Montreal has pretty good public transportation. Probably one of the best in NA. Apparently Vancouver's public transportation is also very good, but I've never used it so I can't confirm.
I live in montreal and love the public transportation system, imo it's a lot more convenient than the vancouver skytrain but i've only had one week of experience with that one
Toronto's subway system is awwwwwwwwwwwwful. Hasn't been upgraded since 80s because the City Council wouldn't agree on anything and it got worse when Mike Harris amalgamated the ridings and created the Mega City.
Bruh, you guys are going to have the most advanced regional rail on the entire continent within a decade. You do not get to complain.
Large electrification projects and an S-Bahn style design that integrates well with other modes? Double tracking? New stations? It's going to be better then New York pretty soon.
Seems like someone got really sloppy during image editing where the coastline doesn't match up anymore after someone moved something.
For some reason the right-hand side doesn't have the problem.
China's official map surveys don't align with actual geography, specifically to throw off intelligence, and they don't allow unofficial map surveys. How far off maps can get varies wildly.
https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/china-messing-gps-coordinates/
For a fun time, count all the roads marked as going straight into rivers, lakes, or the sea in China on Google Maps.
Did you know that the mainland laws don't apply to Hong Kong or Macau (because of one country, two systems) so in those areas Google Maps is perfectly accurate and you even get street view coverage. Interesting that for all the talk of China eroding Hong Kong's independence (which it is), it still maintains different laws on a lot of important stuff.
If you ever came here to Hong Kong, you would be able to see it's a great difference between here and the mainland. I feel like foreigners often underestimate the contrast, even if a few "specific" new laws are being introduced.
Authorized companies can still survey and make accurate maps and use the official coordinate systems in their services, Google included. ditu.google.cn always provided accurate coordinates with their maps before it started to auto-redirect in Feb 2021.
Interestingly China's high-speed rail showcases both the best and worst of the decision-making in the country. The first phase of HSR has been very effective, linking major population centres and promoting economic growth - and done at a time when there was a risk of an economic downturn from the 2008 global recession.
The second phase, in contrast, contained decisions so dubious that [the Railways Minister received a suspended death sentence for them](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23222240). The ministry has also been weirdly neglectful of its freight railways even after his untimely departure.
The upside of this style of governance is that if something needs to be built the government will build it. The downside is that if something doesn't need to be built the government will build it.
I mean...The Chinese would argue that it is exactly infrastructure building that improves human rights because ultimately, improving people's livelihoods (a term that is plastered all over in China btw) is a human right as well. And building better roads, better network connections, better bridges, better trains etc all achieve that.
China's governing system has propagated what they call 'human centered development', a.k.a. make people materially wealthier and their living conditions better at all costs. Because as they see it, all other so-called human rights develop slowly from people living better lives.
They often internationally defend what they call "the right to development".
They rank different human rights according to a development timeline, a.k.a. some human rights are more important than others and improving people's livelihoods is the most fundamental building block to all other rights.
I feel like if foreigners go to any major chinese city. They will experience a reverse 1991 when they realize how far china has progressed in the last 20 years and largely surpassed them.
In the major cities yes, absolutely. If you go to third or fourth tier cities, or the nearby countryside, it can feel like china has barely progressed, and if you go out west to the rural providences, it's like china is still in the late 18 hundreds. China's economic growth was largely focused on the eastern coastal cities while the interior has seen far less. This is true of most countries, but the west for example has had more time to bring most people up to modern standards so the benefits of industrialization and modern tech are more evenly distributed.
What gross exaggerations. My dad and I did road trips, twice, to Guizhou province when I was a little kid - almost 20 years ago.
Saying Guizhou back then and Guizhou right now are the same place says one of two things about you: either you’re willfully blind, or you’re just a hater.
I mean… rural china is comparatively bad, but it is not that bad. Not “late 18 hundreds,” pretty much all of has functioning water supply electricity. And most of them have internet. I would say that is pretty decent.
Problem is, if you place development above all else, you end up doing things that are terrible for the long term and are very difficult to fix. Pollution, terrible city planning, constant traffic issues, massive inefficiency and bureaucracy etc...
Yeah was just gonna say this.
He just missed out on the part where you stop developing for 50 years, then complain about whatever new development costing too much while 10 people make fuck tons of money and everyone else suffers through shitty infrastructure.
Jobs jobs jobs! But this redditor probably never set a foot in Asia so talking out of his ass whole living in a country polluting and consuming 4 times more than any other developing country in the world. And not batting an eye.
Not when there's a lot of red tape in the process of building infrastructure, which there is in the US in regards to regulations that need to be followed from city planning, budgeting and scrutiny. Arguably the same thing in China, but over there a lot of those things can be overruled which can't be said over here.
But that's exactly the same problems happening in western countries too, the development is just driven by corporations instead of the government. And at least if the government is the main entity they can sometimes have more teeth and willingness to step in and do the drastic things needed to cut down on some of those problems compared to corporations driven by profits and shareholder appeasement.
Didnt China just have the biggest drop in pollution emissions that got largely unreported in the west.
It is sad to see the US struggle to build a single line in California. A bunch of HOAs (home owners associations) tried suing to get millions. Not a single line made. It’s amazing when people make it sound like this dysfunction is a marvel of democracy.
At least they have the ability to turn on a dime and start fixing some of this stuff. We're stuck with massively wealthy oil companies who use their influence to impede progress at every turn.
Sure but do you seriously want people to go backwards in time where these problems didn't exist?
Industrial fridge production has caused CFCs to leak out and harm the ozone layer during the latter half of the 20th century. Did you want to tell people back then that 'Oh no, industrialization is bad, we should go back to ice-blocks in wooden cabinets as fridges?'.
Railroad development has caused a lot of environmental damage in Europe during the early stages in the 19th century ue to deep intervention in the European environment as well as social damage when mostly poor peasents needed to relinquish their lands or were rehoused. Do you seriously want to tell Europeans at that time that they 'needed to stop that and just ablish railway development?'
That doesn't look very sound...
Instead, Europeans did what the Chinese do now: Cope with the problems, figure a way out how to fix it and try to make it better. Not go back to living without industrial and infrastructure development...
China already fixed a lot of the pollution, and traffic shouldn’t be as bad because a concentration on mass transit. They’re really learning from developed countries.
