World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Opens In China 322
An anonymous reader writes "Today China continued rolling out the future of high speed rail by officially unveiling the world's longest high-speed rail line — a 2,298-kilometer (1,428-mile) stretch of railway that connects Beijing in the north to Guangzhou in the south. The first trains on the new route hit 300 kph (186 mph), cutting travel time between the two cities by more than half."
Therewhile ... (Score:5, Funny)
...the United States has the longest Slow Speed rail lines of the world.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Funny)
And the United Kingdom has the slowest Slow Speed rail lines in the world... we even had a name for it given by the staff of the state operator.
It's called British Rail Time - around rnd*9 hours behind GMT (or BST), whichever is currently operating. The only timezone in the world defined in pseudocode.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still faster than 90% of Amtrack.
To go from Buffalo NY to Toronto Canada by car takes about 1.44 hours, by train it takes 4.5 hours. As a trip I make on a fairly regular basis for pleasure it would be great to be able to avoid driving as I do not need a car once I arrive. Wasting half of a day of vacation on a train is not something I intend to do.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Informative)
Amtrak top speeds is around 80mph. They are physically capable of going faster, but the cost (fuel) and the track conditions generally don't allow it.
Amtrak trains are sidelined for any passing freight trains, and have to slow down to traverse sections of poor track, and towns. When Amtrak was conceived, it was supposed to have precedence over Freight. That lasted all of 12 minutes, before the railroad which "own" and maintain the track got Congress to strip that language.
(I but "own" in quotes because in most cases, these railway right-of-ways were historically simply granted to the railroads for zero dollars.)
Its cost prohibitive to build new railbeds today, due to the cost of land. This restriction doesn't apply in a command-economy such as China.
The best that could be done would be to build high-speed passenger rail along the Interstate highway system right-of-way. Even this will never happen because its not perceived as important as dumping money down the social program rat hole. Small projects are underway, principally in California, but I suspect these will be gobbled up by freight or budget cuts long before they are completed.
People should ride Amtrak. Its an enjoyable way to travel. Just don't go by train if you are in a hurry.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:4, Informative)
I ride trains when I am in Europe. In the USA it is not just that you have to be not in a hurry, but you have to be retired or independently wealthy. I just checked to visit my brother in TX, would take one overnight train to Chicago, a long layover, and another overnight train onward. So I am supposed to pay more than airplane tickets, and take two days?
With the TSA now moving towards inspecting my testicles for train rides that slim advantage is also disappearing.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Insightful)
From Rome to Berlin... Maybe you should open a map of Europe and see what's in between these two cities : Huge mountains. Try Paris to Barcelona instead (7h25), for example, and tell us if taking the plane is really worth it, considering all the security circus you've got to live with when taking planes and the fact that trains will bring you directly to near the center of each city.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amtrak is fucking stupid. It costs as much or even more than a plane ticket and is like 10 times slower.
well worth it if you're 6'6". plus i get smoke breaks.
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Not to mention train tickets are usually the same, if not higher, than a plane ticket... There's no food on the train. If you're not used to riding the train, it's pretty confusing. You're basically left to your own devices to figure out which train you need to get on, where to get off, and then navigate the tourist trap they call a train station. Not that the airports much better, but the few times I've taken the train I've not been impressed at all. It'd been cheaper, faster and more comfortable to drive
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... There's AN ENTIRE DINING CAR WORTH OF food on the train.....
ftfy
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No food on the train? Maybe things have changed since my last trip, but I've *never* been on a train (other than a commuter) that didn't have a dining car, and the food is typically far better than anything on a plane (though in fairness high altitude really messes with your sense of taste). You just don't get that tiny packet of 5 peanuts and a shot glass worth of soda delivered to your seat.
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>To go from Buffalo NY to Toronto Canada by car takes about 1.44 hours,
On what planet?
The 401 is nearly impassible if you don't get your butt on the highway from the Peace Bridge before 4AM.
1.44 hours from the Peace Bridge only happens if you happen to hit that magical time of the day when traffic is light, and that is generally "before the Devil gets his shoes on."
