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Dante80 posted:The result was a line that cut the travel time between the cities from 20hrs to 4hrs with trains initially running at 250km/h (now they are shooting for 300km/h there). The 856 km long line was completed in 7 years, and took almost $14Bn to build. Or you could fly in 1 and a half hours and not spend 7 years building a 14 billion dollar plus god-knows-how-much-in-annual-maintainence HSR line carrying negligible economic benefits, but then again where would China be without GDP-generating white elephants.
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Apr 8, 2018 09:26
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Fojar38 posted:Or you could fly in 1 and a half hours and not spend 7 years building a 14 billion dollar plus god-knows-how-much-in-annual-maintainence HSR line carrying negligible economic benefits, but then again where would China be without GDP-generating white elephants. Well this is true, and China has indeed used HSR as a means to boost the economy (especially during and after the 2008 crisis). And they have paid dearly for it too (see the 2011 corruption scandals). It has to be said though. Up until 1000km or so, HSR is ridiculously competitive to regional air travel. This is a good starter, if you are interested in the subject at hand. Watch Out, Airlines. High Speed Rail Now Rivals Flying on Key Routes Also, there is really nothing negligible as far as economic benefits are involved. This is transforming the country. The line I mentioned above connects via rail a 5 and a 15 million metro area (with a lot of other big population centers in between) and can sustain passenger rates vastly superior than a regional air route (while also being a lot cheaper for everyone involved too). China HSR serviced 1.713 billion trips last year for reference, the numbers involved are bonkers really. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 09:39
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I don't know about the Guiyang-Guangzhou line specifically (although I am very skeptical that its economic benefits outweigh its maintenance costs) but infrastructure, especially things like railroads, are subject to diminishing returns regarding their productivity. The big statistics from China regarding rail, like total track length and all the other stuff that advocates of central planning/train enthusiasts find so impressive are figures that economists find worrying, especially when China's state-owned companies in charge of building and maintaining things like railways are already so heavily indebted and addicted to state subsidies.
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Apr 8, 2018 10:17
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you're wrong, the cool fast trains are good
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Apr 8, 2018 10:39
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Trains has more comfortable boarding style and you get more leg room. Also China owns world leading hst technology but not airliner technology. They literally brought the techs from 3 out of 4 competing hst solutions and mash them together. whatever7 fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 10:54
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whatever7 posted:Trains has more comfortable boarding style and you get more leg room. You mean they stole it off everyone else?
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Apr 8, 2018 10:57
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I’m just back from a trip from Hong Kong flying a 4 hour flight to Beijing, then a half hour train to tianjin, a 5 hour train to Hangzhou, a one hour train to shanghai then a major delay 2 hour turned 5 hour flight to Hong Kong. Holy gently caress airports suck in China and that’s because of the PLA controlling all the air space. I don’t know about the economic numbers of the HSR, I think the Shanghai / Beijing route and Guangzhou / Shenzhen are the only major profitable ones. But man train travel beats air travel hands down. No stupid tsa bullshit (we still get security theatre) and the train stations are way closer to the city than the airports. My only gripe about transport is not linking the airport terminals with the train terminals. That’s why Shanghai hongqiao being such an old small airport is still leaps and bounds popular because it’s right next to a HSR stop. People need choices for alternative transport to keep transportation competitive. And a boat load of investment. I think japan HSR is only profitable between Osaka and Tokyo and the rest is heavily subsidized and losing money. Most HSR are losing money but hey it’s public transportation and mobility brings wealth. 14 billion RMB? Well.....
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Apr 8, 2018 11:00
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All that train capacity sure helps during Chinese New Year too
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Apr 8, 2018 11:01
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The goal of high speed rail shouldn’t be creating value for the shareholders, lol
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Apr 8, 2018 11:02
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oohhboy posted:You mean they stole it off everyone else? And they also made it cheaper for everyone! I’m sure the Japanese and Germans are making better versions which haven’t been copied though
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Apr 8, 2018 11:03
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fart simpson posted:All that train capacity sure helps during Chinese New Year too
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Apr 8, 2018 11:04
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oohhboy posted:You mean they stole it off everyone else? They brought and own the technology, that's why China can build HST in other countries. I believe some core compenents for the 300km platform is still being made by Siemens. Chinese are very good at copying. I am actually impressed by how safe it is, compare to the slow junk in the US.
