13 ms·

The Largest Infrastructure Project in History: Chinese High-Speed Rail to Europe

68 points by limist 17y ago

fbu 17y ago
Any map so far ? They have to go through Iran, Russia or a myriad of ex-ussr countries, I can't see how that's gonna work out ...
- DenisM 17y ago
  Existing rail network covers entire world already and works without any drama.
  - fbu 17y ago
    It's like saying there are roads everywhere around the globe, but not super highways, because it's a huge investment. Therefore you need to be confident it's gonna be used for a long time.
- gn 17y ago
  I've personally been to Iran, Russia, and a handful of other ex-USSR countries, and I can't see any real obstacles here. Even those countries in this region that suck at stable government tend to be fairly good at reliable infrastructure; California-style rolling brownouts or Manhattan-type shitty metro cars would be more or less unthinkable here. I'm pretty certain people and politicians alike are ready to embrace this project. In the former Soviet block and in the Middle East alike, especially in Turkey, rail networks still symbolize progress and prosperity like nothing else.
  - mseebach 17y ago
    One word: Visas. As it now, you need a transit-visa just to change planes in Moscow. Travelling through, what, 11 countries, each one insisting on confirming the identity of each person entering the country and making sure they exit again? The alternative is sealing people inside the cars, which is what they do on the Kaliningrad-Moscow train that passes through Lithuania and Belarus, but that's logistically problematic, when there are stops in more than two countries. There are very real political problems to this, and while some of them can be resolved easily, I'd like to remind people that the TGV rail system in France is frequently brought to a halt by protesting farmers who park a tractor on the track. And that's just one country (two if you ask the angry farmers - Paris and the 'real people').
    - gn 17y ago
      You do have a point there; trains are a lot easier to stop than planes or ships and the visa thing can be a pain here, even with a very good passport. Consider, however, that most countries in this region have a +lot+ of experience with commercial land passenger vehicles going across multiple borders. I'm in Sofia, Bulgaria right now. There is a daily direct bus connection from here to Tehran. It does take 48 hours but it's safe, it's clean, and it gets me there. I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, there will be problems and setbacks, but more likely than not they will find a way eventually.
- yread 17y ago
  There is one here http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/03/09/china-promotes-its-transcontinental-ambitions-with-massive-rail-plan/ http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/03/09/china-promotes...
drats 17y ago
"Its main connection to Europe would likely go through India, Pakistan and the Middle East. Although, exact routes are not yet determined." Can anyone say "IED derailment at 200kph+"?
- fnid2 17y ago
  Wow, why all the negativity? This is an awesome project and lots of rational reasons it should go through, but you and other commenters are being so irrationally negative. People in the old days said, "International plane flights will never work. People won't trust flying over the ocean." This project will happen. It's inevitable. It's the only way people will be able to move between countries when planes are too expensive to fuel.
  - tomjen2 17y ago
    It is cheaper for me to fly Aalborg-Copenhagen than it is to take the train. I don't see this as a cost cutting meassure. It would also be a major annoyance to have to go through customs in 10 different countries.
  - drats 17y ago
    It's not negativity, it's a dream that I hope one day will be established; people living in peace and traveling to each others countries to learn and trade, enriching and improving each other's lives. I am being a realist, there are terrorist attacks almost daily in some ME countries and Pakistan. A train packed with tourists and businesspeople is pretty much the same target value to a terrorist as a plane, except you can attack it from the outside much more easily. The prevalence of IEDs and people willing to use them, highly mobile suicide car bombs and the doctrine of certain radical Muslims which allows for moral permissibility of killing fellow Muslims who are "dealing with the enemy" (strains of Wahhabi and Qutbism thinking like Bin Laden's) would make such an attack inevitable. This "negative" attitude of mine is part of the economic damage that is done to the moderate Muslims of these countries by the extremists. How many tourists have decided not to take a trip to many of these countries? How many businesses haven't been set up? How many skilled workers have fled? It's a massive economic damage these people are inflicting beyond the scope of their deplorable murders.
CapitalistCartr 17y ago
This is not a big deal as an engineering project. It's a lot of expensive track-laying, but the obstacles are not as bad as some already conquered elsewhere. Politically, it's basically impossible.
- fnid2 17y ago
  In the U.S. it'd be politically impossible, but not in other countries, especially not in China. All the other countries have to say is "yes" and they very likely will because it'll be cheaper to transport goods and people between their markets. The Eurail pass will take you nearly anywhere you want to go in Europe for 6 months and $2k. They love trains. This project and this vision is another nail in the U.S. hegemony coffin.
  - waterlesscloud 17y ago
    Everyone has to keep saying "yes" in perpetuity, or the project has gaps and interruptions and is worth less than was planned. 17 nations with wildly different goals are unlikely to keep saying yes.
    - fnid2 17y ago
      They said yes to airlines for the same reason they'll say yes to this project. China paying for it is a big incentive. Imagine if the U.S. told Romania they'd build them an international airport if Romania provided the concrete and iron. Do you think Romania would say no? Of course not. Saying yes opens up Romania to the world. Similarly, this rail line opens up europe and asia to a market that will dwarf the west. If they don't say yes, they will be excluded from perhaps the most powerful coalition of countries ever before assembled. It is definitely not in any country's best interest to say no to this project. Why would they say no?
