22 ms·

So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is the world's largest econom

• intopieces 7y ago
  >Why on earth isn't there a high speed rail between these cities? The cost of labor, the cost of environmental studies, the cost of materials, and the need for the project to show a profit. All of these factors are much different in China.
  • jbay808 7y ago
    Yeah, that's why Japan and Europe don't have high speed rail either.
    • gwright 7y ago
      Those factors are very different in those places also.
    • beerandt 7y ago
      They were built before environmental regulation was implemented, the same as the US interstate system. None of those could be built today as cheaply or easily as pre-1970s. If at all.
      • wahern 7y ago
        None of them could be built today as cheaply, but all the projects built in those countries today are still dramatically cheaper than in the U.S., despite similar or even greater labor and regulatory costs. This has been well reported. The U.S. pays 2x or 3x more than comparable projects in comparable countries. Ultimately the costs come down to politics. You can see the problem repeated dozens of times in this discussion--"I'd support X if and only if X was exactly what I wanted". That's not a recipe for compromise, and compromise is fundamental to efficient group decision making. The costs balloon not because labor is too expensive, but because we take too long to build things and are constantly changing things as we go along. Regulations don't get in the way because they're overwhelmingly difficult or costly; regulations get in the way because the regulatory processes are hijacked and abused to stone wall projects. We can't get things done in the U.S. because our politics are broken, especially at the national level, but even at the local level.
      • benhurmarcel 7y ago
        The French high speed lines were built between 1981 and 2017, and ongoing.
      • molmalo 7y ago
        Looking at the dates when the high speed lines (AVE) were opened in Spain [1], save for one (1992), all the rest were opened after 2003, and most were opened in the last decade. France keeps extending their network too... Same with other countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE#Lines_in_operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE#Lines_in_operation
• mrtksn 7y ago
  I’m under the impression that the US public want cars not trains and even the current tech celebrity’s vision is to have self driving cars that work together as if they are train carriages and go in a tunnel as if they are metro train carriages. In the rest of the world, people are fine with ride sharing.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • simion314 7y ago
    I understand this for inside a city, using a car is more pleas sent then sharing a bus or metro with strangers but when you travel a long distance you use a plane so all the comfort is gone, it would be better to have a high speed train , you still share it with strangers but if you are rich you can afford better accommodations including beds, you can walk and stretch your legs and there may even be spots for smokers. Maybe the average person travels only a few times with a plane so he can endure it.
    • nicoburns 7y ago
      > using a car is more pleas sent then sharing a bus or metro with strangers Not when it means you're stuck in a traffic jam. In a big city I'd take decent metro system over a car any day.
      • notJim 7y ago
        Even between cities. For a while I was driving between Portland and Seattle pretty often, and the traffic was always awful! I would love to be able to take a HS train.
      • userbinator 7y ago
        I certainly think it's better to be stuck in a traffic jam and sit in your own car than stuck in a traffic jam inside a packed vehicle full of other (sometimes extremely unpleasant) people.
• cheeko1234 7y ago
  As a commenter stated below: Be careful comparing a system which can simply take the land and labor it wants to one in which people have rights. China also has the lowest organ recipient lists, maybe we should try to emulate that too: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-u...
  • hojijoji 7y ago
    That't not an excuse. You can build infrastructure without violating peoples rights. It may be more difficult but definitely doable. Look at Japan or Europe. This is a political issue based on a missing long term agenda.
  • asteli 7y ago
    What? The US has the ability to repossess land under Eminent Domain, and it can raise taxes to pay for construction labor (a roundabout way of compelling people to labor for the government). That's not the issue here.
    • gwright 7y ago
      It is not reasonable to equate the rules regarding eminent domain in the US with the effort required by the Chinese government to acquire land. Nor is it reasonable to equate the complexities of raising revenue in representative government with the ability to direct expenses in a command economy as in China.
• ecf 7y ago
  Currently living in California, and I feel the main opposition to things like this are the constituents. Everyone in the Central Valley will simply vote against whatever California wants to spend money on unless if overwhelmingly benefits them, or “hurts” those in the cities. I know this isn’t the only reason the high speed rail project was canned, but those in the Centra Valley opposed it unless it connected some stretches like Fresno <-> Bakersfield together.
  • aaron-santos 7y ago
    > those in the Centra Valley opposed it unless it connected some stretches like Fresno <-> Bakersfield together. Why would they support being essentially left behind?
    • cnlevy 7y ago
      So just add stations on side tracks and count them in.
    • tootahe45 7y ago
      Allowing people to commute from outside for work decreases property value in major cities.
• deleted 7y ago
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• ctrl-j 7y ago
  The US has had a money hoarding problem for the last three to five decades. You're not going to get very many high cost infrastructure problems solved when the government doesn't force the issue. Socialism is a red herring, the real greatest enemy of capitalism is the unregulated free market.