>by train is 4.5 hours
>amtrak
>As if you can take the train directly from the Peace Bridge to Union Station.
1. Amtrak doesn't operat
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I do it pretty regularly. You don't have to take the peace bridge you know. Actually you keep taking it, leaves the other bridges free for me.
1. No but it offers connections.
2. Amtrack website disagrees
3. It is not that much fun.
4. I do usually get a hotel outside of town and take the train in. Driving in Toronto is a total shitshow.
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I'm not familiar with that trip, but it has to be some kind of an edge condition. Out of interest I looked it up on Amtrak's site and it's two trains. (Does Amtrak even operate in Canada?)
Nevertheless, for the trips I take, Amtrak is much faster and far more enjoyable. I take the train when I'm going from Philadelphia to New York, Washington DC, or occasionally Boston.
* By the time I've fought with traffic around NYC, or made the detour, or fought with traffic around DC, the train has already arrived.
* Oh,
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It's not so stark a contrast when you consider how cheap it is to travel by plane inside the US. My friends and relatives in China are surprised at how inexpensive a plane ticket is here.
Consider the reported lowest priced Economy class seats on the new Beijing-Guangzhou (around 2000km) high speed line is RMB 895, [xinhuanet.com] and that Beijing's and Guanzhou's average wages are around RMB 60k [bjdch.gov.cn], that means the cost of a one-way trip is around 1.5% of yearly income. Now, the lowest cost of a similar one-way flight in the U
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:4, Informative)
We have the population density in some areas, yet it it still not built there. Much of Europe has similar densities yet damn near every town has a train station. Here in the Northeast many towns do not even have one in an hours drive.
Buffalo to Toronto takes 4.5 hours. You claiming those places have to low a population density?
Times to NY city are also insanely long.
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This is true and easily fixable, stop slowing down the damn train. I have been on the ICE and screamed through towns just as you describe.
In just a few generations we can eliminate that population group. If we work to make visits to train stations a yearly school function we might be able to get it done even faster.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, already in the first couple sentences you are wrong.
Look at the actual numbers, for population density then think about it again. France 303/sq mile vs NY state 412.3 inhabitants per square mile. Spain is even lower. Germany only slightly higher. We have states that have very comparable population rates and relatively few hub cities. NY state has only NYC, Buffalo, Rochester. Still there is no good rail travel between them. Those 3 cities hold almost the entire population of the state.
Berlin is not even the biggest airport in Germany, much less some hub city. Way to piss off the entire Western and Southern parts of that country.
China I cannot speak too.
The USA has 60 Major metros, 90% of which don't even have subway systems and sure as hell could be linked with HSR to each other.
Planes are heavily subsidized and burn fuel at rates that will not continue to be possible. The advantage is if we build HSR now we can still use it when we don't have the oil to spare for jets.
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Wow, already in the first couple sentences you are wrong.
Look at the actual numbers, for population density then think about it again. France 303/sq mile vs NY state 412.3 inhabitants per square mile. Spain is even lower. Germany only slightly higher. We have states that have very comparable population rates and relatively few hub cities.
Our two most populous states, CA and TX, are considerably lower in population density that France. The US as a whole is about on-par with that of Spain, save for being 20 times as big. And from my time spent in Europe (mainly Belgium in the mid 2000s, with a lot of trips to Spain and Portugal for vacation), the Spanish train system wasn't anything to brag about!
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Planes are heavily subsidized and burn fuel at rates that will not continue to be possible. The advantage is if we build HSR now we can still use it when we don't have the oil to spare for jets.
Per the Bureau of Transportation Studies (a part of the Federal DOT), rail is subsidized at a 10+ times rate over planes, per passenger mile [dot.gov]. If HSR was able to cut that subsidy by an order of magnitude the best you could do is become competitive with planes, in terms of Federal subsidies.