      - waterlesscloud 17y ago
        Many nations do many things that aren't in their best interest, objectively speaking. It's not like politics or even economics are ruled by rational decision making, you know.
ojbyrne 17y ago
A trans-North America high speed rail route would be pretty cool. This seems analogous to the way sputnik ignited the space race.
- melling 17y ago
  Yeah, someday we'll have high-speed rail in the US. It will probably take at least a decade to get the first one, if not a little longer. In the meantime, read how GM paid to destroy our mass transit system so people would buy more cars. http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html
- chancho 17y ago
  Except that sputnik was a proxy for a nuclear weapon. "Look what we can put up above your heads, and there's not a thing you can do about it." High-speed rail doesn't have the same overtones. Also, connecting 1.5 billion to 700 million is a lot more lucrative than connecting, what, 150 million to 50 million? Nevermind the fact that there are existing high-speed networks to connect with in Europe and China. What a fucking bummer it would be to take a 6 hour train trip from NY to LA then a 6 hour bus from LA to SF.
  - Xichekolas 17y ago
    To get from NY to LA in 6 hours would require a train that averages 410mph. This is exactly the type of route that trains will not take from planes any time soon. The fastest train in the world is China's maglev that does almost 270mph. But a trip from LA to SF, or St. Louis to Chicago, or NY to DC, or between any major city in Texas and any other one... that is the kind of route that rail would excel at, provided we had the motivation to build it. All that said, I don't see the motivation to take a two day train trip from China to London when you could fly it in much less time. I understand the comfort factors and all, but when you are talking that length of time, I think the customer demand is going to be very limited (unless it's significantly cheaper than airfare).
jacquesm 17y ago
Once it's done I'll travel that thing, what a unique perspective on the world it must be to see the landscape and the culture change like that. It's a perspective that no airplane ride will ever give you.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  Writer Paul Theroux has made essentially this trip twice now, decades apart. Chronicled in his books THE GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR and GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR.
- stingraycharles 17y ago
  Well, you can already do something like that, just a little slower (which gives you more time to appreciate the landscape changing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway It essentially connects Vladivostok with Europe, going through countries like North Korea and China, making the railway even larger than the railway proposed in this article.
  - chrisb 17y ago
    "going through countries like North Korea..." Your geography and politics are slightly incorrect :)
    - stingraycharles 17y ago
      Hmmm, now I might be completely ignorant, but care to explain why? As far as I understood, the train splits in China with a connection to Pyongyang.
      - mseebach 17y ago
        The Trans-Siberian railway goes across Siberia, north of China and Mongolia, and is entirely in Russia. A popular variation, though, is the route that branches through Mongolia and terminates in Beijing. This route also connects to Pyongyang, but that's not the TSRW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Trans-Siberian_railway.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Trans-Siberian_railway... EDIT - wikipedia says it better than I: The Trans-Siberian Railway is often associated with the main transcontinental Russian train that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At 9,259 kilometres (5,753 miles),[1] spanning a record 7 time zones and taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world, after the Moscow–Pyongyang (10,267 km, 6,380 mi)[2] and the Kiev–Vladivostok (11,085 km, 6,888 mi)[3] services, both of which also follow the Trans-Siberian for much of their routes. The route was opened by Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovitch of Russia after his eastern journey ended.
sman 17y ago
Hard to make it happen politically. India tried something similar, to get gas from Iran in a pipeline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan%E2%80%93India_gas_pipeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan%E2%80%93I... The project has been gestating for the last 20 years with no real movement in the progress meter. And similar to what happened with the pipeline, I expect the US to spring roadblocks all over the place. Even if it cannot convince every country, it will convince enough to ensure gaps in the rail line undermining its usefulness.
- fnid2 17y ago
  In January 2010, the United States asked Pakistan to ... abandon its plan ... in order to isolate Iran. What is an American to think of this? Am I suppose to like it because I'm an American or despise it because it is holding up a better life for humanity?
  - Qz 17y ago
    Nationalism is overrated, so I vote for despise it.
danw 17y ago
Any mention of what the route would be? And what's the anticipated travel time from London to China?
- DFootball 17y ago
  Good question. Wouldn't that still take almost a week?
- limist 17y ago
  From the article: "...China’s new goal is to continue on with a HSR revolution internationally in order to create two-day HSR trip times between Beijing and London."
  - waterlesscloud 17y ago
    A 48 hr trip would have to average just over 100mph. Maybe, if it's got some pretty limited stops.
    - noilly 17y ago
      London to Beijing takes about 9-10 days as of right now. You could easily get that to 5-7 days if you cut out stops (especially between Moscow and Beijing) and if you tripled the average speed of the trains from ~30-40 mph to 90-120 mph... there you go, although the latter part is what requires so much money and engineering.
limist 17y ago
