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Accretionist posted:And while this is being presented as a serious proposal, should it be taken seriously? I wouldn't, particularly since it offers no tangible benefit over flying. At first I thought that it was supposed to be a prestige project but even that wouldn't really be true if this thing was built unless the entire thing was built by Chinese laborers under the control of the Chinese government and good luck getting anyone to agree to that. I'd lump it in with that super-subway Elon Musk idea that was floating around the internet a few months ago. A neat idea but it'll remain an idea. Adventure Pigeon posted:They need huge infrastructure projects to keep their GDP flying high, and this would be a hell of a lot more useful to them economically and politically than another empty city. "Rest of the world please help us keep an unsustainably high rate of GDP growth in order to keep the CCP in power by letting us build useless crap that nobody will use in your countries too."
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May 11, 2014 22:34
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And having the Bering Strait rail crossing be to China solves the typical issue with proposed Bering Strait connections - typical ones are just links to Russia, and Russia uses a different track gauge, meaning lengthy waits on one side or the other changing over to other gauges before things can go on their way. Meanwhile a China-funded route would safely stay standard gauge all the way through.Fojar38 posted:I wouldn't, particularly since it offers no tangible benefit over flying. Freight from Chinese factories arriving in the Americas faster ships, but still significantly cheaper than air freight isn't exactly insignificant. Sure they talk up the passenger stuff, but fast freight would be pretty major. This will never happen without China dumping masses of money into building the thing, but once it was in place it would be pretty heavily used. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 22:39 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 22:36
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I'm unfamiliar with rail infrastructure. Should I interpret expanded high-speed rail capacity/networks as implying increased shipping capacity, too? Could I interpret this as reflecting increasing economic integration across central Asia? Also, if the Arctic Circle is going to be as big a deal as I've seen suggested, could this project be thought of as less connecting china to the world than connecting Arctic-adjacent Sino-Russian rail infrastructure to the world? Accretionist fucked around with this message at 22:45 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 22:41
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Install Windows posted:Freight from Chinese factories arriving in the Americas faster ships, but still significantly cheaper than air freight isn't exactly insignificant. Sure they talk up the passenger stuff, but fast freight would be pretty major. True, I didn't consider freight. That still seems to presume that China will have a manufacturing-based economy forever though, and I can't see anyone allowing China exclusive control over such a massive project, particularly one that crosses multiple national borders. That of course presents a problem, because if other nations get heavily involved it ceases to become a "Chinese rail" and hence lowers the prestige associated with building it.
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May 11, 2014 22:47
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Accretionist posted:I'm unfamiliar with rail infrastructure. Should I interpret expanded high-speed rail capacity/networks as implying increased shipping capacity, too? Could I interpret this as reflecting increasing economic integration across central Asia? It's more because China is doing insane amount of infrastructure upgrade to avoid a mass of angry workers.
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May 11, 2014 22:47
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I also just noticed that judging by its lack of mention in the article the ideal Chinese international rail system is one that completely bypasses Japan.
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May 11, 2014 22:51
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There would be much more significant issues building rail from China to Japan than across the Bering Strait. It would be relatively short between South Korea and Japan, but you'd need to go through North Korea or engage in truly massive crossings from China to South Korea across the Yellow Sea. You'd need about 240 miles of sea crossing for the shortest route between China and South Korea that doesn't enter North Korean territory, and then another 50 miles of sea crossing between South Korea and Japan. The Bering Sea crossing is "only" 120 miles total of sea crossing.
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May 11, 2014 23:01
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Accretionist posted:And while this is being presented as a serious proposal, should it be taken seriously? No. I'm sure it'll be in Popular Mechanic though.
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May 12, 2014 00:01
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FrozenVent posted:No. Not to mention Lyndon Larouche.
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May 12, 2014 00:16
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Note that while rail transport will be faster than ships the vast majority of freight will still go by ships because they're really loving big.
