not-so-fast train to toulouse and then you are on slow tracks to Bordeaux. In practice most people that need to go from Lyon to Bordeaux fly. (Or at least it was like this in 2008)
About walking in America, it really depends on the city. From downtown Columbus to where I live, it is more than 10 miles. There is no direct bus, I am not even sure I can make the trip in a single connection. There is nothing to do downtown Columbus. The only reason to go there would be administrative. (Though, there is an art college close to downtown.)
It is a success, because it works, and tons of goods and millions of people use it everyday. HSR, will be not be, because it is simply too limited. I can take my car to from Sacramento to LA in about 6 hours, at a cost of (Gas Guzzler) less than $150 in petrol, taking my family (four additional people) as a bonus. HSR will make the trip in 4 hours (not that much faster) and at more than $250 per person, AND still lose money. AND once I get there, I would still need to rent a car. And further trips, I would simply just take a plane.
I can rent a car for a week for that, drive and come back for less money. The only benefit of HSR in this situation is that I can get up and walk around or sleep instead of driving, and with Google Cars on the way, I can even do most of those things. HSR is romantic notion for idiots. IT never pans out like the proponents claim.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If it was up to me rail would be doing 90% of that.
I have no problem paying for lifestyle problems, just like the rock climbing example I would gladly pay for that to make sure everyone can get healthcare.
The day you find yourself unemployed and the HSA spent you might change your mind. Probably not, I have an uncle like that, he talked the same talk and now gladly accepts medicare but still talks bad about the 47%. He never gets that he is part of it.
Exactly, and with the number of people that are planned on using the HSR, the "unless it is for you" is miniscule. You won't see Millions of people opting for the HSR instead of driving I5. So, HSR is just a romantic notion ... still.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And yet, there are plenty of businesses that have closed because of the regulations that require elevators. You won't actually see that though, because they simply disappear rather than spend millions retrofitting old buildings.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I feel sorry for you :P
Sounds like Columbus sucks. Buffalo used to be similar but the city has done a great job in recent years growing some neighborhoods.
Also please speak to your countrymen about CDG airport. It is not only a toilet for the many homeless that inhabit it, but also a huge pain in the ass to traverse. Otherwise, I like your nation just fine, what I have seen of it.
Zeppelins!
I believe in karma, which is why, when I do something bad to people, I assume they deserve it.
As opposed to rail?
Are you entirely insane or just a little?
Since we're talking about California: the HSR project is absolutely retarded, and a case-study in how not to create an HSR:
- due to political issues, the rail line stops in the towns of Bumfuck and Nowhere, also known as Gilroy and Bakersfield. That adds cost and time to delivering it.
- due to cost issues, a lot of the HSR tracks are actually shared with various existing rail authorities (Caltrain, for example), and therefore the trains will not hit the high speeds necessary to qualify as HSR in many locations.
The HSR we're getting is HSR in name only, is stuffed to the gills with pork to appease local politicians, and faces a ton of NIMBY opposition (or OIMBY even). The proper way to create an HSR line on the Pacific: have a dedicated rail-line built from Portland to San Diego. Have it stop in San Jose, Los Angeles and maybe Sacramento and a few towns cities in Washington and Oregon. Subsidize the rail building and rail maintenance with state funds, and have the trains operated by private train operators. Start with the California tracks, then expand once the lines are running.
Instead, we get an initial rail line that goes nowhere interesting and isn't high-speed. The problem here is political will, not technical aspects of HSR. If you'd remove the emotionalism from all the HSR projects, you'd get working HSR. The problem is that that is impossible, and we get an emotional mess.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You could have hit the airport and been there in far less time. Leaving you time to eat at a nice restaurant and sleep in a hotel.
Do they even have booze on Amtrack?
yes they do, and you can drink you're own and share all you like as long as the dining car is closed or out of alcohol.
I believe in karma, which is why, when I do something bad to people, I assume they deserve it.
Yep, columbus sucks...
about France. One of the main problem of the country is an over concentration of everything in Paris. About 20% of the French population lives in ile-de-france (the region of paris) and about 4% of the french population lives in paris itself.
