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"Less than a decade ago China had yet to connect any of its cities by bullet train. Today, it has 20,000km (12,500 miles) of high-speed rail lines, more than th

• ealexhudson 10y ago
  China is huge, though, and the UK is not. HS2 is dragging in the UK because it's a massive amount of money to spend in order to shave 45m off a trip to Scotland. The cost/benefit ratio is totally different - and with the Hitachi training they're bringing in, the saving goes further down. HS2 is a large waste of money.
  • digi_owl 10y ago
    Huge, and authoritarian. They move whole cities worth of people when it comes time to build a hydroelectric dam, by force if need be. The west in comparison gets bogged down in NIMBYism and haggling over land value pr CM of track/road. Never mind multiple rounds in court if one of the would be contractors can find any reason to claim the government was biased...
    • hneans 10y ago
      lol, figure out where the railway line passes, please. And How the railway was laid, with BRIDGE, ok? In the process of laying railways, engineers try to avoid residential areas or farmland. if it comes to the pinch, then build a bridge.
    • sjg007 10y ago
      the USA moved towns to dam rivers too.
      • jerf 10y ago
        And the UK used to do things too. Your past tense is correct. Whether this is a good or bad thing, well, see debates in other comments.
  • crdoconnor 10y ago
    Rail is typically never profitable unless the increase in land value around stations is captured. In the UK they typically leave those spoils to private land owners. Japanese rail companies manage this: they run the trains at cost - or even a loss - and make profits back from (for example), building malls around the stations and leasing space to retailers. The UK could really use high speed rail around the London commuter belt. If land value increases are captured it would probably pay for itself, in fact.
    • mafribe 10y ago
      Rail is typically never profitable unless the increase in land value around stations is captured. This is really interesting. Have you got a pointer for me where I can read more on the economics of railways along those lines? I wonder if the same is also true with public transport in cities, in particular rail-based underground system like London's tube.
    • claudius 10y ago
      Road-building is also not profitable unless you capture the increase in land value around roads. Curiously, most people are okay with tax-funded roads and streets but strongly oppose spending public funds on trains. Of course, ideally both would be run exactly at cost via user fees (i.e. train tickets, tolls etc.), but this is not an often-shared opinion.
      • crdoconnor 10y ago
        >Curiously, most people are okay with tax-funded roads and streets but strongly oppose spending public funds on trains. Actually the public is strongly in favor of spending public funds on trains, but the British oligarchy (reflected by the media's default opinion - which some people confuse for the public's), is vehemently against it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11867259/What-Jeremy-Corbyn-doesnt-get-is-that-the-government-causes-most-of-the-problems.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11867259/What-J... Note the Telegraph accusing the general public of being communists: "the majority of the electorate who have no love for bankers and are positively Trotskyist when it comes to trains and utilities" "A recent YouGov poll showed that the majority of people support the renationalisation of railways, including those who identified themselves as Conservative or UKIP voters." >Of course, ideally both would be run exactly at cost via user fees Why are you against capturing the increased land value like Japan does?
  • davepav 10y ago
    Smaller countries in Asia have also implemented HS railway really well. I visited Taiwan last year and was in awe at how good their rail network was.
  • robin_reala 10y ago
    We’ve invited them to bid though: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/118bn-hs2-bidding-process-opens https://www.gov.uk/government/news/118bn-hs2-bidding-process...
  • pjc50 10y ago
    HS2 is not so much about speed as capacity. It does not replace the existing lines, it adds to them. That's why it's been so controversial - it puts railway where there was none. It turns Coventry and Birmingham into London commuter suburbs.
    • grw_ 10y ago
      Capacity is only needed for short periods at peak times, which could be achieved by e.g running more standard-class carriages instead of first class. [0] Since you mentioned Coventry, it's intercity capacity to London will actually be reduced if HS2 comes to be due to extra trains to Birmingham occupying the track. Same for many other towns and cities in the Midlands. [1] [0] https://beleben.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/friday-capacity-to-spare/ https://beleben.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/friday-capacity-to-... [1] http://stophs2.org/news/13115-13115 http://stophs2.org/news/13115-13115
• new299 10y ago
  Forget high speed rail. It would be great if the trains weren't 30+ years old. On the lines I most often use the carriages don't have automatic doors. I'm constantly embarrassed when I have to show visitors how to open the window, stick their hand out and use the handle on the outside to open the door (which is how it's done).