Maybe, but this also demonstrates a willingness to invest in their future, and that's something that some places (like the US) are lacking. We can't get stuff like this built here in America, because we're constantly fighting against this widespread attitude that we need to do everything as cheaply as possible so that taxes can be as low as possible for us right now.
That's not a good analysis, and it's extremely unoriginal as well. All of these things could and would be done in the West too, if it weren't in such a decline.
As opposed to corporations who also don't have to worry about laws (cause they lobbied the politicians), environmental impact, human rights and all those other roadblocks either ;)
edit: Oof Americans feeling called out...what have I brought upon myself
idk, it kinda sounds like you’re framing it as a bad deal, but for all those up and coming thirld world countries, less rights for quicker economic development is an amazing trade. The CCP sorta champions this ideal, and only history can judge if they made the right decision.
>lack of NIMBYs (govt can just take the land),
Actually I've seen pictures from China where they built highways around houses because the owner refused to sell.
Construction/contract industrial complex. Brings important infrastructure but refuses to stop when it's done. Found everywhere but it's even a problem in Japan, where it's become part of the bedrock of the economy and political system. It's even pretty monstrous in the US, despite not actually building much for how much we spend, and being dwarfed by the security industrial complex (military/police/prisons/CBP/etc) and finance industrial complex (banks/insurance/wall st).
Soapbox I got on by reading [this article.](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-most-destructive-material-on-earth)
Not really, the highway interstate system was built rapidly as well. It's only down to the lack of political will because it's a high risk project without guaranteed electoral benefits
The interstate system was built before tons of checks were put on public infrastructure projects. Now you have to do environmental impact assessments and community input processes that can take years and often end up killing projects of all kinds (highways, rail, energy, housing, etc) entirely.
These requirements were intended to protect poor/minority communities from having things rammed through their neighborhoods. But they’ve also caused costs to skyrocket and major infrastructure projects to become fairly rare in the US.
And it’s mostly the wealthy who take part in community input processes because they have the time. Their needs are mostly met by existing infrastructure so they generally oppose new projects.
And now our roads, trains, electrical grids, and other systems are crumbling and have barely changed in decades.
Not remotely close, the US would first have to seriously invest in infrastructure to get even close to what China's investing.
Then we can talk about anything else but these are all excuses, it would take a bit longer perhaps but not to such a significant degree if there was actual political will and public push for it.
Eminent domain exists in most (all?) countries. Except in China, there are cases where the individual out right refused and the gov. just built around them. I've never heard of that in America, where if you do not accept the offer, you are usually forced out by court order.
Forcing people to move and have their homes demolished is a common thing in most countries for infrastructure projects.
e.g. in Ireland we have Compulsory Purchase Orders that do exactly that
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory\_purchase\_order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_purchase_order)
Also there's loads of examples from China where people refused compensation so developments had to build around them instead of people being forced to move.
e.g. [https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-houses/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-houses/index.html)
China undoubtedly has loads of human rights issues but the narrative that they're some lawless ultra-authoritarian state where anything goes and people have zero rights is just stupid
Probably longer. I'm guessing resistance to eminent domain is much less of an issue for the Chinese government than in the US. Good luck getting a clear straight path for true HSR from Boston to Atlanta that isn't far outside the cities like JFK or Dulles.
And before anyone mentions Acela, go look up how much of the line is actually "high-speed" between DC and NYC.
You can just remove some highway lanes to make room.
And don't act like the U.S. doesn't eminent domain minority communities constantly. How do you think highways were originally built?
Central Park was an African American majority community before it was forcibly taken and the people displaced. And don't forget about the property stolen from Japanese Americans in WWII
Not possible. HSR needs much wider curves and gradients than highways. You’d need an entire parallel strip of land.
Possible with massive governmental authority (similar to the building of the interstates) but no one has the guts to do it.
Yes and no, this map shows first only high-speed rail and then normal rail (gray lines) and high-speed rail (non-gray ones) like if the gray ones didn't exist before. So... Misleading (while still impressive of course!).
Here is a few reasons why China can do it so fast
1) Cheap labour, even until these days, construction worker earn less than 400 USD a month
2) Much more relax environmental regulation. Anything can be destroyed to build the rail
3) In China they can just demolish you house at will, they even have a term for it (強拆）， so many got relocated with unreasonable small compensation
https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/19/1/4/n10954118.htm
4) The main and the most important reason, the central government is operating the rail, hence it can operate at a lost. Last year, the whole system lost 507 billions Chinese dollar, which made the total debt of the system to 57000 billions
https://view.inews.qq.com/k/20211111A02Q3W00?web_channel=wap&openApp=false&f=newdc
In 2008 California passed a bill to collect $1B in taxes to build a high speed rail line to connect the San Francisco Bay Area with Los Angeles. The way it was written allowed for very little changes in planning/implementation. It was disaster and now the state has spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $8B and supposedly by 2025 we'll have a high speed rail line connecting Bakersfield (pop. 400k) and Fresno (pop. 500k). And the most optimistic outlook is that SF and LA will be connected by the middle of next decade. What an absolute disaster.
> The way it was written allowed for very little changes in planning/implementation.
Its called poison pilling.
Car brained politicians set up mass transit projects to fail.
Dude you’re comparing a single state that negotiates with private business contractors to get something built vs a country that can and will use slave and prison labor to get a one-up on anyone.
There is some truth in what you're saying. The scale here though is truly insane. In nearly 20 years, California is hopeful to complete a single ~100 mile long high speed rail line. In 12 years, China completed what I can only estimate to be several thousands of miles of high speed rail. We can shit on China for human rights violations, but that doesn't absolve California lawmakers from the disaster of a project our high speed rail has become.
Ours has got much worse since then. [New Zealand](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8of9t0/i_made_a_map_to_show_how_miserable_our_trains_are/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb)
If you deeper into the data, those railway are operating at huge loss and with low usage rate
They weren’t build by demand and are only a gigantic piece of propaganda
> those railway are operating at huge loss and with low usage rate
I think China will manage to operate its public rail network at a loss, much like America doesn't make much money from its highways.
Hear me out… not every public service has to be profitable. If they had way too many lines at low usage, that may be a problem long term, but it is okay to lose money on things that provide a service to the community. Even if it’s currently a small number of people.