That completely skews everything. They were planning on building a 3rd airport around Paris. If you look at an infrastructure map of France, it appears fairly clearly that everything go from or to Paris. All the administration (public or private) tends to centralize in Paris which makes the city a huge mess and prevents other parts of the country from developping.
It also leads to the impression that France is Paris and that Paris is France.
Instead of acting so smart, why not do the math?
You simply can not make up a half hour stop, or even a 15 minute stop at more than a very few cities.
You need this time to board and de-train passengers, stow luggage, etc.
You have to slow down to approach to cities, curves, hills, and accelerate on departure from cities.
Start chopping half hour segments out of 10 hour trip an see what your average speed needs to be.
Anything beyond 6 stops along the route means you can't possibly make up the time.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
According to the DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, probably not. Rail is subsidized at a 10-40 times higher rate, per passenger mile, than air. Note that cars are actually a net revenue generator, with a negative subsidy.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The highway system. It is actually a net tax revenue generator (per the DOT's own numbers), while passenger rail is highly subsidized. And it was certainly faster for me to drive from Seattle to Santa Barbara, than it was to take the train (20 hours versus 33). Not to mention cheaper ($217 spent on fuel and a night in Redding, CA versus $408 for the train and a shared sleeper). Not to mention I was able to pack all my belongings in the back of my Ford Ranger at the same time - AMTRAK wouldn't let me do that.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The interstate highway system is paid for by the federal government. $425 billion. Apparently the largest public works system since the pyramids.
How much would the proposed HSR system cost? Would it operate at a surplus like the highway system does?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sorry, but what you write on the French situation is outdated. Since the opening of the LGV Rhin-Rhône travel time between Strasbourg and Lyon for direct trains is less than three and a half hours; the train has just two indermediate stops. Going via Paris is definitely much slower.
Philipp
The Acela cost ~$2B and generates $500M/year in revenue. Its been running since 1999 and is successful because it has downtown terminals in Boston, New York and Washington. Also because it runs on existing right-of-way with some track upgrades. Business class New York to Boston is $107 and takes 4 hours which is about the same time as air travel + 2 airport shuttles + groping. So if you choose the right location, it works. However, nothing I've seen about the California plan suggests they are choosing the right location.
We were going 186 miles an hour and hit a little chink on the rail.
That's racist - the proper term is person of Chinese descent.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As opposed to rail?
As opposed to passenger rail.
You see, even in spite of passenger rail leveraging the existing infrastructure of freight rail, it still requires further subsidies just to exist at all.
"His name was James Damore."
Manipulating currency is not the problem
Actually, the main problem is that there isnt a problem..at least not one worth actually complain about, so the people intent on complaining pick some random statistic and without any justification at all call it a problem.
The real question is, why are some people so intent on complaining in this case?
It seems to me that some people are under the false assumption that there must be a winner and loser, and then they take certain queues to mean that China is winning and so by induction that we must be losing. It doesnt occur to them that both sides benefit because the respective situations are asymmetric, that we each assign different values to various things and we benefit from the differences.
"His name was James Damore."
Trains can run 24 hours.
Are you fucking kidding me?
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If it is anything like the Japanese HSR system these trains are in station for less than 2 minutes, usually around 90 seconds. There isn't a baggage car, no baggage offloading. You keep your bags with you at all times and when you get near your stop they announce it and you stand up and head to the doors. When the train stops you just get out (the platforms are level with the doors, so no hopping down awkwardness, its very quick. Then the train is off again. Since these are all EMU train sets that means they do not have a single engine, but powered bogies along the entire train. They can accelerate and decelerate very quickly.
I think I read 35 stops on the route, if a train stops at every stop then that is roughly 70 minutes in station at 2 minutes a stop. So out of the 8 hour trip, thats 6 hours and 50 minutes you are moving, which means that the trains are going somewhere over 300km/h (336km/h to be exact). I doubt this is the actual speed, I am guess that the 8 hour trip is for express trains, which will skip some of the stops on the way, only stopping at major stations, while other trains will stop at all or more stations (this is how it works in Japan). That'd put the speed at around 280-300km/h which is about what Japanese systems run at.