Wow, didn't expect such interest from HN. Seems everyone loves trains. :) Tangentially, what is it about trains anyway? Seems to me they hit the natural sweet-spot of "comprehensible speed" or speed at a near-human scale: not so fast and distant as to be alien like jets, but fast enough to be interesting. Oh, and stress-free compared to driving.
- fnid2 17y ago
  Have you traveled on trains? It's so much nicer than planes. No security check, no long waits, no cattle herding. Plus, they are more efficient. They are transportation of the future. The world is going to be going backwards in time as energy becomes more expensive. This means leaving planes and going to trains and wind powered ships. It's already happening. Plus, it is a national recognition that long term thinking is beneficial. China in this case is a visionary example for the world. I hope the U.S. wakes up soon.
  - shawndrost 17y ago
    > ...as energy becomes more expensive. Is energy becoming more expensive? A quick search (ie http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1869.gif http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1869.gif) shows no such long-term trend.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - fnid2 17y ago
      Many argue, including Hubert King, that oil is running out. He noticed a bell curve of output and predicted the peak of that output would be right around today. He extrapolated data from single wells, to fields to entire nations, correctly was pretty accurate with his predictions and many petrol geologists think we are at or very near the peak and energy will continue to get more expensive as output declines relative to consumption. By my math, even at current consumption rates we have just about 30 years of oil left: oil reserves divided by daily consumption. That doesn't include the growth rate of consumption and China and India hardly use anything right now per capita compared to the west.
portman 17y ago
The largest PROPOSED infrastructure project in history would be the Transatlantic Tunnel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic-maglev http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic...
- MaysonL 17y ago
  As told by Harry Harrison: A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/harry-harrison/tunnel-through-deeps.htm http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/harry-harrison/tunnel-th...
  - aarghh 17y ago
    First thing I thought of, too.
- fnid2 17y ago
  I shook my head when I read this part: Cost: $88 billion to $175 billion Why on earth hasn't this project been started yet? We spend that in a few months in Iraq. We write checks for that and just give them to AIG, GS, and MS. Seriously, what is going on? Why is our country like this?? When is it going to change? Is it going to change? Should I just move to china? Seriously. I've considered it. Or India. Or even south america. I continue to ask myself, why do I choose to live in the U.S.? Because I was born here? Is that a good enough reason?
  - nfnaaron 17y ago
    It does feel like the world is passing us by.
  - mseebach 17y ago
    Considering that none of the key technologies exist yet, I find that the cost is very optimistic. The "øresund" bridge linking Denmark and Sweden opened in 2000 at a cost of ~5.5 bln USD. It's 15.9 km = 9.9 miles, or $555 mio/mile. This was a successful project, using very well understood technology by people who just finished building a similar project 150 miles away, finished roughly on time. A transatlantic tunnel would be 3500 miles, that's 350 times longer. Its completely unknown technology - no-one has ever submerged a vacuum tunnel, and no-one has build a mag-lev that actually goes 4000mph. And they're telling us it can be done for $50 mio/mile, less than a tenth of a regular bridge? I know it doesn't scale linearly, but I'd expect such a tunnel to be more, not less, expensive pr. mile. At the same mile-cost as a bridge, it'd cost $1942 bln. I did a back-of-an-envelope calculation when this came out a while ago, that if all plane passengers from London to New York (can't remember the number now) were to switch to such a train, tickets would have to cost an average $10.000, one way, to cover 5% maintenance, interest and ROI.
martythemaniak 17y ago
With all the flack airlines and air transport is getting now because of climate change, maybe China can try and sell this is action on that front? Trains are more efficient than airplanes, are they not? (not a rhetorical question) Even so, I doubt this will happen in 10 years.
zol 17y ago
With China's minimum wage being around US 60c an hour (http://bit.ly/6mDBYz http://bit.ly/6mDBYz) they are in a much better position to undertake such a labour intensive job as the West. It is a smart move to receive payment in the form of natural resources as some of the countries involved in the network are economically poor but resource rich. It is likely the countries participating will end up paying a lot more in resources than they would have in cash. It's my opinion that people are mistaken when viewing the proposal in terms of personal transport. It's not. It's a system designed to fuel China's growing demand for resources, which cannot be transported via air. In the other direction will come a high speed flow of manufactured goods.
- erikstarck 17y ago
  For that kind of project it would make sense to develop robotics and other technology that could lower the cost dramatically. Also, you can't just take the minimum wage from China and multiply with the number of workers, there are many costs added to having that many people in different countries. Food and housing in Germany, for example, are expensive.
thingie 17y ago
Hm, this doesn't really seems to be an attempt to divert passenger traffic from using the planes to some cross-continental HSR. On the other hand, it'd allow China to export much much more goods and much much faster than nowadays with ships [1]. And of course, it would also very much strengthen China's influence in the Middle east and around, as in this area, HSR travel times would be very interesting and provide (in comparison) wonderful connection with China. You wouldn't travel from China to Europe by train even with this, of course. I wonder what would the Russian response be, as they are quite expected to maintain their strong influence in this region, and this isn't exactly going to support that. [1] This is already being done, in a rather small scale.