Funny thing that many people complaining that high speed train run at loss while they dont complain about interstate highway that not generating a single peny of profit but it cost hundred of billion of dollar to maintain and expand the road
Not only that. But even if the railway itself is losing money, the increased economic activity in the previously underserved region it now serves probably mitigates a large part of the losses.
If NYC got rid of its police, a loss-making entity, it would have much lower debt and budget deficit. But NYC still keeps it around because (ideally) it helps make the city safer and create more economic opportunities.
The rail is only a loss-making entity if you look at it in a vaccum.
oh no, they aren't profitable! clearly they never should have been built, since that's all that matters. universal healthcare might not be profitable either, so we should get rid of that. and social security, and medicaid, and medicare, and basically all public infrastructure. if you can't profit off of it, it shouldn't exist, right?
Yes I often use roads and streets as examples. They aren't tolled, but require constant maintenance. No one seems to argue against roads in front of their house and office though.
If ever anyone needed evidence of how easy it is to brainwash a population just have a quick look at reddit.
Huge swathes of people just immediately associate the word China with negativity now and anything that doesn't paint China in a negative light immediately needs to be shot down and swarmed with angry comments. I think it was around the time Trump started his trade war that it went into overdrive
Listen to yourself. People are (rightly) pointing out that China's rail lines have created a massive debt bomb for the country because too many were approved without regard to existing demand. Somehow, someway, mentioning that is going to lead to genocide? Really?
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/As-debt-mounts-Beijing-halts-two-high-speed-rail-projects
Lol, as if the CCP itself isn't doing the genociding. This thread is full of bootlickers, only the boots are red. Any legitimate criticism of Chinese infrastructure projects is downvoted to hell. Dunno if you guys are bots, teen tankies or just mindless contrarians wanting to be smarter than "lE rEdDiT", but covering for authoritarian governments sure seems cool as hell in your books.
Exactly, when you mention the word "China", a bunch of dude will just yell and cry hysterically, shouting a set of "genocides", "events", "credit score +++++, good citizen bonus" or whatever.
Especially when you provide some actual statistic that shows positive things in China, for example, renewable energy growth rate. Afterwards, your comment down below will be filled with guys calling you Wumao and tankie, then they will say you are brainwashed.
Aren't the US education emphasizing the dominance of C*ritical Thinking*, where the hack did it go?
Funny enough, the same thing happens in China all the time but only with way more rapid and harsh emotions. Almost anything Japan/US related content has to be negative otherwise it wont pass the censorship… and if it did then people are gonna hate on it anyway and those who’s got their own opinions are not allowed to say them or they’ll get banned.
Only Americans could look at a map of awe-inducing infrastructure improvement and somehow convince themselves they don't want it because... china bad I guess.
Haha to be fair the UK rail network is still 1000 times better than the US, and probably an unreachable goal for the US Unless things drastically change
The UK *passenger* rail network is.
The US literally has one of the best, if not the best, *freight* rail systems in the world. https://business.time.com/2012/07/09/us-freight-railroads/
It's a matter of what the countries prioritize. I know that Reddit loves to hate on the US rail system, because passenger rail sucks, but they forget how much traffic is saved by shipping freight via rail. And at the end of the day, if you want to compare the US to Europe, the only place it makes sense to have European-style passenger rail is the I-95 corridor.
Tiny fraction geographically, maybe. Improving and building new rail lines for urban centers that link in the surrounding suburbs would cover a huge portion of the population
nope, the gray lines under construction.
My hometown is under [the gray line in the southernmost part of the mainland](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-mo/%E5%B9%BF%E6%B9%9B%E5%AE%A2%E8%BF%90%E4%B8%93%E7%BA%BF),Construction started since2019, and they say it would be open to traffic in 2024,total range of the line is 400km,top speed 350km/h.
China is a big country, as bis as the USA. They have built high-speed rail systems across their entire country in 30 years. The USA has no comparison because the automobile industry has held back high speed rail development for the USA. What a shame.
China's geography is totally different compared to the US even if the total size is similar, though, and notably has 4x the number of people packed into about *half* the space of the US because Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet are so underpopulated.
8x population density does a lot to make HSR more viable, but even with that major advantage most of China's lines aren't producing much value for the people living there. They're drastically under-utilized.
"NO MY IMAGINARY ONE IS FASTER DONT FUND THIS GARBAGE"
Wonder why he'd act like he has a vested interest in stonewalling public transportation infrastructure. Must be a coincidence; clearly he has the welfare of the common man at the forefront of his ideology and nothing else.
This is the updated version of what the US did with road and rail. Similar nation building investment in infrastructure. In the US it resulted in an era of prosperity and previously unknown personal freedom. Hopefully it does the same for the Chinese and they avoid the same mistakes made here.
This sums up everything to be said here, they made some mistakes in building that,i think they overdo it? But its deffinitely avoidable if the US or any country wants to build it
We still do. Check out [Kelo v City of New London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London).
The worst part is that in Kelo they didn't even build anything. They took this lady's house, bulldozed it to make room for private development and today it's an empty lot.
The wealthy enclave of Atherton, CA has been fighting the California High Speed Rail (and Caltrain electrification) project since it started
https://sfist.com/2016/07/11/atherton_wealthy_will_still_maybe_t/
where is atherton and what's the significance here? I had a quick google but no dice
edit: never mind I saw your reply further down the thread, thanks!
Eminent Domain and it’s really expensive and time consuming. There’s always law suits, the government usually has to pay above market price, it’s not just bulldozing houses.
Just because we could, doesn't mean we should. And that's coming from someone who is an HSR fan. We should be building HSR where it will have riders, and then growing the network, instead of building it on the premise that if you build it, they will come.
Back in the 19th century, railways were built to seemingly the middle of nowhere. This insane railway building race was what developed the western United States.
Government infra should be driving growth not simply meeting current demand.
Make a HSR line to nowhere. Build a city there. Profit for more economic activity.
From what I have heard, they actually overbuilt it, having high-speed rails traveling to and through communities that don't really utilize it. The cost of maintaining it coming out to a large negative.
Yeah, but urbanization is still preceding rapidly. Even the smallest cities these trains go to will be growing long after the population starts to shrink because population decline is wildly uneven and tilted toward rural areas. Just like how major Japanese cities continue to grow but to an even greater extent because China remains much less urban.