It is a success, because it works, and tons of goods and millions of people use it everyday.
The same argument can be used in Europe and Asia. You never refuted the grandparent's claim which is that the interstate highway was funded by government money, not by user money which you used against HSR.
HSR, will be not be, because it is simply too limited.
Europe and most of Asia would disagree.
I can take my car to from Sacramento to LA in about 6 hours, at a cost of (Gas Guzzler) less than $150 in petrol, taking my family (four additional people) as a bonus.
Yet in your entire analysis, you only account for the cost of gasoline. You didn't account for the cost of the roads you would use (they are not free and cost money to maintain or in your words LOSE money). You didn't account for the cost of the vehicle depreciation, license, registration, and maintenance. You also can't sleep and drive at the same time. You're not supposed to eat and drive at the same time. And you're definitely not supposed to drink and drive at the same time.
Meanwhile an elementary school child in Japan can travel at will as long as he has enough money to pay for the fare. The traveling business man can still drag himself onto the train despite having a bit too much to drink. Most of all, each household is perfectly happy with one car, while here in California each adult or older teenager needs their own vehicle.
AND once I get there, I would still need to rent a car.
HSR itself isn't enough, I'll give you that. Intra-city rail and adequate public transit would be necessary. We would also need to improve public transit in major metro areas. LA is already on its way with Measure R.
And further trips, I would simply just take a plane.
So you admit that cars aren't a solution, yet planes aren't a solution either. By that I would argue that the more modes of passenger transportation we have, the better off we are. In Japan the airlines compete with HSR. This directly benefits the traveler--because of the additional competition, fares become cheaper.
HSR is romantic notion for idiots. IT never pans out like the proponents claim.
In Japan, the rail companies are private entities just like airplanes and car manufacturers. They turn a profit. Why? I'll give you a few reasons:
Now in Japan people want to live near a train station because it means convenience. Property prices generally increase the closer they are to a train station--and decrease as you get further from a train station. And people are free to own cars, and drive as much as they would like, yet people choose the trains? Keep in mind that Japan especially during t
I travel this route quite frequently myself. And I love it. I still require the use of my car to get to the train station on my end, but the subway infrastructure in Shanghai means that you don't really ever need a taxi unless you're tired, injured, in a hurry, or don't want to get rained upon. (Nanjing's subway system still has a lot to be desired; it's being built, but not yet built in my area).
Yet every time I pay my 220 RMB for a first class ticket, I know I'm stealing from the Chinese because it's so heavily subsidized. This is spurring competition from the airlines, though, so perhaps that's a good thing. It now costs essentially the same to fly to Shanghai or Beijing as to take a first class seat in a high speed train. When you factor in the time to get to the airport, the waiting time, the Chinese queuing system for boarding, waiting for bags, and so on, there's no argument that the train is faster and more convenient than an airline (for home leave and outside-of-China business trips, we often simply go to Shanghai on train as a first step). One could argue that it's probably just as fast to take the train to Beijing as it is to fly, factoring in all of the hassles flying.
But again I'll say, every time I pay my 220 RMB for a first class ticket, I know I'm stealing from the Chinese because it's so heavily subsidized. Despite my affinity for the Chinese trains, I can't possibly see a way to build a system in the USA -- let alone Michigan -- unless we stop other spending and subsidize it like the Chinese. And not care about environmental impacts, like the Chinese.
There's a lot of romance about trains, but no practical solution for the USA -- emphasis on "practical."
--Jim (me)
Monorail!!!
Oh wait, that is a train also.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
A 186mph crash looks like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision
The amount of corruption involved is staggering, and the blind push to build the line and breakneck speed has already led to deaths like the above; substandard materials, design, construction, and components (like the signal systems that failed above.)
I'll be astounded if there isn't another major crash within 6 months.
Please help metamoderate.
You know if the Democrats had actually showed up to vote in the 2010 elections we'd have hi-speed rail. For one thing those elections directly killed off the plans for WI, OH, and FL.