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May 12, 2014 00:23
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computer parts posted:Note that while rail transport will be faster than ships the vast majority of freight will still go by ships because they're really loving big. Bingo. An 8000 TEU ship can carry 8000 twenty feet containers, or 4000 forty feet containers. Realistically, it's going to be in the middle if it's fully loaded; and it can haul all that poo poo at 21 knots, or 24 MPH. That's a lotsa ton-miles per day. Your train is going to carry, realistically, 2 forty feet containers per car. That's 2000 cars to carry the equivalent of a single container ship; now those cars have to go up North to Russia, across to Alaska, down the coast through the Rockies... And you have to recover the cost of all the infrastructure that implies, which is going to be significant to say the least. Further, you have to have Russia, Canada and the US on board. All the time. Borders are really easy to close. Accretionist posted:Also, if the Arctic Circle is going to be as big a deal as I've seen suggested, could this project be thought of as less connecting china to the world than connecting Arctic-adjacent Sino-Russian rail infrastructure to the world? The Arctic circle is not going to be as big a deal as you've heard; it's entirely a bunch of consultants and policy science people circlejerking via interposed articles. The Arctic is an ocean; there's resources to be pulled out of there - assuming their price justifies the technical challenges and the environmental headaches - and they're going to come out by ship to wherever they're going to be processed. Once they're processed, they'll just piggy back onto the existing transportation network. If you enjoy watching overschooled bulllshitters eat their socks, watch your favorite "THE ARCTIC IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE!" and "THE NORTH WEST PASSAGE IS GOING TO BE THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY!" writer this summer. They'll probably be pretty quiet, because a cold winter and a slow spring... The ice cover up there is going to be far from 2012. I was gonna segue into a rant about how the North West and North East passages won't be economically viable sea routes any time soon, but that's getting off topic and I think the issue's been covered well enough in the technical press.
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May 12, 2014 00:46
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FrozenVent posted:Bingo. Yeah but air cargo is even worse for price and ability to carry but it still gets used. Freight rail would be a middle ground in terms of price and speed. And China doesn't really have to actually recover the costs of building it, it's the kind of out-there prestige project where they're just building something to employ people if it ever actually happened. Also, acting like Canada and the US are ever going to really disagree is a bit silly. And if China actually built the thing Russia would have a major opening to sell the fuel or electricity to run trains on the thousands of miles through its territory, a sort of thing where Russia would get too much out of it to do more than threaten closing it when they get pissy.
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May 12, 2014 00:59
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Is it actually that much faster? Freight trains don't run that much faster than cargo ships and over a much longer distance.
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May 12, 2014 01:00
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Isn't most of China's high speed rail network mostly for passengers? Do they actually slap freight on it at night?
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May 12, 2014 01:03
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caberham posted:Isn't most of China's high speed rail network mostly for passengers? Do they actually slap freight on it at night? Putting passengers on HSR frees up the regular rail network for more freight. Supposing that people actually take HSR.
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May 12, 2014 01:11
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Dusseldorf posted:Is it actually that much faster? Freight trains don't run that much faster than cargo ships and over a much longer distance. Freight trains run pretty fast when you have no stops to make for hundreds of miles and good braking systems. Freight rail runs at 60-70 mph in many places in the US thanks to that. Edit: and for instance, a route from Shanghai to Seattle by rail through their plan would be about 6000 miles. By sea, it's about 5600 miles. If you run the train at 50 mph that's 120 hours versus about 220 hours for a container ship trundling along at 23 knots. And to say nothing of the common trend of freighters slowing down further because you can recoup major fuel savings. caberham posted:Isn't most of China's high speed rail network mostly for passengers? Do they actually slap freight on it at night? What China's proposing to build is not the same as their current network at all. It's a pie-in-the-sky program and if it was just for passenger rail it'd be sitting idle most of the time. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 01:28 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 01:13