68 points by limist 17y ago

fbu 17y ago

Any map so far ? They have to go through Iran, Russia or a myriad of ex-ussr countries, I can't see how that's gonna work out ...

DenisM 17y ago
Existing rail network covers entire world already and works without any drama.
- fbu 17y ago
  It's like saying there are roads everywhere around the globe, but not super highways, because it's a huge investment. Therefore you need to be confident it's gonna be used for a long time.
gn 17y ago
I've personally been to Iran, Russia, and a handful of other ex-USSR countries, and I can't see any real obstacles here. Even those countries in this region that suck at stable government tend to be fairly good at reliable infrastructure; California-style rolling brownouts or Manhattan-type shitty metro cars would be more or less unthinkable here. I'm pretty certain people and politicians alike are ready to embrace this project. In the former Soviet block and in the Middle East alike, especially in Turkey, rail networks still symbolize progress and prosperity like nothing else.
- mseebach 17y ago
  One word: Visas. As it now, you need a transit-visa just to change planes in Moscow. Travelling through, what, 11 countries, each one insisting on confirming the identity of each person entering the country and making sure they exit again? The alternative is sealing people inside the cars, which is what they do on the Kaliningrad-Moscow train that passes through Lithuania and Belarus, but that's logistically problematic, when there are stops in more than two countries. There are very real political problems to this, and while some of them can be resolved easily, I'd like to remind people that the TGV rail system in France is frequently brought to a halt by protesting farmers who park a tractor on the track. And that's just one country (two if you ask the angry farmers - Paris and the 'real people').
  - gn 17y ago
    You do have a point there; trains are a lot easier to stop than planes or ships and the visa thing can be a pain here, even with a very good passport. Consider, however, that most countries in this region have a +lot+ of experience with commercial land passenger vehicles going across multiple borders. I'm in Sofia, Bulgaria right now. There is a daily direct bus connection from here to Tehran. It does take 48 hours but it's safe, it's clean, and it gets me there. I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, there will be problems and setbacks, but more likely than not they will find a way eventually.
yread 17y ago
There is one here http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/03/09/china-promotes-its-transcontinental-ambitions-with-massive-rail-plan/ http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/03/09/china-promotes...