For another, the GOP took full control of multiple state governments. They took advantage of the once-a-decade Congressional re-districting to lock in GOP majorities in several states. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted pretty strongly for Democrats in the US House in 2012, but both delegations are heavily Republican. Instead of getting 20-25 seats out of those states the Dems got 12, and the GOP was also able to dominate Ohio 12-4 despite only getting 51% of the popular vote. If those states had fair district boundaries the Dems win the House back.
And in that case the Fiscal Cliff solution includes a hefty dose of Keynesian stimulus, probably focused on spending lots of money fairly quickly in ways that mitigate carbon pollution and give lefties warm fuzzies, and that means the various Hi-Speed rail programs that 2010 not only never died, they get re-inforced by fresh money in 2012.
Lots of things in the US are like that. Conservatives win by default because they have so many veto points to derail change, and they never sit out an election because they're pissed off about the 'tone' in DC.
You do realize that that the Highways only passed one of your three tests when they were built?
That's the thing about building infrastructure. It costs a lot of money, but it earns it back.
nor better, they just copied the technology from foreign HST manufacturers, same as the manned space program where they're copying Russian hardware. Trust me the Wal-Mart stuff are the good stuff produced by China, the Chinese export industry has fairly good quality since the foreign market has more strict consumer protection laws, if you think the things in Wal-Mart are bad, you don't want to know what's in China's domestic market. The progress China is making is nothing new, Taiwan, S. Korean and other Asian countries did the same in the 1970s and 1980s, this is no different except in a larger scale.
No, because state funded medicine means I have to pay for someone else's bad lifestyle choices, such as not exercising and eating crap.
You have to do so with private insurance as well. And? The difference being that single-payer systems are vastly less expensive.
Meanwhile in China and a lot of other places that doesn't apply, just as rail used to be competitive in the USA before rail company owners showed how much money they could squeeze out of the taxpayer after buying a few Senators.
HSR are not developed to compete against automobiles. For shorter trips up to about 300km, automobiles will be faster, even though in the grand scheme of things, rail is probably the cheapest is in terms of dollars per passenger per kilometer (no source, but the economy of scale, relatively cheap equipment (operating cost of one HSR train set, versus the operating cost of 100 automobiles), track maintenance may be more expensive than road maintenance?).
HSR is meant to compete against Air travel. Trains is without a doubt cheaper, and less demanding on resources than airplanes. And safer in theory. Not only cost, train will be faster for any trip less than about 2,000km (provided you can do 300kmh type speeds), and may even be preferable for >2k km trips for the above cost and safety reasons.
The Japanese, Europeans, Chinese seem to like to tinker with HSR. While we are guzzling resources jetting around the country, and wondering why the Chinese have surplus income. It's too bad America has lost its edge.
Actually, in the US rail is subsidized much higher than commercial air or automobiles, by several orders of magnitude, on a per-passenger mile basis.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Elevators weren't paid for by US Treasure notes or other financing instruments, they were financed by the building and business owners who were required to build them, and increase prices on everything until they went out of business because they were regulated to death, and can no longer compete with out of state, out of country products coming from places that aren't regulated to death. And people want to know why my city has 30% unemployment and people with Master's Degrees are working at Starbucks.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Amtrak top speeds is around 80mph.
The Metroliner (now Northeast Regional) does 125 mph (and has since 1981) and the Acela does 150. The locomotives that were used for Metroliner service are now on other lines, so at least they're capable of 125mph speeds, if the track they're on is upgraded, wherever they ended up.
Amtrak trains are sidelined for any passing freight trains
Northeast Regional and Acela run on Amtrak-owned track from Boston to DC. Dunno about other lines.
Please help metamoderate.
I'm in Michigan and well over a decade ago a push was put in for a high speed rail between Chicago and Detroit. The local city had small streets with rail crossings closed, nice fencing was put along the rails in the city. It was part of the push to be one of the possible stops along the way. Still no fast trains. I mean sure who would want to go to detroit.. maybe leaving it fast makes sense. But plenty of reasons to go to Chicago. Still way slower than driving. Also very pricey.