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Install Windows posted:Yeah but air cargo is even worse for price and ability to carry but it still gets used. Air cargo gets used for high value or perishable cargo. Light stuff, small stuff, really expensive stuff - We're talking either stuff that gets Fedexed or time-critical spare parts and race horses, that kind of stuff. Air freight is a tiny rear end part of the total cargo carried worldwide, and it's a pretty niche case - Stuff that needs to get there in days or it's going to be more expensive than shipping it by plane. The middle-of-the-way case for rail isn't there. Rail is a *shitload* more expensive, because it's not as fuel-efficient as shipping, and you have to pay for the tracks. Or in this case, the ridiculous trans-pacific tunnel, that needs to be built and maintained. A Shanghai to LA container voyage by sea is ballpark 11 days. Obviously I don't have the rail distances and speed for the same trip, and I assume the US logistic hub would shift to the Pacific Northwest in that situation (There's an expense) but say it's a 7 days trip. I don't think that's too ridiculous considering the distances invovled, and note that I'm abstracting other points of friction such as turnaround times. For a cargo of the same value, you can afford a 47% freight rate increase to shift to trains. Seems like a lot? You're looking at $1200 per container by sea. That means train would have to come in under $1764. As to the political aspect, I don't doubt that Canada and the US would be onboard... To an extent. You're still going to have to find easements for the tracks, quiet down the environmentalists and locals that are going to lose their poo poo (Canadians don't like trains these days), the port workers and shipping companies that are going to do everything they can to stop the whole thing... And from a shipper's perspective, you're looking to stabilize your supply chain for years at a time. All it takes is a disagreement over locomotive exhaust emissions, or natives in BC blocking the track, and the system is disrupted - We gotta get 20 000 rail cars a day through this thing, remember? Now of course if there's a shift to rail, the container ship capacity is going to be reduced. Shipping lines aren't going to keep ships around if they're sitting empty. So now XYZ Logistics has a bunch of containers sitting in Tsingtao that gotta get to LA/LB, there's been a landslide in Alaska and it's going to be a week before the trains can go through again (And then a week before the backlog clears). So now they have to hustle to get space on container ships, which they have to pay a premium for because everyone's trying to do the same thing... Or they could have just avoided the whole headache by booking on container ships in the first place. The good thing about the marine industry is that if a ship fucks up, you're down a ship. If a train fucks up, you're down a track. Took what, ten months to get the Lac-Megantic spur back in operation? Predictability is extremely valuable in logistics. Dusseldorf posted:Is it actually that much faster? Freight trains don't run that much faster than cargo ships and over a much longer distance. Freight trains run at 60 MPH in flat, open area; ships run at 25 MPH or so. If you're looking at ton-miles per day, though, the ship probably wins. I can't speak as to handling and turnaround times, though; I'm not familiar enough with rail operations. caberham posted:Isn't most of China's high speed rail network mostly for passengers? Do they actually slap freight on it at night? The time-value of freight isn't enough to justify using HSR; if you have a cargo that's high value enough you're going to want the added flexibility of trucks or you'll use a train. Plus passengers are self-loading; you'd lose a lot of the advantage on turnaround. No sense having the cargo travel at 500 MPH if it's going to sit in a warehouse for eight hours first. FrozenVent fucked around with this message at 01:26 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 01:24
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FrozenVent posted:The time-value of freight isn't enough to justify using HSR; if you have a cargo that's high value enough you're going to want the added flexibility of trucks or you'll use a train. Plus passengers are self-loading; you'd lose a lot of the advantage on turnaround. That's what I figured. It's mostly container trucks and freight.
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May 12, 2014 01:33
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The thing is the whole scenario already assumes China following through on its wacky plan to build a good 4000 miles of new rail and over 120 miles of undersea tunnels. It would be safe to assume that if they're going to go that far their whole prestige project thing is going to mean they're the ones worrying about paying the maintenance expenses, and unlikely to put some ridiculous charges on their new rail system to recover the costs - that'd lead right to it sitting there unused and making them look bad. You're also not going to have them build this whole project and not have it carefully engineered to avoid as much risk of landslides or whatever breaking it as possible. You don't get to the point of constructing a 120 mile set of undersea tunnels if you're just going to have bare track sitting unprotected on either side. Also trucks aren't really going to be a valid comparison here, there is definitely not going to be individual vehicle highways constructed instead. Edit: Again, there is absolutely nothing practical about building it in the first place, and it doesn't make any sense to do it except as an over-the-top national bragging rights thing. But once it was in place it would be reasonably useful. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 01:42 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 01:34
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Do you know of any track anywhere that isn't just sitting unprotected? It's what tracks do; they sit there. At the end of the day, no matter how over-engineered it is, any rail system is dependent on the infrastructure being intact over a long linear distance. You have a break anywhere, and assuming the system is at full utilization, everything stops. If they don't pass off the cost of the infrastructure to the customer, then they have to subsidize the ever loving poo poo out of it. I have a feeling Panama, the Marshall Island and Liberia are going to have something to say about that at the WTO, (And they'll suddenly have all sorts of resources to start poo poo over there!) amongst other concerned stakeholders. The charge would be ridiculous because the cost of the system would be ridiculous. Sea shipping is way cheaper and more flexible (The capacity is more elastic and there's little infrastructure required), there's no way a solution involving a 120 mile undersea tunnel is going to be viable for the foreseeable future.