Meanwhile in China ... (Score:3)
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Germany is certainly not centered around Berlin. There are lots of major centers like Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and so on. In the US a high speed train would make lot of sense, e.g. from Washington to NYC and then to Bostonor LA to San Francisco. It's just that the US has given up on improving its infrastructure.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Informative)
... It's just that the US has given up on improving its infrastructure.
this bears repeating
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Re:Therewhile ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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So at the end of the day, when planes are faster for passenger movement, water transporation is already available and vastly cheaper for goods movement, why on earth would anyone in the US build high speed rail? What's the advantage?
Should we mention that there are 30,000 automobile deaths a year? Or the hundreds of thousands of injuries? You ARE scared to death of driving a car, right? You did develop your own survival instincts to fear an automobile transportation system, right? Those are what you shou
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The US has 12 super-metro/regional areas. The "Great Lakes" region (when it is extended to include St. Louis) is the only one that lacks the density to fully connect all cities within the region.
If the regions are adequately connected internally, linking all 12 is quite easy. The problem is that first step isn't moving fast enough.
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You could do customs like it is done on planes, at the destination.
Even a group of cars would not take more than an hour, this is adding 3 hours to the trip we are talking about.
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Our freight system is the best in the World, though. And if high speed passenger rail made sense, trust me, the railroads would be on it.
You're assuming they're still in the passenger business. They aren't. And you're also assuming that nobody is being an impediement to them.
They are.
If we had the population density to warrant such a passenger system to make it worth while, folks would be jumping on it.
I'm all for rail and efficient transportation. Just because it is so in other areas doesn't mean it's appropriate for another. In other words, a high speed rail system in the US - for except maybe the Northeast - just doesn't make financial or environmental sense. It's a lose/lose proposition.
Let's be smart about it.
And then you see that during the 20's and 30's, we had over a billion rail-passengers a year, when the population was a lot less dense in most areas.
You may think that rail makes no sense except in limited areas, but then you take a look at one of those Earth at night maps and see lots of shining lights. Are there places where rail makes no sense in the US? Absolutely.
But there's a lot more places where we could use it. But we don't have it. Why isn't it being built? Is it a combination of opposition to government, greed on the part of automobile, highway and fuel companies, or what?
Heck, just ask Florida. They voted in a high-speed rail. Then somebody lead a campaign to do what? End it. Why? Do you believe he was really concerned about the fiscal interests, or was he thinking of his own?
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Automobile and air travel are subsidized with public money to build roads and provide air traffic services (and security). The only significant public money going to railroads is to build crossings for car traffic. If politicians were looking for fuel efficiency and cost savings instead of the flashiest most vote-getting programs they would be investing in rail.
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Automobile and air travel are subsidized with public money to build roads and provide air traffic services (and security).
Not forgetting the biggest subsidising of aircraft: Aviation fuel is tax free. Unlike fuel for road or rail.
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The only significant public money going to railroads is to build crossings for car traffic.
Nope, both federal and state money is going to high speed rail in Illinois. It's slated to be finished in 2015 and they already have some stretches finished. Citation here. [idothsr.org]
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Heck, just ask Florida. They voted in a high-speed rail. Then somebody lead a campaign to do what? End it. Why? Do you believe he was really concerned about the fiscal interests, or was he thinking of his own?
And here's the other thing that's often forgotten... Every time something like this gets proposed in Florida, it seems to parallel whatever the major inter-city highway is, while blatantly ignoring the sprawl. If a rail system is 10 miles from your home, and 20 miles from your destination, what good is it exactly? Places that do this right, tend to have some sort of light-rail system to help pick up the slack. However, the density is probably too low for such a system to be worthwhile. I suppose this i
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And if high speed passenger rail made sense, trust me, the railroads would be on it.
You nailed ½ the question when it comes to population density – but only ½. I think high speed rail would work in some locations within the US. I think local politics play en equally important role.
I have been a residence who was directly affected by a rail expansion (freight, upgrade from 1 track to 2) and a commuter rail project. Every place that would be affected put in its own request for harm mitigation that required its own environmental impact studies, etc.
Projects that make sense on
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The problem in America isn't density or population, it's stupid laws that force HSR into absurd "all or nothing" scenarios where they have to either build brand new dedicated corridor every last inch of the way, or make the trains capable of surviving a head-on collision with a mile-long freight train at the highest speed they travel ANYWHERE along their route... not just the highest speed they'd run at along the shared segment of track.