The south shore line goes from Chicago and ends at the South Bend airport with a few stops along the way. That is also a very slow ride, is packed, and is no more than a slow people mover. The last time I rode it was for a nephew to get a boy scout thing for riding a train. That will be the last time I ride it since driving would have been cheaper, and faster.
So a failure to comprehend "averages 210km/h including stops along the way" and now unrealistic arbitrary conditions added about lengths of stops, which is irrelevant, since the number is the distance divided by the total time taken including stops.
He already "did the math" before you went anywhere near it.
Sorry to be so bitchy, but this place is far more fun if people act like they've actually been near a school before venting shit everywhere. Please sober up or come down from whatever is eating your brain before posting such dumb accusations.
The USA still plays those same trade games, and a pile of the systems in those trains came directly from Germany.
They can, but that involves getting off their arses, stopping whining about it, and not letting accountants and lawyers run everything in their country.
Talk about acting smart... why don't you do the same?
How can you even think a fast train going at 300 km/h arrives at a stop only to stay there for half an hour? How can you think someone goes and pays the hefty price of a high speed train ticket only to spend half the time stopped in stations? Just because that's all you've seen?
Trains in any civilized part of the world stop for a few minutes at anything but the terminal stops. Even in major stops along the route it won't stop for more than 5 minutes. You get it, and while the train is already moving you find a seat and a place to put your luggage. And trains go at their full speed most of the time. They don't slow down for curves! For HSR the entire track is designed so the train goes at its rated speed. The curves are wide enough (and superelevated) so that a train that can go at 300 km/h doesn't have to slow down to 60 km/h or whatever speed you think is acceptable.
And your original comment with its "I suggest the route is undoable in 10 hours"... it's a typical case of "guy in internet forum knows better than the world". Grow up!
When any government involvement with societal life other than national defense is arbitrarily off the table, you have an impossible situation and a recipe for an agrarian society.
You actually have a situation where even the ability to do national defense will decline, as a large part of that is having the industrial capacity and transport capacity to be able to sustain a substantive military.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
There are two kinds of authoritarians. Stupid ones who get the priorities comprehensively fucked up and build a choking mountain of red tape (U.S.), and those who have actual working critical faculties and rational priorities (China).
Sure, the details of China's priorities are arguable, and adjustments are made over time. But one thing they are not is stupid and irrational. In the U.S. the priorities are blatantly stupid, utterly irrational, and no one is allowed to argue them.
This is a completely separate discussion from human rights.
Yeah. $425 billion for a continent-wide network of free-flowing (for the most part) freight and personal travel. As opposed to the California High Speed Rail which is estimated by the proponents to cost as much as $115B just for a line from San Francisco to Los Angeles (mostly). And that's probably lowballing the price, and definitely doesn't include the debt service costs.
One quarter of the entire Interstate Highway System for a HSR line that doesn't go half of where the parallel Interstate 5 goes, and doesn't carry any of the freight that Interstate 5 does, and doesn't include maintenance or operating expenses.
Yeah, what a deal.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Way to miss the point. The vast majority of the 47% are in the exact same position. They paid in all their lives and are now collecting. At the same time they seem to think these things are just paying out to crack addicted inner city unwed mothers.
Same thing with over the road trucking. They pay far less fuel tax as compared to the damage they do to the roads.
I know I'm trolling a bit by making this statement but I actually feel strongly about it. I'm sick of hearing about China this and China that. China does not play by a fair set of economic, safety, and environmental rules. I have a hard time lauding any Chinese progress. They artificially manipulate their currency and sell goods at below market value which hinders the world's economy. I wonde how safe this train really is!
I know I'm trolling a bit by making this statement but I actually feel strongly about it. I'm sick of hearing about America this and America that. America does not play by a fair set of economic, safety, and environmental rules. I have a hard time lauding any American progress. They artificially manipulate their currency, printing money whenever they feel like it and engage in trade protectionism which hinders the world's economy.