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Apr 8, 2018 11:14
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oohhboy posted:You mean they stole it off everyone else? Technically no, and it's a pretty fascinating story. During the 90's, they tried making a couple of high speed trains themselves, but quickly found out they were not proficient enough to match the reliability and effectiveness in then state of the art rolling stock. So they said gently caress it, and then started an international contest for 200+ sets, pitting the four biggest international competitors against each other. Alstom (Pendolino), Siemens (ICE3), Kawasaki (Shinkansen) and Bombardier (Regina). The competition required the companies to pretty much share almost all the technology in each platform, make strategic partnerships with indigenous firms, and produce most of the stock in China. Siemens didn't want that, so the other three companies got their contracts first. Then Siemens came back and got a contract too. After a couple of years from making said stock, the Chinese started putting on operation their own variant copies, and after that they had enough know-how to move strictly to indigenous, upgraded designs of their own. Everybody knew that was going to happen (the Chinese were pretty adamant on that from the start), but the competing companies nonetheless wished to get as much money as they could squeeze from the Chinese before the curtain fell (greed is a weird thing), so they went forward with it. Now China has a terrific know-how of high-speed rail, and they are building and selling globally their own trains, which btw are sufficiently different than mere copies of other trains. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 11:18
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good posts....in the china thread????
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Apr 8, 2018 11:40
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i wish my country had central planning and high speed rail
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Apr 8, 2018 11:48
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Surely you couldn’t have forgotten already that it’s Infrastructure Week!
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Apr 8, 2018 12:01
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Without accidents please. Were there any other railway fatalities since Wenzhou?
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Apr 8, 2018 12:16
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whatever7 posted:They brought and own the technology, that's why China can build HST in other countries. I believe some core compenents for the 300km platform is still being made by Siemens. Chinese are very good at copying. I am actually impressed by how safe it is, compare to the slow junk in the US. I’m never surprised when other countries’ trains are better than the US, tbh.
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Apr 8, 2018 12:26
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Pirate Radar posted:I’m never surprised when other countries’ trains are better than the US, tbh. I switched from car to bicycle for my commute because it takes New York forever to build a pair of road bridges connecting Brooklyn to Queens. We are at 9th year and only one of the bridges is finish.
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Apr 8, 2018 14:28
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oohhboy posted:You mean they stole it off everyone else? 
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Apr 8, 2018 16:08
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oohhboy posted:You mean they stole it off everyone else?
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Apr 8, 2018 16:28
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Stealing tech is good
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Apr 8, 2018 16:31
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I'm not sure if posters in thread understand this, but there are other places on the planet than Emperor Xi's 地 and America.
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Apr 8, 2018 17:49
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Wow sick burn.
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Apr 8, 2018 18:37
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caberham posted:Without accidents please. None that I know off (definitely none in HSR at least). There was a fire in a CRH3 last January, but no casualties.
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Apr 8, 2018 20:16
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Dante80 posted:Technically no, and it's a pretty fascinating story. During the 90's, they tried making a couple of high speed trains themselves, but quickly found out they were not proficient enough to match the reliability and effectiveness in then state of the art rolling stock. So they said gently caress it, and then started an international contest for 200+ sets, pitting the four biggest international competitors against each other. Alstom (Pendolino), Siemens (ICE3), Kawasaki (Shinkansen) and Bombardier (Regina). The competition required the companies to pretty much share almost all the technology in each platform, make strategic partnerships with indigenous firms, and produce most of the stock in China. Forced technology transfers in exchange for access to the Chinese market so that the Chinese can copy your tech is, uh, copying. It doesn't have to involve breaking into servers and stealing blueprints. You might have noticed that a lot companies and governments have gotten extremely irritated at this sort of blatant mercantilism from the PRC, especially since it hasn't been followed up with any meaningful policy change or broader market access. Of course part of the blame falls on these western companies themselves for being so greedy and stupid that they fell for a trick so obvious the Chinese weren't even trying to conceal it. fart simpson posted:The goal of high speed rail shouldn’t be creating value for the shareholders, lol The goal doesn't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) creating profit. But the goal should be making society as a whole more productive (in the case of HSR, efficiently moving people from place to place) and infrastructure that doesn't do that actually makes society less productive, because you need to devote resources to maintenance/dealing with this useless thing instead of things that are actually useful. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 21:38
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Looking at passenger numbers it is useful though? As far as the Chinese government playing hardball with foreign companies...so what? China used the size of its economy as leverage for a better deal. I mean obviously it is not domestically produced tech, but they obviously made the right call. As for China being protectionist, yeah this was always the case. The US and the West just always turned a blind eye since first it was such a source of cheap labor, and then more recently a massive consumer market. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 22:18
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Ardennes posted:Looking at passenger numbers it is useful though? Definitely is for the big lines but this is China. I have to wonder how many useless lines there are for every useful one, and Chinese statistics should be taken with a salt shaker.
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Apr 8, 2018 22:20
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Fojar38 posted:Definitely is for the big lines but this is China. I have to wonder how many useless lines there are for every useful one, and Chinese statistics should be taken with a salt shaker. It sounds like you have some future research to work on.
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Apr 8, 2018 22:29
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I'd also love to see more high speed rail in North America and think that the regional economy would get a substantial boost if it was done well, but I don't think people should be looking to China for a template on how to do it. Europe and Japan are better templates in my opinion.