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May 12, 2014 01:41
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FrozenVent posted:Do you know of any track anywhere that isn't just sitting unprotected? It's what tracks do; they sit there. You must have never seen railroads through mountainous areas before to be saying that. You don't just slap some track down and wait for it to have a landslide on a running train. Breaks are really rather infrequent. Sea ports can get shut down too. You also don't shut down an entire railroad system over one break, nor do you ever have 100% usage of the rails. We're talking about a project that might seriously cost over a trillion dollars all told (and honestly would take decades to build). It's pretty much impossible to recover the costs associated from the traffic that would use it in any sort of short-term period, so you can bet your rear end it would effectively massively subsidize transport along it.
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May 12, 2014 01:48
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I'm confused. Are you guys suggesting that this proposed HSR is going to carry freight? There isn't an HSR in the world that carries freight. This would be revolutionary and I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on it. As well, HSR track maintenance cycles are crazy frequent compared to conventional rail. As an example, Taiwan's High Speed Rail has major problems during typhoon season with landslides and just general debris. The track is inspected every night before it's given the ok and allowed to hurtle through at 300km/h.
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May 12, 2014 04:01
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I was operating under the assumption that the proposed trans-pacific rail system wouldn't be HSR; if the intent was for it to be HSR, I'd like to edit my previous posts in the following manner: FOR (All text) READ "LOL".
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May 12, 2014 04:06
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FrozenVent posted:I was operating under the assumption that the proposed trans-pacific rail system wouldn't be HSR; if the intent was for it to be HSR, I'd like to edit my previous posts in the following manner: Yeah the whole thing is a HSR passenger train, but don't edit your posts, they're pretty educational about transcontinental logistics. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2014-05/08/content_17493399.htm
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May 12, 2014 04:10
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Jagchosis posted:Yeah the whole thing is a HSR passenger train, but don't edit your posts, they're pretty educational about transcontinental logistics. I for one can't wait to take a four days train voyage instead of a 12 hour plane ride.
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May 12, 2014 04:17
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This is a really stupid derail.
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May 12, 2014 04:18
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Arglebargle III posted:This is a really stupid derail.
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May 12, 2014 04:20
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Cultural Imperial posted:I'm confused. Are you guys suggesting that this proposed HSR is going to carry freight? There isn't an HSR in the world that carries freight. This would be revolutionary and I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on it. As well, HSR track maintenance cycles are crazy frequent compared to conventional rail. You do understand that you can run slower trains on the same lines? Even in the fantasy world where China manages to build this minimum 6000 mile system between major Chinese cities and the lower 48, you're still not going to have hourly departures for your 2 day passenger service.
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May 12, 2014 04:39
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Install Windows posted:You do understand that you can run slower trains on the same lines? Even in the fantasy world where China manages to build this minimum 6000 mile system between major Chinese cities and the lower 48, you're still not going to have hourly departures for your 2 day passenger service. I'm not aware of any HSR in the world that does this but it sounds like it'd be quite an engineering feat. The next time I see my dad, I'll ask him. He used to be the director of safety and maintenance of an HSR.
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May 12, 2014 05:16
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You'd need a second siding just for the HSR trains, or have the HSR slaloming between the freight trains. Or you schedule your freight trains so the HSR has a clear shot through the line, but then your utilization is going to be atrocious.
