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"didn't come cheap" Is that $500 billion? $1 trillion? $2 trillion? I imagine $1 trillion in infrastructure, for example, will pay future dividends. Simply s

"didn't come cheap" Is that $500 billion? $1 trillion? $2 trillion? I imagine $1 trillion in infrastructure, for example, will pay future dividends. Simply saying something wasn't cheap doesn't help us compare. For example, the US spent $1 trillion in the Iraq War and another $1 trillion in Afghanistan. If China can build infrastructure at a fraction of the cost, and their economy passes the US by 2032, as predicted, it doesn't bode well for the United States.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
The world bank estimates between 17-21m$/km. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/10/cost-of-high-speed-rail-in-china-one-third-lower-than-in-other-countries http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/10/co... https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/chinas-high-speed-rail-is-one-third-us-price-and-half-of-europe-price-but-still-too-expensive-for-other-countries.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/chinas-high-speed-rail... So a little math - china has 22km of HSR ATM - well, that is a big number, $418 billion. If you are a private investor and your bonds paid for this, whether it can make a profit is important. Unless the government is going to bail them out (and being SOEs, everyone expects they will!), then it is important to move that debt from private to public. China's debt numbers ATM assume that much of the SOE debt is private, which is dubious at best. China Railway's $6 trillion yuan debt is 6% of China's GDP. I've ridden the Beijing-Guangzhou HSR a couple of times (my wife's hometown is on the route and it lacks an airpot), and the car we were traveling in was always very empty for much of the 8 hour trip.
- melling 9y ago
  The claim is at least a billion people a year ride the train each year. http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/chinas-rail-ambitions-run-at-full-speed http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/chinas-rail-ambitions-run-a... Where is the volume?
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    A lot of it happens during Chinese New Year. Shanghai - Beijing has a lot of people riding it, it is also the only line that is profitable (ticket sales > operating costs + debt interest, otherwise, only 6 lines pull in enough to cover operating costs). There are lots of short (relatively speaking) commuter jaunts also (from one HSR station to the next), as mentioned in the article you linked. But then you have the rest of the track.... Don't get me wrong, HSR will be good for China. But someone is going to pay for it.
  - azurezyq 9y ago
    Busy lines are busy and profitable, while many lines are essential but not enough passengers yet. I used to travel between Shanghai and Hangzhou regularly on HSR and it is basically fully packed all the time. Same thing for Shanghai to Beijing and Beijing to Tianjin. Actually they are building a second line from SH to BJ. Similar to Japan's Shinkansen, the only profitable line is Tokyo to Osaka. You may see some under-capacity HSR lines, but they mean a lot to economy development. My hometown is a small city off trunk railways. 10 years ago the travel time to Beijing is 14 hours, now, with HSR, it's 5 hours. No one thinks Beijing is far away any more and people tend to travel farther and more frequently. After years in US, I think US government is not good at "generating" or "boosting" social needs. Moonshot in infra is really worth investing and sometimes you have to take the risk. US has been away from major infra (like interstate hwys) for years and I cannot believe economy growth without more infra.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Tokaido is the most profitable Shinkansen, but most of the other Shinkansen's are in the black. The only unprofitable one is the new one toward Hokaido.
    - kelnos 9y ago
      > Moonshot in infra is really worth investing and sometimes you have to take the risk. US has been away from major infra (like interstate hwys) for years and I cannot believe economy growth without more infra. I agree in principle, but my belief is that we (the US) need to focus a lot more on infra that serves local and regional needs before worrying so much about interstate infra (CA HSR is not technically interstate, but given the size of CA it's an interstate-scale project). We have a ton of aging and insufficient local/regional infra that badly needs upgrades and expansion.
      - wahern 9y ago
        > We have a ton of aging and insufficient local/regional > infra that badly needs upgrades and expansion. That was _precisely_ the point of HSR--to slow growth in automobile traffic so there'd be less need to upgrade and expand the highway infrastructure. Airports and highways are immensely expensive. There were extensively analyzed projections that showed investing in HSR was more sensible than doubling-down on the automobile. We can quibble over the calculus all day long, but that sort of quibbling is why we can never get sh*t done. I live in the Richmond District of SF. We have one of the busiest bus lines in the country, and that's just one line out of 4+ parallel lines 2 blocks apart. Everybody here wants a subway, but the city is building BRT because of cost and as a compromise with local business owners (who don't want _anything_). Nobody wants BRT, but it's a done deal, and it irks me the amount of energy people put into killing BRT ostensibly in pursuit of a subway. It's idiotic. All it does is make BRT more costly without making a subway any more likely. If you want government to be more efficient, we need to come together as a community and learn how to compromise and _support_ infrastructure development. This stuff is costly because the opposition is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