In Germany, it would be entirely legal to build 200km of brand new HSR
Re:Therewhile ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US also has the worst on-time stats (train) of any developed country. It is still faster to travel long distances in the US by air. Flying from Boston to Los Angeles is 3,000 miles by road (twice the China rail length). It's 2604 miles by air and only takes 6 hours 21 minutes (413mph avg). The same trip by China's train would take 14 hours assuming that it ran 186mph the entire trip. Unfortunately now the US you are equally likely to be groped by a TSA agent by air or rail.
It seems disingenuous to compare a non-stop air flight to a mode of travel designed to provide transportation to many points in between the two end points. How long would you think it would take if there were twenty stops on each flight between Boston and LA? Try sticking with Apples to Apples when doing comparisons.
The on time record is abysmal. But it is that way by law. The law that established Amtrak was changed at the last minute to give freight the right of way.
Amtrak is working pretty much as designed. The design was severely flawed. It was, after all, a creation of Congress.
And, for the record, I've never seen a TSA agent on an Amtrak train or at an Amtrak station. Not saying they don't show up, more as a muscle flexing exercise and trial balloon, but is is extremely unusual. Pretty hard to hijack a train and take down a sky scraper with it.
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The law that established Amtrak was changed at the last minute to give freight the right of way.
Wow, that's so dumb.
Reference (Score:5, Informative)
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Hundreds of deaths in the past 2 years in China due to railway accidents? And you prefer to go by car (more than 60000 deaths due to car accidents in China per year)? China's railway system may not be up to European safety standards, but this worlds worst railway systems are still far safer than this worlds safest highways.
Philipp
Re:Reference (Score:5, Informative)
The TGV have had a grand total of zero fatalities on high speed lines in France since they opened in 1981, as a point of comparison.
Catan (Score:3, Funny)
I guess China has cemented their hold on the card for The Longest Road now...
While I'm here, does anyone care to trade wood for sheep?
Cemented? (Score:2)
No. They tied it. China, long a sleeper in technology is now siding with the West in new developments. This will signal a switch to new railroad advances.
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Don't worry, the U.S. will always make sure to spend all of our ore, sheep, and grain (working from memory here) to make sure that we maintain our hold on the Largest Army card.
Train Wreck (Score:2, Interesting)
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What would an airplane crash look like?
Heavy thing going fast can indeed lead to trouble, no point in worrying about just this one.
Nice. Connects to Shenzern. Hong Kong in 2015. (Score:5, Informative)
There's already a high speed rail connection from Guangzhou to Shenzhen North. The high speed rail connection through to Hong Kong is scheduled for completion in 2014, and will shorten travel time for that last link from 2 hours to 38 minutes. (Except that there's a border control point between Shentzen and Hong Kong that takes longer than the travel time.)
Another step has been taken in tying China more closely together. That's part of the political motivation. Traditionally, China's provinces were not closely connected. Each province was expected to be self-sufficient in food and other essentials. That continued through the Mao era, and it's not completely gone. There are still some inter-provincial trade restrictions.
Of course, the South still speaks Cantonese, while the North speaks Mandarin. This despite half a century of effort by the central government. "The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away".
I just hope they improved their technology (Score:3)
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China just connects cities with theirs. We connect cornfields with ours.
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When you can build a HSR train, not have it subsidized (heavily) by tax payers, have it affordable and convenient (fast) for people to use, THEN and only then will I accept it as an option. Problem is, you can't, as HSR fails on all these accounts. In California, we passed HSR and the costs have already tripled what they proponents claimed it would cost, AND it hasn't even started. The estimated ticket prices are such that is is still cheaper to fly (air rail system). Nobody that is proposing HSR is based o
Re:Meanwhile in the US... (Score:5, Informative)
So should we get rid of the interstates as well?
What about airports? Should they all be closed for the same reason?
I propose HSR not for any romantic notions, but because I have ridden it in Europe. I have been on the damn things and seen how well they work.
How about you name a method of travel that meets those goals so we can compare it to HSR.