I'm British and I've been on high speed trains in Europe and China. The other side of the pond is right to be jealous. America needs to play catch up on this bit of tech.
It doesn't remain to be seen, it has been seen already. The travel times aren't the only things that get slashed in half when you ride high speed rail in China.
First of all, the figure I gave for the Interstate System was year 2000 dollars. The system actually being built decades earlier when the costs were lower even in real terms.
and doesn't include maintenance or operating expenses.
Neither does the interstate figure.
And you missed this line from your link: "The CHSRA projects that the system will "alleviate the need to spend more than $100 billion to build 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of new freeway, five airport runways, and 90 departure gates."[8]"
So it's a wash on construction costs.
That's capitalism for you. Companies that can't afford the cost of doing business go bankrupt to possibly be replaced by new companies that can.
Of course you see it as the fault of regulation, blind to the fact that capitalism cannot function without regulation.
I suggest the route is undoable in 10 hours if there is even a few stops unless the train spends a great deal of time at 300km/h.
Yes, you do understand the difference between average and top speed.
But how long do you think a high-speed train stop is? TGV's usualy stop for around 3 minutes. Even when you add in the time to slow down and speed up again a few stops in 2100 km isn't goint to take too much time.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Also, despite having a good HSR trian system, all trip that do not go toward or away from paris are a nightmare (try a Lyon-Bordeaux or Lyon-Strasbourg for instance).
Lyon - Strasbourg:
Vendredi 28/12 Durée 03h41 :LYON PART DIEU :DB SNCF :9582 :13h45
Départ à : 10h04
De la gare de
Transporteur
Numéro du train
Services à bord Voiture bar
Arrivée à
A la gare de : STRASBOURG GARE
Don't see your problem, frankly.
Lyon - Bordeaux
Vendredi 28/12 Durée 06h38 :09h04 :LYON PART DIEU :TGV DUPLEX :6610 :11h02 :PARIS GARE DE LYON :12h27 :PARIS MONTPARNASSE 1 ET 2 :TGV :8537 :15h42 :BORDEAUX SAINT JEAN
Départ à
De la gare de
Transporteur
Numéro du train
Services à bord Voiture bar
Arrivée à
A la gare de
Départ à
De la gare de
Transporteur
Numéro du train
Services à bord Voiture bar Transport de vélo payant
Arrivée à
A la gare de
Ok, that's pretty horrid. 6h38 to go less than 600 km. Bloody Paris.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The same goes between Lyon and Strasbourg you can go there but you have a stupid slow train that stops eveywhere and it might be faster to go through Paris. [...] Or at least it was like this in 2008
But 2008 was such a long time ago!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Don't worry *bump* about the *bump* downside. It is *bump* matched by the *bump* upside to each *bump*.
Took me a whole day to stop "bouncing" after I got off the train ride of 12 hours.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
But they only have two bottles of the good stuff, and the rest is rotgut. Even my wife knew something was up when her "Crown and Coke" was really Jack Daniels and Pepsi.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If you overlay western Europes megaregions over the midwest, you will see not only is the North American Midwest more dense, that the area is even larger commanding even more people to ride the high speed rails. You need to turn off Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and stop listening to the GOP nonsense.
Hell, these days, I would take a 4 hour trip with booze over an ~2 hour drive. I just moved back to the states from Japan and miss the public transit (including HSR) immensely. It's about the same amount of time to either of the nearest cities as the Buffalo to Toronto drive, and there is no other solid viable options. At least with a train I can either be drunk, reading, or coding "hello world" in a new language for the 30,000th time.
Then again, this is the states, and I'm sure there would be all sorts of unnecessary security and other nonsense if they ever established HSR here. Hell, in Japan I could bring my own 6 pack, I could get to the station 5 minutes before departure, and if I was smoking at the time, chances were the train had an enclosed well ventilated smoking area.
As someone who also used to make the Buffalo to Toronto drive, quality HSR along that route, as well as from Buffalo to NYC, Boston and Cleveland (and beyond!) would be awesome. Buffalo would make a decent hub station and the rail might even help revitalize the area.