  • flukus 10y ago
    At least they've still got windows. Around here you have to put up with aircon that doesn't work in summer and a heater that's turned up way to high in winter. I find the older ones with windows provided much better temperature control.
  • kriro 10y ago
    On the plus side this is actually an example in the usability classic "The Design of Everyday Things". Iirc Norman concludes that he doesn't have a clue as to why they were designed that way and offers some hypotheses which he dismisses right away (book is at home so I can't check) :D
    • huxley 10y ago
      A little off topic, but anyone interested in picking up "The Design of Everyday Things" be aware it was previously published as "The Psychology of Everyday Things". There was an expanded and updated edition in 2013 so you should probably look for that one.
  • pjc50 10y ago
    Is that the Intercity 125 trains? Modern ones have generally fixed this.
    • aninhumer 10y ago
      Of course, but the point is that these old ones haven't been replaced yet.
  • pyb 10y ago
• mseebach 10y ago
  > I am left with a feeling of awe at China's development, and frustration at the UK's stagnancy. While the UK does feel particularly stagnated on several fronts, I'm not sure abandoning the rule of law, protection of private property, labour protections, at least an attempt at the appearance of corruption-free tenders, high safety standards and the principle that people who are affected should be consulted is worthy of much awe.
  • peteretep 10y ago
    I don't see why getting HS2 built quickly needs any of those abandoning, other than perhaps land seized through eminent domain?
    • pjc50 10y ago
      The consultations took a long time, and inevitably involved demolishing minor historic buildings. The UK devotes a lot of effort to preservation where China devotes almost none. The price of cities popping up like desert flowers is the sweeping away of entire villages of traditional buildings. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/15/hs2-rail-archaeologists-english-heritage-environment https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/15/hs2-rail-arc...
      • peteretep 10y ago
        I've been to a lot of National Trust and English Heritage houses. The country is lousy with them. I feel sure one or two can be parted with. This isn't America where anything over 100 years is automatically some kind of national monument. We sold them London Bridge, can't we offload a Little Pifflington Stately Home or two?
        • pjc50 10y ago
          This is unlikely to be popular with the voters. Not an issue in China, of course.
  • bainsfather 10y ago
• hacker_9 10y ago
  Developing anything outside London is often not a priority for the government.
  • lmm 10y ago
    HS2 goes to London so that's a dubious explanation.
• schuke 10y ago
  There's also, I guess, a diminishing return for infrastructure investments in a highly-developed country like the UK, especially when it's much smaller than China. That said though, it's a shame Heathrow still can't get the extra runway it desperately needs...
  • Symbiote 10y ago
    It's a shame Heathrow's terminal buildings have been rebuilt in the last 15 years, rather than shut down with an airport in a sensible place constructed to replace it. The noise of flights landing over London for 17 hours a day, pretty much every 90-120 seconds, is miserable.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• Markoff 10y ago
  it's easy to grow from rock bottom
• djsumdog 10y ago
  I've only briefly been in the UK, but I really liked the rail system. It's far better than that of other countries I've lived in. I've gone London-Manchester and back and found it a delightful experience.
• gred 10y ago
  > I am left with a feeling of awe at China's development, and frustration at the UK's stagnancy. To be fair, the UK was overspending on railway long before it was cool :-) From Edward Chancellor's "Devil Take the Hindmost" [1]: > In January 1845, sixteen new railway schemes were projected. By April, with rail receipts continuing to grow rapidly, over fifty new companies had been registered... > By June 1845, plans for over eight thousand miles of new railway -- four times the size of the existing railway system and nearly twenty times the length of England -- were under consideration by the Board of Trade. In the following month, new schemes appeared at the rate of over a dozen a week. > At the end of October [...] over twelve hundred railways were being projected at an estimated cost of over £560 million. The total amount of outstanding railway liabilities was nearly £600 million. This figure exceeded the national income, estimated at around £550 million, of which perhaps £20 million a year could be spent safely on the railways without starving the rest of the economy of capital. > In Britain, [...] the spirit of laissez-faire dictated that the development of the railways should be left entirely to private enterprise. The uncontrolled expansion of the railway system, in the hands of semi-criminal entrepreneurs, produced a haphazard network. For instance, by the 1850s there were three independent routes from Liverpool to Leeds and three alternative routes from London to Peterborough. > The results of the mania, however, were not entirely negative. With over 8,000 miles of track in operation by 1855, Britain possessed the highest density of railways in the world, seven times greater than that of France or Germany. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Speculation/dp/0452281806 https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Specula...