The world bank estimates between 17-21m$/km. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/10/cost-of-high-speed-rail-in-china-one-third-lower-than-in-other-countries http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/10/co... https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/chinas-high-speed-rail-is-one-third-us-price-and-half-of-europe-price-but-still-too-expensive-for-other-countries.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/chinas-high-speed-rail... So a little math - china has 22km of HSR ATM - well, that is a big number, $418 billion. If you are a private investor and your bonds paid for this, whether it can make a profit is important. Unless the government is going to bail them out (and being SOEs, everyone expects they will!), then it is important to move that debt from private to public. China's debt numbers ATM assume that much of the SOE debt is private, which is dubious at best. China Railway's $6 trillion yuan debt is 6% of China's GDP. I've ridden the Beijing-Guangzhou HSR a couple of times (my wife's hometown is on the route and it lacks an airpot), and the car we were traveling in was always very empty for much of the 8 hour trip.

melling 9y ago
The claim is at least a billion people a year ride the train each year. http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/chinas-rail-ambitions-run-at-full-speed http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/chinas-rail-ambitions-run-a... Where is the volume?
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  A lot of it happens during Chinese New Year. Shanghai - Beijing has a lot of people riding it, it is also the only line that is profitable (ticket sales > operating costs + debt interest, otherwise, only 6 lines pull in enough to cover operating costs). There are lots of short (relatively speaking) commuter jaunts also (from one HSR station to the next), as mentioned in the article you linked. But then you have the rest of the track.... Don't get me wrong, HSR will be good for China. But someone is going to pay for it.
- azurezyq 9y ago
  Busy lines are busy and profitable, while many lines are essential but not enough passengers yet. I used to travel between Shanghai and Hangzhou regularly on HSR and it is basically fully packed all the time. Same thing for Shanghai to Beijing and Beijing to Tianjin. Actually they are building a second line from SH to BJ. Similar to Japan's Shinkansen, the only profitable line is Tokyo to Osaka. You may see some under-capacity HSR lines, but they mean a lot to economy development. My hometown is a small city off trunk railways. 10 years ago the travel time to Beijing is 14 hours, now, with HSR, it's 5 hours. No one thinks Beijing is far away any more and people tend to travel farther and more frequently. After years in US, I think US government is not good at "generating" or "boosting" social needs. Moonshot in infra is really worth investing and sometimes you have to take the risk. US has been away from major infra (like interstate hwys) for years and I cannot believe economy growth without more infra.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Tokaido is the most profitable Shinkansen, but most of the other Shinkansen's are in the black. The only unprofitable one is the new one toward Hokaido.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    > Moonshot in infra is really worth investing and sometimes you have to take the risk. US has been away from major infra (like interstate hwys) for years and I cannot believe economy growth without more infra. I agree in principle, but my belief is that we (the US) need to focus a lot more on infra that serves local and regional needs before worrying so much about interstate infra (CA HSR is not technically interstate, but given the size of CA it's an interstate-scale project). We have a ton of aging and insufficient local/regional infra that badly needs upgrades and expansion.
    - wahern 9y ago
      > We have a ton of aging and insufficient local/regional > infra that badly needs upgrades and expansion. That was _precisely_ the point of HSR--to slow growth in automobile traffic so there'd be less need to upgrade and expand the highway infrastructure. Airports and highways are immensely expensive. There were extensively analyzed projections that showed investing in HSR was more sensible than doubling-down on the automobile. We can quibble over the calculus all day long, but that sort of quibbling is why we can never get sh*t done. I live in the Richmond District of SF. We have one of the busiest bus lines in the country, and that's just one line out of 4+ parallel lines 2 blocks apart. Everybody here wants a subway, but the city is building BRT because of cost and as a compromise with local business owners (who don't want _anything_). Nobody wants BRT, but it's a done deal, and it irks me the amount of energy people put into killing BRT ostensibly in pursuit of a subway. It's idiotic. All it does is make BRT more costly without making a subway any more likely. If you want government to be more efficient, we need to come together as a community and learn how to compromise and _support_ infrastructure development. This stuff is costly because the opposition is a self-fulfilling prophecy.