Re:Meanwhile in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)
The GP insists, first and foremost, that it not be subsidized by Government money (tax payers).
That immediately sets an impossibly high barrier. One that can't be met by any transportation system, water system, sewer system, or communication system.
Ignorance of the proper place for government expenditures is an unfortunate trait of ultra-conservative types. When any government involvement with societal life other than national defense is arbitrarily off the table, you have an impossible situation and a recipe for an agrarian society.
Roads, and railroads, necessarily require government money and government powers. If one stubborn farmer can stand in the way of a road or railroad (as would be the case in a purely private development) it would be legally impossible to build anything, not just cost prohibitive.
I suspect the GP never thinks about that while driving to work on that government road, or flushing his toilet to that government sewer while surfing the web on that government bandwidth.
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Re:Meanwhile in the US... (Score:5, Informative)
The interstate highway system is paid for by the federal government. $425 billion. Apparently the largest public works system since the pyramids. Why exactly Americans think of this as "a brilliant economic success" and state funded medicine as "socialist" the FSM only knows.
Well actually we do know. Because that's how lobbyists chose to frame them.
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The interstate highway system is paid for by the federal government. $425 billion. Apparently the largest public works system since the pyramids. Why exactly Americans think of this as "a brilliant economic success" and state funded medicine as "socialist" the FSM only knows.
Well actually we do know. Because that's how lobbyists chose to frame them.
I bet some of the same people going out and making a stink about the evils of the health care reform bill or teachers unions still call up to complain when there is a pothole on their street.
Everything is wasteful, unless it's for you.
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Exactly, and with the number of people that are planned on using the HSR, the "unless it is for you" is miniscule. You won't see Millions of people opting for the HSR instead of driving I5. So, HSR is just a romantic notion ... still.
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For similar reasons I think public transport (and many similar) systems shouldn't be run as profit centres. There should be safety, quality, availability and reliability standards, and good regulation. Cost should also be considered but mainly to see if someone is screwing up badly, or corrupt. Anyone not too stupid can figure out how much such things
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And yet, there are plenty of businesses that have closed because of the regulations that require elevators. You won't actually see that though, because they simply disappear rather than spend millions retrofitting old buildings.
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It is a success, because it works, and tons of goods and millions of people use it everyday. HSR, will be not be, because it is simply too limited. I can take my car to from Sacramento to LA in about 6 hours, at a cost of (Gas Guzzler) less than $150 in petrol, taking my family (four additional people) as a bonus. HSR will make the trip in 4 hours (not that much faster) and at more than $250 per person, AND still lose money. AND once I get there, I would still need to rent a car. And further trips, I would
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It is a success, because it works, and tons of goods and millions of people use it everyday.
The same argument can be used in Europe and Asia. You never refuted the grandparent's claim which is that the interstate highway was funded by government money, not by user money which you used against HSR.
HSR, will be not be, because it is simply too limited.
Europe and most of Asia would disagree.
I can take my car to from Sacramento to LA in about 6 hours, at a cost of (Gas Guzzler) less than $150 in petrol, taking my family (four additional people) as a bonus.
Yet in your entire analysis, you only account for the cost of gasoline. You didn't account for the cost of the roads you would use (they are not free and cost money to maintain or in your words LOSE money). You didn't account for the cost of the vehicle depreciation,
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The interstate highway system is paid for by the federal government. $425 billion. Apparently the largest public works system since the pyramids.
How much would the proposed HSR system cost? Would it operate at a surplus like the highway system does [dot.gov]?
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So I have to pay taxes to fund that shit, even though my commute is under 5 miles?
Sounds like you are the fatty eating bonbons here.
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If it was up to me rail would be doing 90% of that.
I have no problem paying for lifestyle problems, just like the rock climbing example I would gladly pay for that to make sure everyone can get healthcare.
The day you find yourself unemployed and the HSA spent you might change your mind. Probably not, I have an uncle like that, he talked the same talk and now gladly accepts medicare but still talks bad about the 47%. He never gets that he is part of it.
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WTF are you talking about?