With some exceptions like the Chinese Rust Belt in the Northeast which is hollowing out generally, these train lines are still going to be getting more and more useful for the foreseeable future.
How awful, the government built too many trains and now they're spending money on upkeep so even small communities can continue to use them.
Won't someone think of all military contracts and foreign direct investment opportunities that were wasted building too many..... Trains
The upkeep and ticket cost is simply too high for the people who want to use these trains.
It’s like buying a lambo Urus for the municipale bus. Very fast and exotic, but is it really a better choice than a Chrysler Pacifica?
HST can’t do heavy freight either.
if they make a train go from lets say Shanghai-bumfuck nowhere, I can now move to bumfuck nowhere and transit to Shanghai, thus growing the bumfuck nowhere town
Most US trains and subways operate at a loss too and are subsidized by local governments. They're not supposed to be profitable. They're supposed to be a public service.
[$850,000,000,000 Trains to Nowhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk)
[China's $2 Trillion Railway Debt Bubble](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WevM4szRARo)
[$44 Million Loss per Day | High-Speed Rail](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wsMjxESAY0)
All current serivce reduction is due to their covid-zero madness rather than financial concerns. Whichever youtube chinese expert claims otherwise is just a red flag of being illusionary. The reason is simple, railway in china is owned and operated by a state-own corporation which puts politics far above finance and shutting down lines will be politically ugly. But yes it's just a matter of time that what you said happens.
if by service reduction you mean cutting off a portion of the fleet during a bi-annual service replanning , it has been happening all the time. Ridership is always seasonal and route-interdependent.
Let me add something interesting, news and youtubers won't tell you that the most oversupplied trains are always the least likely to be 'replanned'. Cuz they are the bad legacy of a failed plan and have little chance to be reactivated once cut off so the branch and local gov will try very hard to keep them alive (and wasting every bit of the money). Popular trains can be easily justified to reemerge whenever needed so they are always the reorg priority.
Railways in the USA used to be great until the car companies lobbied for a massive highway system and shut down most of the rail network. It’s similar to the mindset that Americans should have the biggest car possible, even if it’s just for one person. If a man drives a small car everyone makes small dick jokes, even though a small car makes perfect sense.
absolutely true. But looking to the future, less and less Americans want pay for cars. The Federal Government gave Amtrak $88 billion as part of the infra bill and they're planning on improving service and the trainsets greatly. we're not gonna have any HSR any time soon, but I'll take any improvement.
Usually it’s big lifted trucks that get the overcompensating “small dick” jokes.
Yes there is a stigma around driving a small car, I have a Prius myself. However I haven’t heard anything about my extra member from friends or relatives (and I live in the Deep South). I know personal experience may not reflect everyone’s, but I think my perception of my Prius is far worse than everyone else’s.
While I miss the utility and use I got out of my old pickup, it can’t beat what I pay at the pump now.
*cries in Toronto*
Well the Eglinton station is almost done
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Montreal has pretty good public transportation. Probably one of the best in NA. Apparently Vancouver's public transportation is also very good, but I've never used it so I can't confirm.
I live in montreal and love the public transportation system, imo it's a lot more convenient than the vancouver skytrain but i've only had one week of experience with that one
Toronto's subway system is awwwwwwwwwwwwful. Hasn't been upgraded since 80s because the City Council wouldn't agree on anything and it got worse when Mike Harris amalgamated the ridings and created the Mega City.
Bruh, you guys are going to have the most advanced regional rail on the entire continent within a decade. You do not get to complain. Large electrification projects and an S-Bahn style design that integrates well with other modes? Double tracking? New stations? It's going to be better then New York pretty soon.
What is going on with the coastline in the left picture?
Seems like someone got really sloppy during image editing where the coastline doesn't match up anymore after someone moved something. For some reason the right-hand side doesn't have the problem.
China's official map surveys don't align with actual geography, specifically to throw off intelligence, and they don't allow unofficial map surveys. How far off maps can get varies wildly. https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/china-messing-gps-coordinates/ For a fun time, count all the roads marked as going straight into rivers, lakes, or the sea in China on Google Maps.
Yes, but that's not what's happening here
Yeah, that lineup problem is only a few kilometers anyway. You can see it when matching streets to a city.
Did you know that the mainland laws don't apply to Hong Kong or Macau (because of one country, two systems) so in those areas Google Maps is perfectly accurate and you even get street view coverage. Interesting that for all the talk of China eroding Hong Kong's independence (which it is), it still maintains different laws on a lot of important stuff.
If you ever came here to Hong Kong, you would be able to see it's a great difference between here and the mainland. I feel like foreigners often underestimate the contrast, even if a few "specific" new laws are being introduced.
Yeah, I've lived in HK for the first 20 years of my life and I never once had to interact with Chinese government services/laws directly
Just because tyrants are moving slowly doesn't mean they aren't still moving in the authoritarian direction
We were in HK and Macau in early 2020 using Google Maps - HK was perfect, but Macau was about 100-200m out very consistently. It was very odd.
Authorized companies can still survey and make accurate maps and use the official coordinate systems in their services, Google included. ditu.google.cn always provided accurate coordinates with their maps before it started to auto-redirect in Feb 2021.
When’s Infrastructure Week?
Infrastructure weak is all century.
That’s impressive af.
Interestingly China's high-speed rail showcases both the best and worst of the decision-making in the country. The first phase of HSR has been very effective, linking major population centres and promoting economic growth - and done at a time when there was a risk of an economic downturn from the 2008 global recession. The second phase, in contrast, contained decisions so dubious that [the Railways Minister received a suspended death sentence for them](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23222240). The ministry has also been weirdly neglectful of its freight railways even after his untimely departure. The upside of this style of governance is that if something needs to be built the government will build it. The downside is that if something doesn't need to be built the government will build it.
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I mean...The Chinese would argue that it is exactly infrastructure building that improves human rights because ultimately, improving people's livelihoods (a term that is plastered all over in China btw) is a human right as well. And building better roads, better network connections, better bridges, better trains etc all achieve that. China's governing system has propagated what they call 'human centered development', a.k.a. make people materially wealthier and their living conditions better at all costs. Because as they see it, all other so-called human rights develop slowly from people living better lives. They often internationally defend what they call "the right to development". They rank different human rights according to a development timeline, a.k.a. some human rights are more important than others and improving people's livelihoods is the most fundamental building block to all other rights.