drats 17y ago

"Its main connection to Europe would likely go through India, Pakistan and the Middle East. Although, exact routes are not yet determined." Can anyone say "IED derailment at 200kph+"?

fnid2 17y ago
Wow, why all the negativity? This is an awesome project and lots of rational reasons it should go through, but you and other commenters are being so irrationally negative. People in the old days said, "International plane flights will never work. People won't trust flying over the ocean." This project will happen. It's inevitable. It's the only way people will be able to move between countries when planes are too expensive to fuel.
- tomjen2 17y ago
  It is cheaper for me to fly Aalborg-Copenhagen than it is to take the train. I don't see this as a cost cutting meassure. It would also be a major annoyance to have to go through customs in 10 different countries.
- drats 17y ago
  It's not negativity, it's a dream that I hope one day will be established; people living in peace and traveling to each others countries to learn and trade, enriching and improving each other's lives. I am being a realist, there are terrorist attacks almost daily in some ME countries and Pakistan. A train packed with tourists and businesspeople is pretty much the same target value to a terrorist as a plane, except you can attack it from the outside much more easily. The prevalence of IEDs and people willing to use them, highly mobile suicide car bombs and the doctrine of certain radical Muslims which allows for moral permissibility of killing fellow Muslims who are "dealing with the enemy" (strains of Wahhabi and Qutbism thinking like Bin Laden's) would make such an attack inevitable. This "negative" attitude of mine is part of the economic damage that is done to the moderate Muslims of these countries by the extremists. How many tourists have decided not to take a trip to many of these countries? How many businesses haven't been set up? How many skilled workers have fled? It's a massive economic damage these people are inflicting beyond the scope of their deplorable murders.

CapitalistCartr 17y ago

This is not a big deal as an engineering project. It's a lot of expensive track-laying, but the obstacles are not as bad as some already conquered elsewhere. Politically, it's basically impossible.

fnid2 17y ago
In the U.S. it'd be politically impossible, but not in other countries, especially not in China. All the other countries have to say is "yes" and they very likely will because it'll be cheaper to transport goods and people between their markets. The Eurail pass will take you nearly anywhere you want to go in Europe for 6 months and $2k. They love trains. This project and this vision is another nail in the U.S. hegemony coffin.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  Everyone has to keep saying "yes" in perpetuity, or the project has gaps and interruptions and is worth less than was planned. 17 nations with wildly different goals are unlikely to keep saying yes.
  - fnid2 17y ago
    They said yes to airlines for the same reason they'll say yes to this project. China paying for it is a big incentive. Imagine if the U.S. told Romania they'd build them an international airport if Romania provided the concrete and iron. Do you think Romania would say no? Of course not. Saying yes opens up Romania to the world. Similarly, this rail line opens up europe and asia to a market that will dwarf the west. If they don't say yes, they will be excluded from perhaps the most powerful coalition of countries ever before assembled. It is definitely not in any country's best interest to say no to this project. Why would they say no?
    - waterlesscloud 17y ago
      Many nations do many things that aren't in their best interest, objectively speaking. It's not like politics or even economics are ruled by rational decision making, you know.

ojbyrne 17y ago

A trans-North America high speed rail route would be pretty cool. This seems analogous to the way sputnik ignited the space race.

melling 17y ago
Yeah, someday we'll have high-speed rail in the US. It will probably take at least a decade to get the first one, if not a little longer. In the meantime, read how GM paid to destroy our mass transit system so people would buy more cars. http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html
chancho 17y ago
Except that sputnik was a proxy for a nuclear weapon. "Look what we can put up above your heads, and there's not a thing you can do about it." High-speed rail doesn't have the same overtones. Also, connecting 1.5 billion to 700 million is a lot more lucrative than connecting, what, 150 million to 50 million? Nevermind the fact that there are existing high-speed networks to connect with in Europe and China. What a fucking bummer it would be to take a 6 hour train trip from NY to LA then a 6 hour bus from LA to SF.
- Xichekolas 17y ago
  To get from NY to LA in 6 hours would require a train that averages 410mph. This is exactly the type of route that trains will not take from planes any time soon. The fastest train in the world is China's maglev that does almost 270mph. But a trip from LA to SF, or St. Louis to Chicago, or NY to DC, or between any major city in Texas and any other one... that is the kind of route that rail would excel at, provided we had the motivation to build it. All that said, I don't see the motivation to take a two day train trip from China to London when you could fly it in much less time. I understand the comfort factors and all, but when you are talking that length of time, I think the customer demand is going to be very limited (unless it's significantly cheaper than airfare).