They are a giant sinkhole of money. The only way they are a success is if you are in the oil, auto or road building business.
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As opposed to rail?
Are you entirely insane or just a little?
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Tired of the corporate sycophants on Slashdot.
I know that it is sacrilege in the U.S. to say so, but some things are worth doing even if you can't make a profit on them.
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Heck they understand that the roads were worth making even though there wasn't a profit on them.
Their thoughts are formed by what lobbyists tell them to think.
Re:Meanwhile in the US... (Score:4, Informative)
The Acela cost ~$2B and generates $500M/year in revenue. Its been running since 1999 and is successful because it has downtown terminals in Boston, New York and Washington. Also because it runs on existing right-of-way with some track upgrades. Business class New York to Boston is $107 and takes 4 hours which is about the same time as air travel + 2 airport shuttles + groping. So if you choose the right location, it works. However, nothing I've seen about the California plan suggests they are choosing the right location.
Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Enjoy your slide into obsolesce. If you remove all the emotionalism from those proposing pure capitalism, your are left holding a big, empty, "I don't want to spend any more" motto. It is religious fanaticism.
Countries thrive when they invest, undertake massive projects, improve themselves. They slide into nothingness when the accountants take over as their infrastructure falls apart and all the bright people find themselves working abroad.
The ultimate failure of religious fantatics like the parent is that they think the race ends. That once you won, that is it. The race never ends. And China right now is winning by default because everyone else has stopped. You can smirk about North-Korea's rocket attempts but at least they are trying. In the west, people worry about the costs to much to do ANYTHING anymore. Great nations were not build by accountants.
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When you can build a HSR train, not have it subsidized (heavily) by tax payers, have it affordable and convenient (fast) for people to use, THEN and only then will I accept it as an option.
If it's not subsidized by tax payers, it's none of your business, so making additional demands on top of that is silly.
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Since we're talking about California: the HSR project is absolutely retarded, and a case-study in how not to create an HSR:
- due to political issues, the rail line stops in the towns of Bumfuck and Nowhere, also known as Gilroy and Bakersfield. That adds cost and time to delivering it.
- due to cost issues, a lot of the HSR tracks are actually shared with various existing rail authorities (Caltrain, for example), and therefore the trains will not hit the high speeds necessary to qualify as HSR in many locati
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Actually, I do not think the Chinese built it. I believe they contracted european train builders.
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That they build unsafe systems.
You are going to have hiccups with any new system – that’s a given. Combine that with tight deadlines & budgets imposed from above, the regulators and safety inspectors are not independent from the organization running the train, the mandatory use of state contractors, and graft from below – well serious accidents will occur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision#Investigation [wikipedia.org]
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You could have hit the airport and been there in far less time. Leaving you time to eat at a nice restaurant and sleep in a hotel.
Do they even have booze on Amtrack?
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I donno about that. "My time" for the train is like 15 minutes to get aboard and literally 5 minutes to cross the street on the NYC side. "My time" for the airplane is a half hour out to the airport in the middle of nowhere and parking, two hours sitting around for security theater playtime, you can't do what you want on a plane so thats about two hours lost during flight time, and finally a nice $50 hour long cab ride on the NYC side, so that's like 5 hours of "my time" if flying.
As for the restaurant, the amtrak food was "nice" sure not a $200 steak house but no worse than a family restaurant, and the cabin was comfortable enough to sleep in. I had a little sleeper cabin with desk, one entire wall is a giant window, and all that.
Booze? Oh god yes. Some day you should take an observation car out west where the obs car has a bar in the middle of the top floor (the observation area). The west coast trains are double decker two floor and much nicer than the east coast single floor dumpy-trains. None the less booze is booze... Nicotine addicts would have serious issues with Amtrak, but the alkies will be just fine, well lubricated, whatever. Also if you have a cabin unless they're peeking in the windows you can drink or eat whatever you can haul aboard...
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When I am retired I plan to do just that.
I love train travel, I use it all the time in Europe. I wish I could use it here. In the states though we seem to have no trouble subsidizing roads, but for some reason we view trans as some socialist evil. I think it has a lot to do with trains being a more democratic form of travel, I sit in the same seat as the rich. On the road they can show off their cars.