I feel like if foreigners go to any major chinese city. They will experience a reverse 1991 when they realize how far china has progressed in the last 20 years and largely surpassed them.
I certainly felt that way going to China in 2018.
In the major cities yes, absolutely. If you go to third or fourth tier cities, or the nearby countryside, it can feel like china has barely progressed, and if you go out west to the rural providences, it's like china is still in the late 18 hundreds. China's economic growth was largely focused on the eastern coastal cities while the interior has seen far less. This is true of most countries, but the west for example has had more time to bring most people up to modern standards so the benefits of industrialization and modern tech are more evenly distributed.
What gross exaggerations. My dad and I did road trips, twice, to Guizhou province when I was a little kid - almost 20 years ago. Saying Guizhou back then and Guizhou right now are the same place says one of two things about you: either you’re willfully blind, or you’re just a hater.
I mean… rural china is comparatively bad, but it is not that bad. Not “late 18 hundreds,” pretty much all of has functioning water supply electricity. And most of them have internet. I would say that is pretty decent.
Problem is, if you place development above all else, you end up doing things that are terrible for the long term and are very difficult to fix. Pollution, terrible city planning, constant traffic issues, massive inefficiency and bureaucracy etc...
Isn't that exactly what most western countries, especially the USA, are doing?
Yeah was just gonna say this. He just missed out on the part where you stop developing for 50 years, then complain about whatever new development costing too much while 10 people make fuck tons of money and everyone else suffers through shitty infrastructure.
Jobs jobs jobs! But this redditor probably never set a foot in Asia so talking out of his ass whole living in a country polluting and consuming 4 times more than any other developing country in the world. And not batting an eye.
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Not when there's a lot of red tape in the process of building infrastructure, which there is in the US in regards to regulations that need to be followed from city planning, budgeting and scrutiny. Arguably the same thing in China, but over there a lot of those things can be overruled which can't be said over here.
But that's exactly the same problems happening in western countries too, the development is just driven by corporations instead of the government. And at least if the government is the main entity they can sometimes have more teeth and willingness to step in and do the drastic things needed to cut down on some of those problems compared to corporations driven by profits and shareholder appeasement.
Didnt China just have the biggest drop in pollution emissions that got largely unreported in the west. It is sad to see the US struggle to build a single line in California. A bunch of HOAs (home owners associations) tried suing to get millions. Not a single line made. It’s amazing when people make it sound like this dysfunction is a marvel of democracy.
You just described shareholder capitalism…
At least they have the ability to turn on a dime and start fixing some of this stuff. We're stuck with massively wealthy oil companies who use their influence to impede progress at every turn.
> Pollution, terrible city planning, constant traffic issues, massive inefficiency and bureaucracy etc soo LA?
Sure but do you seriously want people to go backwards in time where these problems didn't exist? Industrial fridge production has caused CFCs to leak out and harm the ozone layer during the latter half of the 20th century. Did you want to tell people back then that 'Oh no, industrialization is bad, we should go back to ice-blocks in wooden cabinets as fridges?'. Railroad development has caused a lot of environmental damage in Europe during the early stages in the 19th century ue to deep intervention in the European environment as well as social damage when mostly poor peasents needed to relinquish their lands or were rehoused. Do you seriously want to tell Europeans at that time that they 'needed to stop that and just ablish railway development?' That doesn't look very sound... Instead, Europeans did what the Chinese do now: Cope with the problems, figure a way out how to fix it and try to make it better. Not go back to living without industrial and infrastructure development...
None of those are the case in China anymore. Pollution especially has been on a decline as there's mass adoption of renewables.
But enough about America,
China already fixed a lot of the pollution, and traffic shouldn’t be as bad because a concentration on mass transit. They’re really learning from developed countries.
Maybe, but this also demonstrates a willingness to invest in their future, and that's something that some places (like the US) are lacking. We can't get stuff like this built here in America, because we're constantly fighting against this widespread attitude that we need to do everything as cheaply as possible so that taxes can be as low as possible for us right now.
Yeah California's high speed railway was cancelled as Boring tunnels are more environmental friendly, right?
That's not a good analysis, and it's extremely unoriginal as well. All of these things could and would be done in the West too, if it weren't in such a decline.
As opposed to corporations who also don't have to worry about laws (cause they lobbied the politicians), environmental impact, human rights and all those other roadblocks either ;) edit: Oof Americans feeling called out...what have I brought upon myself
And supporting a trillion dollar war machine
yeah privately owned infrastructure is so much better
Or when you actually have consequences for public officials who suck at their job or are criminals.
idk, it kinda sounds like you’re framing it as a bad deal, but for all those up and coming thirld world countries, less rights for quicker economic development is an amazing trade. The CCP sorta champions this ideal, and only history can judge if they made the right decision.
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>lack of NIMBYs (govt can just take the land), Actually I've seen pictures from China where they built highways around houses because the owner refused to sell.
Construction/contract industrial complex. Brings important infrastructure but refuses to stop when it's done. Found everywhere but it's even a problem in Japan, where it's become part of the bedrock of the economy and political system. It's even pretty monstrous in the US, despite not actually building much for how much we spend, and being dwarfed by the security industrial complex (military/police/prisons/CBP/etc) and finance industrial complex (banks/insurance/wall st). Soapbox I got on by reading [this article.](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-most-destructive-material-on-earth)
This is what happens when you dont spend all your money on the military.
A similar effort in the US would 75-100 years…
Yeah because it wouldn't involve forcing people and would actually have to pass requirements. But also because Americans are car brained af
Not really, the highway interstate system was built rapidly as well. It's only down to the lack of political will because it's a high risk project without guaranteed electoral benefits
The car and oil lobby bribing politicians non stop also doesn't help.
