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Looks like the eventual plan is to link the airport to a tourist spot and the city is just the first stop on the way through. Might also be cheaper/easier to d

by kentm 8y ago

Looks like the eventual plan is to link the airport to a tourist spot and the city is just the first stop on the way through. Might also be cheaper/easier to do in a less populated area.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Are they tunneling? That area is really rocky and mountainous, unless it is going on a viaduct I don’t see how this will work out.
- kentm 8y ago
  The article is light on specifics, so no idea.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  "... I don’t see how this will work out ...." That's how most Chinese infrastructure projects start. I saw Ningbo in 1992. I look at it today and, yeah, can you say different? I thought Three Gorges would be impossible, even for the Chinese. A few key innovations later and there it is. (Subtle innovations which, in my defense, a reasonable engineer would never have seen coming.) If there's one thing they're good at over there, it's building infrastructure. I'll give them that.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    The last time I was in ningbo was 2004. Is it really that different today? Building a dam isn’t that hard? Definitely not impossible if you are willing to displace a few million citizens. But tunneling under granite for 30+ km? Yes, possible, but it won’t be cheap. I don’t think the Chinese would do that, it will definitely be a vacuum enclosed viaduct to match what they did with HSR.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      "... Building a dam isn't that hard ..." ??? Three Gorges is a mile and a half long almost. (maybe a tad longer.) Almost what? 6 or 7 hundreed feet tall. Ship locks and ship lifts too! For what? 10 thousand tons or so would be my guess? Not to mention entirely new ports to accommodate new heavy shipping inland. New walls and other flood control measures. And all of it designed to concert in such a manner that they never exceed the design specs of the dam. Displacing citizens is the LEAST of the problems that project faced. Building ANY dam is definitely not to be characterized as "not that hard". Building Three Gorges falls on the "near impossible even with backing of wealthy nation state" end of the scale.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        I’ve been through the dam before, I know how large it is. The locks (multiple ohes) alone take a whole night to go through. And at the end of the day, the human cost was the greatest hurdle for the project that still isn’t completely worked out. But I don’t see how it was extra amazing vs. the grand coullee or hoover dams built almost a century ago.
        bilbo0s 8y ago
        "...But I don’t see how it was extra amazing vs. the grand coullee or hoover dams built almost a century ago...." Count the number of locks and lifts integrated with them. Count the number of deep water ports built to concert with them. Then you'll START to get an idea of how non-trivial Three Gorges was. It's not just a dam, though a dam even the size of Hoover or Grand Coulee would be non-trivial in themselves for us to do today. (A dam the size of Three Gorges? Not even close to being easy.) Throw in concerting projects, and to call it "not that difficult" is, frankly, laughable.

by kentm 8y ago

Looks like the eventual plan is to link the airport to a tourist spot and the city is just the first stop on the way through. Might also be cheaper/easier to do in a less populated area.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Are they tunneling? That area is really rocky and mountainous, unless it is going on a viaduct I don’t see how this will work out.

kentm 8y ago
The article is light on specifics, so no idea.
bilbo0s 8y ago
"... I don’t see how this will work out ...." That's how most Chinese infrastructure projects start. I saw Ningbo in 1992. I look at it today and, yeah, can you say different? I thought Three Gorges would be impossible, even for the Chinese. A few key innovations later and there it is. (Subtle innovations which, in my defense, a reasonable engineer would never have seen coming.) If there's one thing they're good at over there, it's building infrastructure. I'll give them that.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  The last time I was in ningbo was 2004. Is it really that different today? Building a dam isn’t that hard? Definitely not impossible if you are willing to displace a few million citizens. But tunneling under granite for 30+ km? Yes, possible, but it won’t be cheap. I don’t think the Chinese would do that, it will definitely be a vacuum enclosed viaduct to match what they did with HSR.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    "... Building a dam isn't that hard ..." ??? Three Gorges is a mile and a half long almost. (maybe a tad longer.) Almost what? 6 or 7 hundreed feet tall. Ship locks and ship lifts too! For what? 10 thousand tons or so would be my guess? Not to mention entirely new ports to accommodate new heavy shipping inland. New walls and other flood control measures. And all of it designed to concert in such a manner that they never exceed the design specs of the dam. Displacing citizens is the LEAST of the problems that project faced. Building ANY dam is definitely not to be characterized as "not that hard". Building Three Gorges falls on the "near impossible even with backing of wealthy nation state" end of the scale.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      I’ve been through the dam before, I know how large it is. The locks (multiple ohes) alone take a whole night to go through. And at the end of the day, the human cost was the greatest hurdle for the project that still isn’t completely worked out. But I don’t see how it was extra amazing vs. the grand coullee or hoover dams built almost a century ago.
      - bilbo0s 8y ago
        "...But I don’t see how it was extra amazing vs. the grand coullee or hoover dams built almost a century ago...." Count the number of locks and lifts integrated with them. Count the number of deep water ports built to concert with them. Then you'll START to get an idea of how non-trivial Three Gorges was. It's not just a dam, though a dam even the size of Hoover or Grand Coulee would be non-trivial in themselves for us to do today. (A dam the size of Three Gorges? Not even close to being easy.) Throw in concerting projects, and to call it "not that difficult" is, frankly, laughable.