The booze factor may get me to tolerate a 4 hour rid to toronto though. On vacation I like to keep my BAC up
Re:Marketing (Score:4, Informative)
You could have hit the airport and been there in far less time. Leaving you time to eat at a nice restaurant and sleep in a hotel.
Do they even have booze on Amtrack?
Yes they do, and they also have a pretty good restaurant, and the hotel rooms, while small, are quite nice.
Re:Marketing (Score:4)
This new train has an 8 to 10 hour scheduled travel time and covers 2100 km.
That means it averages 210km/h including stops along the way (it's not direct).
Re:Marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
This new train has an 8 to 10 hour scheduled travel time and covers 2100 km.
That means it averages 210km/h including stops along the way (it's not direct).
If there are any stops along the way you will need much greater speeds than 210km/h.
I suggest the route is undoable in 10 hours if there is even a few stops unless the train spends a great deal of time at 300km/h.
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Instead of acting so smart, why not do the math?
You simply can not make up a half hour stop, or even a 15 minute stop at more than a very few cities.
You need this time to board and de-train passengers, stow luggage, etc.
You have to slow down to approach to cities, curves, hills, and accelerate on departure from cities.
Start chopping half hour segments out of 10 hour trip an see what your average speed needs to be.
Anything beyond 6 stops along the route means you can't possibly make up the time.
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
I think I read 35 stops on the route, if a train stops at every stop then that is roughly 70 minutes in station at 2 minutes a stop. So out of the 8 hour trip, thats 6 hours and 50 minutes you are moving, which means that the trains are going somewhere over 300km/h (336km/h to be exact). I doubt this is the actual speed, I am guess that the 8 hour trip is for express trains, which will skip some of the stops on the way, only stopping at major stations, while other trains will stop at all or more stations (this is how it works in Japan). That'd put the speed at around 280-300km/h which is about what Japanese systems run at.
Re: (Score:3)
sigh.
There are hundreds of thousands of miles of train miles covered each day in Europe at speeds like these. Oh, and they have a pretty good safety record. There has been only one fatal crash on High speed lines in Europe and that was in Germany and wasn't down to a track defect.
The completion of the high speed line from London to Paris (including 36km under the Channel) has captured the majority of the passenger traffic between the two capital cities. Two hours and a bit for City-Centre to City-Centre mak
Re: (Score:3)
The situation in America is a little bit different. In Europe you typically want to go to the center of a city. In Paris once you are in Gare du Nord, you are quickly anywhere you want provided you are not already where you want to go. And it is pretty much like that for every major city. Also, despite having a good HSR trian system, all trip that do not go toward or away from paris are a nightmare (try a Lyon-Bordeaux or Lyon-Strasbourg for instance).
In the US, you typically do not care about being downtow
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like either you are a liar or France needs to fix that. In Germany you can get from just about anywhere to anywhere else on the train. To go from Frankfurt to my Uncles home, you can take a plane or train to Stuttgart then another train to a nearby train and in good weather walk or in poor weather take a taxi or bus the last couple miles. I know shocking that an American would consider walking an acceptable method of transportation.
What we actually need is better public transit in the cities as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot, get a fucking edit button.
To go from Frankfurt to my Uncles home, you can take a plane or train to Stuttgart then another train to a nearby small city Goppingen and in good weather walk or in poor weather take a taxi or bus the last couple miles.
Re: (Score:2)
I am french you know. :) There are trains from Lyon to Bordeaux, but not high speed trains and because of Massif Central the track is not straight. The same goes between Lyon and Strasbourg you can go there but you have a stupid slow train that stops eveywhere and it might be faster to go through Paris. If you want to go from Lyon to Bordeaux, I believe you have a not-so-fast train to toulouse and then you are on slow tracks to Bordeaux. In practice most people that need to go from Lyon to Bordeaux fly. (Or
Re: (Score:2)
I feel sorry for you :P
Sounds like Columbus sucks. Buffalo used to be similar but the city has done a great job in recent years growing some neighborhoods.
