Too bad we can't have good public transportation
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Source: it came to me in a dream.
Source.
Straight out of mainland China. Not all does get stopped by the Firewall. -
It's been 16 years and counting.
This one is from 2024
Let that sink in
Home not alone, just unfinishedOne swallow does not make it summer.
Shall we continue this path to see which one runs out first of resources? -
Well I don't really have any reason to doubt the quality of the rail system. It's one thing to go over-budget on transit (which they apparently did); it's quite another to go over-budget and build the whole system to a poor standard where it won't even last.
I hope that you are right but I doubt it.
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as much as I'd like to call this a win for socialism, I don't think socialism is actually necessary for good transit. Japan is very capitalist and has private rail networks which are comparable in quality and extent to China's.
the "Socialism" is in quotes as were aren't really talking about actual socialism. Its now a boogeyman dogwhistle used by rich people to steal public property and convert it into private capital.
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Right now, the Chinese government has effective eminent domain powers which allows them to acquire property for which to build public infrastructure, both expressways and high-speed railways. That the Chinese people have no questions about the positives regarding HSTs, especially crunchtime during holidays where railway stations would be jampacked. That they're rolling their HSTs to show their technological prowess.
Why the US HST programs and passenger rail transport in general are at glacial pace is partly because of the usual car lobby, because of NIMBYs, because of cheap air transport, and some people now on online gambling instead of touching grass and tossing dice in Vegas.
Doesnt the us also have those powers and didn't they use them liberally in the construction of both the railways and interstates?
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Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.
An inefficient government has groups investigating other groups to see if what they are doing is correct. This process takes time, so things move much slower. But is generally a much better protection against corruption.
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Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.
An inefficient government has groups investigating other groups to see if what they are doing is correct. This process takes time, so things move much slower. But is generally a much better protection against corruption.
You say that, but... Iraq was a dictatorship, and they weren't all that efficient at anything other than killing Kurds.
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A feature of rail is very high building costs. If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it's not needed, this means there's gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail. Bad investment.
So it's not about maintenance, but the up-front cost.
Not doing an investment where an investment would make a lot of money is of course a kind of reverse of this, but which leads to a similar outcome.
wrote last edited by [email protected]If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it’s not needed
There's no such thing as "HSR where it's not needed", especially in a country that's building housing at an insane pace. Each HSR station will just get a city built around it (hopefully not a car-dependent hellhole) and people will flock there.
this means there’s gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail. Bad investment.
Chinese government can print an infinite amount of Yuan out of thin air. They don't care about internal debts, what they do care about is popularity among their people, and "build more HSR" is a really popular policy in China because it obviously and immediately improves quality of life for loads of people. While it definitely will not "pay itself off", this is not the point of such projects.
Thinking about everything in terms of "profit motive" is exactly why the US is the way it is.
There are certainly reasons to dislike Chinese government. They are allowing overproduction of single-use plastics (which is horrible for the planet), they are building new coal plants in 2025 (which is horrible for the planet and the quality of air in China), and they are still sometimes building car-dependent hellholes for more affluent people. But it is still like the least bad government on this planet (or at least one of them), all things considered.
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Source.
Straight out of mainland China. Not all does get stopped by the Firewall.So still no source
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So still no source
See my other reactions
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Now do aircraft carriers!
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US Train travel has actually gotten worse since 1996.
Came to say this. If it had literally remained unchanged they'd still be doing pretty good.
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Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.
An inefficient government has groups investigating other groups to see if what they are doing is correct. This process takes time, so things move much slower. But is generally a much better protection against corruption.
Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.
I mean... some people do, but they're weird.
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If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it’s not needed
There's no such thing as "HSR where it's not needed", especially in a country that's building housing at an insane pace. Each HSR station will just get a city built around it (hopefully not a car-dependent hellhole) and people will flock there.
this means there’s gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail. Bad investment.
Chinese government can print an infinite amount of Yuan out of thin air. They don't care about internal debts, what they do care about is popularity among their people, and "build more HSR" is a really popular policy in China because it obviously and immediately improves quality of life for loads of people. While it definitely will not "pay itself off", this is not the point of such projects.
Thinking about everything in terms of "profit motive" is exactly why the US is the way it is.
There are certainly reasons to dislike Chinese government. They are allowing overproduction of single-use plastics (which is horrible for the planet), they are building new coal plants in 2025 (which is horrible for the planet and the quality of air in China), and they are still sometimes building car-dependent hellholes for more affluent people. But it is still like the least bad government on this planet (or at least one of them), all things considered.
Chinese government can print an infinite amount of Yuan out of thin air.
That's not how any of this works. Sure they can do that, but they cannot control the effects of having done so.
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Plenty of people got fucked over for America's interstate system. You just don't care about them because they're poor minorities
One of the reasons it was built was to demolish black neighborhoods.
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Now do aircraft carriers!
Setting that cash on fire would be more practical use of tax payer money
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Doesnt the us also have those powers and didn't they use them liberally in the construction of both the railways and interstates?
wrote last edited by [email protected]That just changed completely, far cry when there was this Robert Moses had whole neighborhoods demolished for highways and rearranging whole cities. Now any sort of public infrastructure in the US does have to undergo scrutiny, whether it's going to affect people or their mortgages or both. And most of the homeowners will oppose anything that shatters their idyll.
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Right now, the Chinese government has effective eminent domain powers which allows them to acquire property for which to build public infrastructure, both expressways and high-speed railways
I've heard people claim as much, but at the same time, Stuck Nail Houses exist, I'm not sure how to reconcile the two. I think it's that their eminent domain is limited to property that was purchased after a certain point, so if it's property your parents owned since the 80s, it's literally easier for developers to route the highway around your home than win that lawsuit, but if they bought in like 2010, they can just give you a similar or better property, or the cash to buy one, and that's that.
There do exist stubborn nail houses but those are very rare occurrences in China where they do indeed fight to hold onto the land they consider their birthright property or believing to be much more valuable than their government tries to buy from them, the only few outbursts of dissent in a country that quashes dissent.
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Chinese government can print an infinite amount of Yuan out of thin air.
That's not how any of this works. Sure they can do that, but they cannot control the effects of having done so.
Ok, so infinite Yuan is a hyperbole, but for something so relatively cheap and so massively beneficial as rail, profitability really doesn't matter. China has more than enough resources and influence to eat the cost now and reap the benefits for the next century.
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Now do aircraft carriers!
Aircraft carriers don't let me travel to my destinations