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Apr 8, 2018 22:38
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Fojar38 posted:I'd also love to see more high speed rail in North America and think that the regional economy would get a substantial boost if it was done well, but I don't think people should be looking to China for a template on how to do it. Europe and Japan are better templates in my opinion. Admittedly, the Chinese have been successful in developing a single national network over very large distances, something probably more comparable to the US. Granted, it probably would make for sense for the US to just license European or Japanese tech directly then having it passed through China. Also, to be frank, it seems the bone you have to pick with pretty much with the country it is in.
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Apr 8, 2018 22:50
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Ardennes posted:Admittedly, the Chinese have been successful in developing a single national network over very large distances, something probably more comparable to the US. Granted, it probably would make for sense for the US to just license European or Japanese tech directly then having it passed through China. In terms of engineering Europe also has a network covering very large distances. While it's true that it's not a single national network, that is a political complication that pales in comparison to the political complications presented by China (namely the completely unaccountable government and centrally planned economy.) A lot of the "bone to pick" I have with the PRC comes down to the nature of its socio-economic structure and its authoritarian politics. And that's a big loving deal that needs to be taken into account with virtually everything pertaining to China. Even HSR networks, whose existence is a product of a combination of fygm mercantilism, provincial statistical puffing, an incestuous relationship between the government and the SOE's, a broad lack of accountability, and good old fashioned book cooking. Of course, none of these are visible, so nobody talks about them in news articles where they breathlessly proclaim China the world leader in modern infrastructure on the basis of "big numbers." Ironically this adds a PR bonus for the CCP and partially why everyone knows about how big China's train network is but unless you live in China you won't know about the constant brownouts and the inadequate sewer systems that flood whenever it rains. You can't write an article in The Economist about sewer systems after all. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 23:37
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the trains in China are good, and I don’t even really care about trains one way or another, they are just convenient as heck
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Apr 8, 2018 23:38
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Fojar38 posted:I'd also love to see more high speed rail in North America and think that the regional economy would get a substantial boost if it was done well, but I don't think people should be looking to China for a template on how to do it. Europe and Japan are better templates in my opinion. "Europe and Japan are better despite using the same trains because I'm a sinophobe"
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Apr 8, 2018 23:47
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China is currently in an economic mode where the elites enrich themselves through graft on development contracts. The US is in an economic mode where the elites enrich themselves through seeking rents. That’s why they get to build lots of cool and actually useful infrastructure which looks good in the news, and we pay the mob not to build subways in New York.
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Apr 8, 2018 23:50
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the Shinkansen in Japan is a lot better than the high speed trains in China, but it is a lot more expensive. This is good as you get people who sit there quietly and read as opposed to a fat smelly guy on one side of you watching a Korean drama on his phone loudly with no headphones on, and an elderly person on the other side of you that has taken off their shoes and socks and is clipping their toenails Of course it is bad because you have to pay more money
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Apr 8, 2018 23:57
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TsarZiedonis posted:China is currently in an economic mode where the elites enrich themselves through graft on development contracts. Hey, I live in Toronto, you don't need to remind me of how lovely the politics of infrastructure can get in the West as well. Canada doesn't have even a single HSR line and is the only G7 country not to have one, and we don't even have the excuse of it not being obvious where we'd put one, we just can't be arsed. I'd rather have that than an unaccountable government that builds all the trains I could ever want though.
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Apr 9, 2018 00:30
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Fojar38 posted:Hey, I live in Toronto, you don't need to remind me of how lovely the politics of infrastructure can get in the West as well. Canada doesn't have even a single HSR line and is the only G7 country not to have one, and we don't even have the excuse of it not being obvious where we'd put one, we just can't be arsed. Why do you hate The Canadian Automobile Industry? Stop promoting the War on Cars.
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Apr 9, 2018 00:36
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Ardennes posted:Looking at passenger numbers it is useful though? I would have taken the deal if I were a company. It’s a one-time deal to build up HSR infrastructure anyway and it’s a lot of money. If you refuse you’re not going to get the money anyway so why not just go for it. I’m assuming that they are confident enough that China isn’t proficient enough to compete with them in other markets.
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Apr 9, 2018 01:06
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Fojar38 posted:Hey, I live in Toronto, you don't need to remind me of how lovely the politics of infrastructure can get in the West as well. Canada doesn't have even a single HSR line and is the only G7 country not to have one, and we don't even have the excuse of it not being obvious where we'd put one, we just can't be arsed. So you’re saying you’d rather have a type of government corruption where nothing gets done rather than government corruption that results in lots of useful infrastructure? Somehow I don’t think you’d be complaining if Germany was building “too many” high speed rail lines
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Apr 9, 2018 01:23
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