Also please speak to your countrymen about CDG airport. It is not only a toilet for the many homeless that inhabit it, but also a huge pain in the ass to traverse. Otherwise, I like your nation just fine, what I have seen of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, columbus sucks...
about France. One of the main problem of the country is an over concentration of everything in Paris. About 20% of the French population lives in ile-de-france (the region of paris) and about 4% of the french population lives in paris itself.
That completely skews everything. They were planning on building a 3rd airport around Paris. If you look at an infrastructure map of France, it appears fairly clearly that everything go from or to Paris. All the administration (public or private) t
Re: (Score:2)
In most cities on Europe there is a comprehensive network of public transport. This negates the need to drive for a lot of us.
I don't drive all the way to work. I drive 4km to the station and take the train. Then it is a sub 5 minute walk to the office.
Only when I got to the USA do I have to drive everywhere. I have a ticket for jaywalking between shopping malls in Fla. when I should have driven the 200yds.
That takes us into another whole argument/debate
For the N.E of the US and certainly for SF/Sac->LA-
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It is nice traveling, but unless you can catch specials or book four months out, it isn't very cheap. 100 - 150 euro per person, one way.
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I wonder why we don't make these kinds of railway advances in the US.
They are. [thetelegraph.com] Lots of news in the local paper [sj-r.com] which unfortunately pulls online stories after they've been up a while. The track is running right through town here.
Re:Good for China (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why we don't make these kinds of railway advances in the US
Really? You actually wonder about this?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/17/california-high-speed-rail-lawsuit_n_2150455.html
Since this should be self evident, I'll keep the explanation simple.
China is run by authoritarians that are hell bent on prosperity. They do not indulge: environmentalists, humans rights, property rights or special interests that aren't immediately aligned with said goal. The rail line goes here and you step aside quietly or spend years of your life making Walmart SKUs in a labor camp. [oregonlive.com]
The US is run by statists and the comfortable electorate they've purchased with bennies. Prosperity is something we have far too much of so we spend our time squabbling in court, creating whole new forms of legal jeapody and liability as we go. This precludes large scale, capital intensive ventures such as continental scale rail systems. The lead times to get through the legislatures, courts, etc. is just too damn long. Capital won't tolerate this and seeks better venues, most of which are in Asia.
Enjoy your decline.
There are two kinds of authoritarians (Score:3)
There are two kinds of authoritarians. Stupid ones who get the priorities comprehensively fucked up and build a choking mountain of red tape (U.S.), and those who have actual working critical faculties and rational priorities (China).
Sure, the details of China's priorities are arguable, and adjustments are made over time. But one thing they are not is stupid and irrational. In the U.S. the priorities are blatantly stupid, utterly irrational, and no one is allowed to argue them.
This is a completely separate
Re:A Detractor (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm where have I heard this somewhere before, oh yeah a bit further down on the page where Lockheed was crying that SpaceX couldn't possibly be doing anything this much cheaper and better than them without compromising safety. Sure, if you go look at the crap they deliver to Wal-Mart your idea of Chinese quality might be low but they also do rocket science putting men in space and probes orbiting the moon and I'm pretty sure they do brain surgery too. That they often ignore emissions is not the same as being ignorant of them, unless it's say the Olympics in Beijing where they make a huge temporary clean-up effort. They might be more willing to trample the individual's rights than in other countries but the progress they make is very much real. Real income has more than tripled for over a billion people in the last decade:
GDP per capita measured in purchasing power terms more than tripled from $2,800 in 2002 to a forecast $9,100 in 2012 according to the International Monetary Fund.
Re: (Score:3)
They artificially manipulate their currency and sell goods at below market value which hinders the world's economy. I wonde how safe this train really is!
Manipulating currency is not the problem, it is when USA and other countries sold to China (it was not stolen) the industrial capability to build things. See "Winner Take All" by Richard Elkus http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Competitiveness-Nations/dp/B002KAOSPG [amazon.com]
Anyway, argue what everyone is doing on this forum, China is building HSR instead PPT like rest of us.