jacquesm 17y ago

Once it's done I'll travel that thing, what a unique perspective on the world it must be to see the landscape and the culture change like that. It's a perspective that no airplane ride will ever give you.

waterlesscloud 17y ago
Writer Paul Theroux has made essentially this trip twice now, decades apart. Chronicled in his books THE GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR and GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR.
stingraycharles 17y ago
Well, you can already do something like that, just a little slower (which gives you more time to appreciate the landscape changing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway It essentially connects Vladivostok with Europe, going through countries like North Korea and China, making the railway even larger than the railway proposed in this article.
- chrisb 17y ago
  "going through countries like North Korea..." Your geography and politics are slightly incorrect :)
  - stingraycharles 17y ago
    Hmmm, now I might be completely ignorant, but care to explain why? As far as I understood, the train splits in China with a connection to Pyongyang.
    - mseebach 17y ago
      The Trans-Siberian railway goes across Siberia, north of China and Mongolia, and is entirely in Russia. A popular variation, though, is the route that branches through Mongolia and terminates in Beijing. This route also connects to Pyongyang, but that's not the TSRW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Trans-Siberian_railway.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Trans-Siberian_railway... EDIT - wikipedia says it better than I: The Trans-Siberian Railway is often associated with the main transcontinental Russian train that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At 9,259 kilometres (5,753 miles),[1] spanning a record 7 time zones and taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world, after the Moscow–Pyongyang (10,267 km, 6,380 mi)[2] and the Kiev–Vladivostok (11,085 km, 6,888 mi)[3] services, both of which also follow the Trans-Siberian for much of their routes. The route was opened by Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovitch of Russia after his eastern journey ended.

sman 17y ago

Hard to make it happen politically. India tried something similar, to get gas from Iran in a pipeline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan%E2%80%93India_gas_pipeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan%E2%80%93I... The project has been gestating for the last 20 years with no real movement in the progress meter. And similar to what happened with the pipeline, I expect the US to spring roadblocks all over the place. Even if it cannot convince every country, it will convince enough to ensure gaps in the rail line undermining its usefulness.

fnid2 17y ago
In January 2010, the United States asked Pakistan to ... abandon its plan ... in order to isolate Iran. What is an American to think of this? Am I suppose to like it because I'm an American or despise it because it is holding up a better life for humanity?
- Qz 17y ago
  Nationalism is overrated, so I vote for despise it.

danw 17y ago

Any mention of what the route would be? And what's the anticipated travel time from London to China?

DFootball 17y ago
Good question. Wouldn't that still take almost a week?
limist 17y ago
From the article: "...China’s new goal is to continue on with a HSR revolution internationally in order to create two-day HSR trip times between Beijing and London."
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  A 48 hr trip would have to average just over 100mph. Maybe, if it's got some pretty limited stops.
  - noilly 17y ago
    London to Beijing takes about 9-10 days as of right now. You could easily get that to 5-7 days if you cut out stops (especially between Moscow and Beijing) and if you tripled the average speed of the trains from ~30-40 mph to 90-120 mph... there you go, although the latter part is what requires so much money and engineering.

limist 17y ago

Wow, didn't expect such interest from HN. Seems everyone loves trains. :) Tangentially, what is it about trains anyway? Seems to me they hit the natural sweet-spot of "comprehensible speed" or speed at a near-human scale: not so fast and distant as to be alien like jets, but fast enough to be interesting. Oh, and stress-free compared to driving.