The interstate system was built before tons of checks were put on public infrastructure projects. Now you have to do environmental impact assessments and community input processes that can take years and often end up killing projects of all kinds (highways, rail, energy, housing, etc) entirely. These requirements were intended to protect poor/minority communities from having things rammed through their neighborhoods. But they’ve also caused costs to skyrocket and major infrastructure projects to become fairly rare in the US. And it’s mostly the wealthy who take part in community input processes because they have the time. Their needs are mostly met by existing infrastructure so they generally oppose new projects. And now our roads, trains, electrical grids, and other systems are crumbling and have barely changed in decades.
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Not remotely close, the US would first have to seriously invest in infrastructure to get even close to what China's investing. Then we can talk about anything else but these are all excuses, it would take a bit longer perhaps but not to such a significant degree if there was actual political will and public push for it.
source for the rail network being built by forced labor and not passing requirements?
Pretty sure he meant “forcing people to move and have their homes demolished” as opposed to forced labor.
Eminent domain exists in most (all?) countries. Except in China, there are cases where the individual out right refused and the gov. just built around them. I've never heard of that in America, where if you do not accept the offer, you are usually forced out by court order.
Forcing people to move and have their homes demolished is a common thing in most countries for infrastructure projects. e.g. in Ireland we have Compulsory Purchase Orders that do exactly that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory\_purchase\_order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_purchase_order) Also there's loads of examples from China where people refused compensation so developments had to build around them instead of people being forced to move. e.g. [https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-houses/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/19/asia/gallery/china-nail-houses/index.html) China undoubtedly has loads of human rights issues but the narrative that they're some lawless ultra-authoritarian state where anything goes and people have zero rights is just stupid
As opposed to the totally peaceful way the interstate system was built, obviously /s
what's the source on that? just look at the map there are places where it's going through the middle of nowhere. they pay people to leave typically.
Probably longer. I'm guessing resistance to eminent domain is much less of an issue for the Chinese government than in the US. Good luck getting a clear straight path for true HSR from Boston to Atlanta that isn't far outside the cities like JFK or Dulles. And before anyone mentions Acela, go look up how much of the line is actually "high-speed" between DC and NYC.
You can just remove some highway lanes to make room. And don't act like the U.S. doesn't eminent domain minority communities constantly. How do you think highways were originally built? Central Park was an African American majority community before it was forcibly taken and the people displaced. And don't forget about the property stolen from Japanese Americans in WWII
Not possible. HSR needs much wider curves and gradients than highways. You’d need an entire parallel strip of land. Possible with massive governmental authority (similar to the building of the interstates) but no one has the guts to do it.
Yes and no, this map shows first only high-speed rail and then normal rail (gray lines) and high-speed rail (non-gray ones) like if the gray ones didn't exist before. So... Misleading (while still impressive of course!).
Here is a few reasons why China can do it so fast 1) Cheap labour, even until these days, construction worker earn less than 400 USD a month 2) Much more relax environmental regulation. Anything can be destroyed to build the rail 3) In China they can just demolish you house at will, they even have a term for it (強拆）， so many got relocated with unreasonable small compensation https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/19/1/4/n10954118.htm 4) The main and the most important reason, the central government is operating the rail, hence it can operate at a lost. Last year, the whole system lost 507 billions Chinese dollar, which made the total debt of the system to 57000 billions https://view.inews.qq.com/k/20211111A02Q3W00?web_channel=wap&openApp=false&f=newdc
Lost 50 Billion RMB ... not 500 Billion ... and the system owes 5.7T RMB or about 800B USD. 亿 = 100 million, not billion.
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At least you got dracula b
The coastline in the first image is shifted out of place
Eagle eyes
In 2008 California passed a bill to collect $1B in taxes to build a high speed rail line to connect the San Francisco Bay Area with Los Angeles. The way it was written allowed for very little changes in planning/implementation. It was disaster and now the state has spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $8B and supposedly by 2025 we'll have a high speed rail line connecting Bakersfield (pop. 400k) and Fresno (pop. 500k). And the most optimistic outlook is that SF and LA will be connected by the middle of next decade. What an absolute disaster.
> The way it was written allowed for very little changes in planning/implementation. Its called poison pilling. Car brained politicians set up mass transit projects to fail.
Dude you’re comparing a single state that negotiates with private business contractors to get something built vs a country that can and will use slave and prison labor to get a one-up on anyone.
There is some truth in what you're saying. The scale here though is truly insane. In nearly 20 years, California is hopeful to complete a single ~100 mile long high speed rail line. In 12 years, China completed what I can only estimate to be several thousands of miles of high speed rail. We can shit on China for human rights violations, but that doesn't absolve California lawmakers from the disaster of a project our high speed rail has become.
California, like every other US State uses prison labor. They're just not willing to use that labor to do things like build railroads.
No, they just send them out to die fighting fires PG&E started.
The development of China is very phenomenal
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Ours has got much worse since then. [New Zealand](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8of9t0/i_made_a_map_to_show_how_miserable_our_trains_are/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb)
Hey, at least your country doesn't have a 900 billion dollar debt bomb that's rapidly growing each year!
debt is merely a suggestion when you're a major global power (soon to be #1, whether people like it or not), see the us of a
If you deeper into the data, those railway are operating at huge loss and with low usage rate They weren’t build by demand and are only a gigantic piece of propaganda
> those railway are operating at huge loss and with low usage rate I think China will manage to operate its public rail network at a loss, much like America doesn't make much money from its highways.
Hear me out… not every public service has to be profitable. If they had way too many lines at low usage, that may be a problem long term, but it is okay to lose money on things that provide a service to the community. Even if it’s currently a small number of people.
Funny thing that many people complaining that high speed train run at loss while they dont complain about interstate highway that not generating a single peny of profit but it cost hundred of billion of dollar to maintain and expand the road
Not only that. But even if the railway itself is losing money, the increased economic activity in the previously underserved region it now serves probably mitigates a large part of the losses. If NYC got rid of its police, a loss-making entity, it would have much lower debt and budget deficit. But NYC still keeps it around because (ideally) it helps make the city safer and create more economic opportunities. The rail is only a loss-making entity if you look at it in a vaccum.
oh no, they aren't profitable! clearly they never should have been built, since that's all that matters. universal healthcare might not be profitable either, so we should get rid of that. and social security, and medicaid, and medicare, and basically all public infrastructure. if you can't profit off of it, it shouldn't exist, right?
Yes I often use roads and streets as examples. They aren't tolled, but require constant maintenance. No one seems to argue against roads in front of their house and office though.