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May 12, 2014 05:19
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Cultural Imperial posted:I'm not aware of any HSR in the world that does this but it sounds like it'd be quite an engineering feat. The next time I see my dad, I'll ask him. He used to be the director of safety and maintenance of an HSR. There's also no HSR in the world that travels through at least 3000 miles or so of no population centers or regular stops or has hundred mile plus long undersea tunnels built into it. If you were to build such a crazy big system, you'd certainly stick freight trains on because you'd not have both directions of track with full schedules from passenger services, and you'd have plenty of room in your new build to shift the freights out of the way of the high speed passenger trains if you needed to do so. FrozenVent posted:You'd need a second siding just for the HSR trains, or have the HSR slaloming between the freight trains. It would be unconscionable to build the very long HSR system and not have plenty of places for sidings, or even just building it as 3 or 4 track all the way through. You end up needing third track enough on short distance medium speed rail. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 05:27 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 05:22
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FrozenVent posted:You'd need a second siding just for the HSR trains, or have the HSR slaloming between the freight trains. So one of the really cool things about an HSR is that the tolerances for the sinking of a section of track are incredibly small. Building an HSR in a seismically active area is a nightmare. So much so that sections of track are built so that they can be literally jacked up if they've sunk too much. I'm no civil engineer, much less a geotech or an expert in rail transportation, but I have a feeling it'd be really expensive to engineer a rail line that can deal with multiple types of payloads. e: maybe popular science can figure it out for us
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May 12, 2014 05:29
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Cultural Imperial posted:So one of the really cool things about an HSR is that the tolerances for the sinking of a section of track are incredibly small. Building an HSR in a seismically active area is a nightmare. So much so that sections of track are built so that they can be literally jacked up if they've sunk too much. I'm no civil engineer, much less a geotech or an expert in rail transportation, but I have a feeling it'd be really expensive to engineer a rail line that can deal with multiple types of payloads. You don't need to do anything special to run freight. There's simply no current rail systems where freight can't just run along parallel trackage. You don't stick freight on bullet train rails because there's 3 parallel routes at hand. Building this China to America by bering strait line on the other hand, most of the route will have absolutely no alternative path. You just build enough room in your system and it's golden for freight.
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May 12, 2014 05:36
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Cultural Imperial posted:I'm not aware of any HSR in the world that does this but it sounds like it'd be quite an engineering feat. The next time I see my dad, I'll ask him. He used to be the director of safety and maintenance of an HSR. There are plenty of HSR systems in Europe that share tracks with slower regional and freight trains. This is not a new concept. HSR rails are not fundamentally different from regular rail lines, just built to allow for higher maximum speeds.
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May 12, 2014 13:16
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http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4f74...t#axzz31f36SKYhquote:
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May 14, 2014 05:41
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Here's another one from the FT China twitter feed: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0993...t#axzz31f36SKYh quote:When New Century Real Estate cut its housing prices by 15 per cent two months ago, the Chinese developer, far from panicking, was in a triumphant mood. It believed the discount was a deft move to get ahead of the market and sell its unsold backlog of apartments. 
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May 14, 2014 05:46
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Wow, the Chinese central bank went and told mortgage lenders to hurry up with approvals. http://on.ft.com/1mWh9EN quote:Asian investors are waiting for corporate earnings, after a subdued session on Wall Street offered little direction, while China's property developers see demand after comments from the central bank. .
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May 14, 2014 05:53
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drat. This is going to be bad.
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May 14, 2014 13:57
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If they're going to go full stupid with train proposals they might as well suggest building an undersea tunnel in a straight line to LA or whatever.
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May 14, 2014 16:54
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Accretionist posted:Article: Beijing to the US by train: China outlines plans to connect world by high speed rail network Let's pretend this is economically feasible - it sounds like a good idea till they hire a geologist who goes "what the gently caress, have you idiots never heard of sea quakes around subduction zones and poo poo" (there's a lot of faults around all of Asia). No, scratch that, it'd sound like a good idea, get implemented, and then demonstrate the existence of sea quakes as segments of the thing have to be rebuilt whenever one happens. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 21:10 on May 14, 2014 |
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May 14, 2014 21:08
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!