fnid2 17y ago
Have you traveled on trains? It's so much nicer than planes. No security check, no long waits, no cattle herding. Plus, they are more efficient. They are transportation of the future. The world is going to be going backwards in time as energy becomes more expensive. This means leaving planes and going to trains and wind powered ships. It's already happening. Plus, it is a national recognition that long term thinking is beneficial. China in this case is a visionary example for the world. I hope the U.S. wakes up soon.
- shawndrost 17y ago
  > ...as energy becomes more expensive. Is energy becoming more expensive? A quick search (ie http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1869.gif http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1869.gif) shows no such long-term trend.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - fnid2 17y ago
    Many argue, including Hubert King, that oil is running out. He noticed a bell curve of output and predicted the peak of that output would be right around today. He extrapolated data from single wells, to fields to entire nations, correctly was pretty accurate with his predictions and many petrol geologists think we are at or very near the peak and energy will continue to get more expensive as output declines relative to consumption. By my math, even at current consumption rates we have just about 30 years of oil left: oil reserves divided by daily consumption. That doesn't include the growth rate of consumption and China and India hardly use anything right now per capita compared to the west.

portman 17y ago

The largest PROPOSED infrastructure project in history would be the Transatlantic Tunnel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic-maglev http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic...

MaysonL 17y ago
As told by Harry Harrison: A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/harry-harrison/tunnel-through-deeps.htm http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/harry-harrison/tunnel-th...
- aarghh 17y ago
  First thing I thought of, too.
fnid2 17y ago
I shook my head when I read this part: Cost: $88 billion to $175 billion Why on earth hasn't this project been started yet? We spend that in a few months in Iraq. We write checks for that and just give them to AIG, GS, and MS. Seriously, what is going on? Why is our country like this?? When is it going to change? Is it going to change? Should I just move to china? Seriously. I've considered it. Or India. Or even south america. I continue to ask myself, why do I choose to live in the U.S.? Because I was born here? Is that a good enough reason?
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  It does feel like the world is passing us by.
- mseebach 17y ago
  Considering that none of the key technologies exist yet, I find that the cost is very optimistic. The "øresund" bridge linking Denmark and Sweden opened in 2000 at a cost of ~5.5 bln USD. It's 15.9 km = 9.9 miles, or $555 mio/mile. This was a successful project, using very well understood technology by people who just finished building a similar project 150 miles away, finished roughly on time. A transatlantic tunnel would be 3500 miles, that's 350 times longer. Its completely unknown technology - no-one has ever submerged a vacuum tunnel, and no-one has build a mag-lev that actually goes 4000mph. And they're telling us it can be done for $50 mio/mile, less than a tenth of a regular bridge? I know it doesn't scale linearly, but I'd expect such a tunnel to be more, not less, expensive pr. mile. At the same mile-cost as a bridge, it'd cost $1942 bln. I did a back-of-an-envelope calculation when this came out a while ago, that if all plane passengers from London to New York (can't remember the number now) were to switch to such a train, tickets would have to cost an average $10.000, one way, to cover 5% maintenance, interest and ROI.

martythemaniak 17y ago

With all the flack airlines and air transport is getting now because of climate change, maybe China can try and sell this is action on that front? Trains are more efficient than airplanes, are they not? (not a rhetorical question) Even so, I doubt this will happen in 10 years.

zol 17y ago

With China's minimum wage being around US 60c an hour (http://bit.ly/6mDBYz http://bit.ly/6mDBYz) they are in a much better position to undertake such a labour intensive job as the West. It is a smart move to receive payment in the form of natural resources as some of the countries involved in the network are economically poor but resource rich. It is likely the countries participating will end up paying a lot more in resources than they would have in cash. It's my opinion that people are mistaken when viewing the proposal in terms of personal transport. It's not. It's a system designed to fuel China's growing demand for resources, which cannot be transported via air. In the other direction will come a high speed flow of manufactured goods.

erikstarck 17y ago
For that kind of project it would make sense to develop robotics and other technology that could lower the cost dramatically. Also, you can't just take the minimum wage from China and multiply with the number of workers, there are many costs added to having that many people in different countries. Food and housing in Germany, for example, are expensive.

thingie 17y ago

Hm, this doesn't really seems to be an attempt to divert passenger traffic from using the planes to some cross-continental HSR. On the other hand, it'd allow China to export much much more goods and much much faster than nowadays with ships [1]. And of course, it would also very much strengthen China's influence in the Middle east and around, as in this area, HSR travel times would be very interesting and provide (in comparison) wonderful connection with China. You wouldn't travel from China to Europe by train even with this, of course. I wonder what would the Russian response be, as they are quite expected to maintain their strong influence in this region, and this isn't exactly going to support that. [1] This is already being done, in a rather small scale.