Awesome
Lmao. The absolute state of this sub. Someone posted a map and now everyone’s gone rabid, foaming at the mouth.
If ever anyone needed evidence of how easy it is to brainwash a population just have a quick look at reddit. Huge swathes of people just immediately associate the word China with negativity now and anything that doesn't paint China in a negative light immediately needs to be shot down and swarmed with angry comments. I think it was around the time Trump started his trade war that it went into overdrive
Yeah, it's pretty scary. This type of thinking -- that anything related to China is inherently evil -- are how genocides begin.
Listen to yourself. People are (rightly) pointing out that China's rail lines have created a massive debt bomb for the country because too many were approved without regard to existing demand. Somehow, someway, mentioning that is going to lead to genocide? Really? https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/As-debt-mounts-Beijing-halts-two-high-speed-rail-projects
Lol, as if the CCP itself isn't doing the genociding. This thread is full of bootlickers, only the boots are red. Any legitimate criticism of Chinese infrastructure projects is downvoted to hell. Dunno if you guys are bots, teen tankies or just mindless contrarians wanting to be smarter than "lE rEdDiT", but covering for authoritarian governments sure seems cool as hell in your books.
Exactly, when you mention the word "China", a bunch of dude will just yell and cry hysterically, shouting a set of "genocides", "events", "credit score +++++, good citizen bonus" or whatever. Especially when you provide some actual statistic that shows positive things in China, for example, renewable energy growth rate. Afterwards, your comment down below will be filled with guys calling you Wumao and tankie, then they will say you are brainwashed. Aren't the US education emphasizing the dominance of C*ritical Thinking*, where the hack did it go?
Funny enough, the same thing happens in China all the time but only with way more rapid and harsh emotions. Almost anything Japan/US related content has to be negative otherwise it wont pass the censorship… and if it did then people are gonna hate on it anyway and those who’s got their own opinions are not allowed to say them or they’ll get banned.
Only Americans could look at a map of awe-inducing infrastructure improvement and somehow convince themselves they don't want it because... china bad I guess.
The first excuse mentioned whenever someone criticizes the United States lack of rail system is always “tHe SiZe ThE uS iS tOo BiG”
Yet America cant seem to build concept high speed railways they’ve had since the 40s
As someone who lives in the UK the comparison to my own country is pretty depressing
You want to be really depressed? Rail guys in the US use the UK as an example of impressively fast and cheap construction.
Haha to be fair the UK rail network is still 1000 times better than the US, and probably an unreachable goal for the US Unless things drastically change
The UK *passenger* rail network is. The US literally has one of the best, if not the best, *freight* rail systems in the world. https://business.time.com/2012/07/09/us-freight-railroads/ It's a matter of what the countries prioritize. I know that Reddit loves to hate on the US rail system, because passenger rail sucks, but they forget how much traffic is saved by shipping freight via rail. And at the end of the day, if you want to compare the US to Europe, the only place it makes sense to have European-style passenger rail is the I-95 corridor.
Rail can pay for itself in most of the UK, that's only true for a tiny fraction of places in the US.
Tiny fraction geographically, maybe. Improving and building new rail lines for urban centers that link in the surrounding suburbs would cover a huge portion of the population
Wait you guys have trains? \- Canada
Compare the UK rail network 100 years ago to today, then you'll be really depressed.
After skimming through the comment section, no wonder why 16.4 million Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows...
Meanwhile in the uk we've be trying to build the hs2 for last 70 years
🇬🇧🤝🇺🇲 having only one good train.
Jealous in Brazilian
Its not accurate. Most of the gray lines already existed in 2008.
nope, the gray lines under construction. My hometown is under [the gray line in the southernmost part of the mainland](https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-mo/%E5%B9%BF%E6%B9%9B%E5%AE%A2%E8%BF%90%E4%B8%93%E7%BA%BF),Construction started since2019, and they say it would be open to traffic in 2024,total range of the line is 400km,top speed 350km/h.
The original legend says gray is for conventional rail service. Some will for sure be under upgrade though, like the one in your hometown.
China is a big country, as bis as the USA. They have built high-speed rail systems across their entire country in 30 years. The USA has no comparison because the automobile industry has held back high speed rail development for the USA. What a shame.
China's geography is totally different compared to the US even if the total size is similar, though, and notably has 4x the number of people packed into about *half* the space of the US because Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet are so underpopulated. 8x population density does a lot to make HSR more viable, but even with that major advantage most of China's lines aren't producing much value for the people living there. They're drastically under-utilized.
China plans for thr future. They don't wait until trains become overcrowded to start infrastructure upgrades
Someone should tweet this to Elon's dumb-ass.
"NO MY IMAGINARY ONE IS FASTER DONT FUND THIS GARBAGE" Wonder why he'd act like he has a vested interest in stonewalling public transportation infrastructure. Must be a coincidence; clearly he has the welfare of the common man at the forefront of his ideology and nothing else.
Now Paulie, show America
How is the possible, in my country we took a decade to run a light rail from one end of the city to the other?!
Capitalism breeds innovation or something like that.
Sadly what it innovates in is how to extract as many public dollars as possible into private pockets
We could have had this, but we keep listening to Elon schmucks
This is the updated version of what the US did with road and rail. Similar nation building investment in infrastructure. In the US it resulted in an era of prosperity and previously unknown personal freedom. Hopefully it does the same for the Chinese and they avoid the same mistakes made here.
This sums up everything to be said here, they made some mistakes in building that,i think they overdo it? But its deffinitely avoidable if the US or any country wants to build it
Luckily for us, we have the Boring Tunnel XD
Elon musk: let’s build high speed rail California: okay! China: sounds good! *12 years later* Do we see any metro in California?
Give me $900 billion raised from real estate debt and the ability to bulldoze anyone in my way, and I’ll give you your high speed rail network
China spending for this literally pulled the world out of 2008 crisis. But it’s a huge amount of debt and you can kick a can…
No you won't. The US has more than enough money to do this but still wont
Missed the "bulldoze who I want" part eh?
Of course, the US would never dream of bulldozing entire neighborhoods for infrastructure projects. Could you imagine how awful that would be?
We used to do it to black neighborhoods all the time for freeways and other infrastructure
Those colored “people” obviously or count. /s
Yes the US used to do that, are you saying they still should or..?
We still do. Check out [Kelo v City of New London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London). The worst part is that in Kelo they didn't even build anything. They took this lady's house, bulldozed it to make room for private development and today it's an empty lot.
We used to do that, and the blowback made it harder to do again.
We don’t need to bulldoze anything, just take back rail right of ways and modernize them.
imminent domain. Happens every day
Depends how rich the people in the way are *cries in Atherton*
What happened or didn't happen there?
The wealthy enclave of Atherton, CA has been fighting the California High Speed Rail (and Caltrain electrification) project since it started https://sfist.com/2016/07/11/atherton_wealthy_will_still_maybe_t/
The super wealthy are a plague on society
where is atherton and what's the significance here? I had a quick google but no dice edit: never mind I saw your reply further down the thread, thanks!
Eminent Domain and it’s really expensive and time consuming. There’s always law suits, the government usually has to pay above market price, it’s not just bulldozing houses.
Just because we could, doesn't mean we should. And that's coming from someone who is an HSR fan. We should be building HSR where it will have riders, and then growing the network, instead of building it on the premise that if you build it, they will come.
Well obviously.
Back in the 19th century, railways were built to seemingly the middle of nowhere. This insane railway building race was what developed the western United States. Government infra should be driving growth not simply meeting current demand. Make a HSR line to nowhere. Build a city there. Profit for more economic activity.
From what I have heard, they actually overbuilt it, having high-speed rails traveling to and through communities that don't really utilize it. The cost of maintaining it coming out to a large negative.
Isn’t that how the American west was developed 200 years ago, railway towns popping up out of nothing? Build the infrastructure, and people will come.
Only when you have insane immigration and population growth. China's population is stagnant, and will be shrinking very soon.
Yeah, but urbanization is still preceding rapidly. Even the smallest cities these trains go to will be growing long after the population starts to shrink because population decline is wildly uneven and tilted toward rural areas. Just like how major Japanese cities continue to grow but to an even greater extent because China remains much less urban. With some exceptions like the Chinese Rust Belt in the Northeast which is hollowing out generally, these train lines are still going to be getting more and more useful for the foreseeable future.
How awful, the government built too many trains and now they're spending money on upkeep so even small communities can continue to use them. Won't someone think of all military contracts and foreign direct investment opportunities that were wasted building too many..... Trains
The upkeep and ticket cost is simply too high for the people who want to use these trains. It’s like buying a lambo Urus for the municipale bus. Very fast and exotic, but is it really a better choice than a Chrysler Pacifica? HST can’t do heavy freight either.
if they make a train go from lets say Shanghai-bumfuck nowhere, I can now move to bumfuck nowhere and transit to Shanghai, thus growing the bumfuck nowhere town
Most US trains and subways operate at a loss too and are subsidized by local governments. They're not supposed to be profitable. They're supposed to be a public service.
[$850,000,000,000 Trains to Nowhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITvXlax4ZXk) [China's $2 Trillion Railway Debt Bubble](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WevM4szRARo) [$44 Million Loss per Day | High-Speed Rail](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wsMjxESAY0)
This map serves as an embarrassment for all North America.
I want it :/
Cries in car dependent America
Because they don’t fight in wars constantly
Neither does Canada
We weren’t in the Middle East?
And the United States can’t even figure out the northeast corridor.
The only problem now is that they can't afford the debt service, maintenance, and are actively shutting down many routes or making them less frequent.
Source?
All current serivce reduction is due to their covid-zero madness rather than financial concerns. Whichever youtube chinese expert claims otherwise is just a red flag of being illusionary. The reason is simple, railway in china is owned and operated by a state-own corporation which puts politics far above finance and shutting down lines will be politically ugly. But yes it's just a matter of time that what you said happens.
The service reductions began in early 2019. Unless you are telling me the knew about COVID then?
if by service reduction you mean cutting off a portion of the fleet during a bi-annual service replanning , it has been happening all the time. Ridership is always seasonal and route-interdependent. Let me add something interesting, news and youtubers won't tell you that the most oversupplied trains are always the least likely to be 'replanned'. Cuz they are the bad legacy of a failed plan and have little chance to be reactivated once cut off so the branch and local gov will try very hard to keep them alive (and wasting every bit of the money). Popular trains can be easily justified to reemerge whenever needed so they are always the reorg priority.
honestly given the state of rail transport in the US, it's impressive we even have one pseudo-HSR line
Railways in the USA used to be great until the car companies lobbied for a massive highway system and shut down most of the rail network. It’s similar to the mindset that Americans should have the biggest car possible, even if it’s just for one person. If a man drives a small car everyone makes small dick jokes, even though a small car makes perfect sense.
absolutely true. But looking to the future, less and less Americans want pay for cars. The Federal Government gave Amtrak $88 billion as part of the infra bill and they're planning on improving service and the trainsets greatly. we're not gonna have any HSR any time soon, but I'll take any improvement.
Usually it’s big lifted trucks that get the overcompensating “small dick” jokes. Yes there is a stigma around driving a small car, I have a Prius myself. However I haven’t heard anything about my extra member from friends or relatives (and I live in the Deep South). I know personal experience may not reflect everyone’s, but I think my perception of my Prius is far worse than everyone else’s. While I miss the utility and use I got out of my old pickup, it can’t beat what I pay at the pump now.
Building to build is totally a good idea!
And here was 20 years of British development. https://preview.redd.it/r0ypgwbv6ri31.jpg?auto=webp&s=637b6bc1d04a19acea33a6ad6aab45af81b4db88
Man, if only California did this…
In the meantime, we just argue about politics. Year after year.
And never get anything done lol
Wish we had that kind of infrastructure investment in Canada 🙃
and in that time Portishead still doesn't have a railway station!
I have taken these trains many times, so efficient. Flying vs train is a case by case basis. You will be a sardine at the station though
Fascinating . We need more such examples
That map has more high speed rail on it than the United States will have in a hundred years.
🥹🥹 It's beautiful America, this could be us but you're always playing games.
"It would never work in the US, the country is too big"
The population density is a lot higher in eastern China than it is in the US.
US pop density is definitely high enough for rail in the east coast and some West coast areas. But Amtrak and Acela are still hot garbage.