• zucker42 7y ago
  California is actually putting in "high speed" rail, but my understanding is it's far behind schedule and uses old technology.
  • bobthepanda 7y ago
    It‘s worth noting that new is not necessarily better. Maglev is extremely rare because standard high speed rail can boost existing rail services; for example, TGV trains use the legacy rail network to reach Nice. With a maglev rail system anywhere that isn‘t directly connected requires a transfer.
• briandear 7y ago
  My father in law can fly from Los Angeles to San Jose in an hour for $150 round trip. Not sure why we need to lay tracks all over the land when we have flying machines.
  • simion314 7y ago
    Maybe it could cost 50$ and take 2 hours, some people would appreciate having the choice.
    • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      But there's a work crew on the tracks so make the trip four hours instead.
      • saagarjha 7y ago
        It’s still significantly better than driving.
      • simion314 7y ago
        It is an option, I can't drive because of medical problems, long distance traveling in cars is also problematic when you have kids that get bad motion sickness. You also need to consider the opportunities that cheap long distance travel gives you, A poor student like I was can travel to a far city to study and afford to come home each 4 - 8 weeks. Because the small cities are linked to bigger ones you get more students or better quality students in the big city. The nation has more educated people, the students from the small city also have to live so they will spend money in the big city, so the big city has an influx of money. The small cities don't have airports, the students are also poor enough so they don't own cars, have where to park them in the big city or afford the fuel.
  • mhandley 7y ago
    In Europe, it's just starting to be regarded as anti-social to fly. Enough so that it's noticable in increased train travel and decreased air travel: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/flygskam-anti-flying-flight-shaming-sweden-greta-thornberg-environment-air-travel-train-brag-a8945196.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/flygska... Not clear yet if this is the early stage of a global trend, and even it it is, it may take a long time to have an effect in the US, where there are fewer good alternatives.
• gok 7y ago
  > Can you imagine the impact of being able to train from San Diego to LA in 30mins? Yeah I can: approximately nothing. What exactly would you do with such a train? Neither LA nor San Diego have meaningful downtowns or local transit, so you'd still need a 45 minute drive on each end to get from/to where ever you're actually going. It's a 2.5 hour drive door-to-door today, so now you've just got a three-seat journey where there was once a one-seat trip, to maybe shave 30 minutes off journey time. Moreover, there's no technology that could build such a train. LA to to San Diego is 200 kilometers. It would almost certainly need to make stops like Anaheim, Irvine, Oceanside, etc.. Oh, by the way, there's a mountain range between the two. Even state-of-the-art HSR would struggle to maintain 200 km/hour over the entire route. So now your train ride is an hour, and you've actually saved no time.
  • dwags 7y ago
    What is a meaningful downtown?
    • nine_k 7y ago
      Something like Tokyo, NYC, London :) That is, you get off the high-speed train there, and immediately take a local subway train that takes you where you need in 10-20 minutes, or a taxi takes you where subway won't. Looking for parking is never your problem.
• beerandt 7y ago
  Infrastructure is easy (and cheap) when you don't have to respect property rights or do environmental impact studies. Skipping phase 0 design also eliminates any potential political and nimby dissent (where all options are ruled out as "unfeasible").
  • simion314 7y ago
    >Infrastructure is easy (and cheap) when you don't have to respect property rights or do environmental impact studies. Is there no national/public interest exception in the constitution just for such cases? Where you take someone land buy you pay or give equivalent land back(I know some people would like to get rich quick in this situations)
    • beerandt 7y ago
      In the US? There is, but it's not always politically popular, and fair market value is required, which gets expensive when tearing down buildings and moving highways in Urban areas. The bigger obstacle is the environmental impact study, which includes a social justice component. That keeps you from using the cheapest routes, as cheap land usually means it disproportionately affects minorities.
      • olivermarks 7y ago
        China's situation is similar to the US in the 1800's when land was basically free and railways were being built everywhere. There is little US land availability today to build infrastructure on, same issue in a lot of europe
      • gwright 7y ago
        See my comment above re: estimates to upgrade the Northeast corridor lines, presumably some of that is $$ to acquire land via eminent domain.
    • aoeusnth1 7y ago
      Yes, there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_S...
• pinkfoot 7y ago
  "The US is the world's largest economy…" If your Federal Reserve stopping adding nonsense imputed and hedonic values to the tune of about ~$7 trillion to your economy's GDP, you would find yourself in second place. Which might make help explain away your confusion :)
  • tanzbaer 7y ago
    Right, because you can totally trust the Chinese numbers...
    • pinkfoot 7y ago
      Not even in the slightest, but there was no CHINESE poster wondering why their CHINESE GDP couldn't fund bullet trains. The poster was wondering why his/her USA GDP couldn't support bullet trains. I was being helpful by pointing out that ~$7 trillion of USA GDP literally (in the old sense of the word) did not happen. Unless you think that $7T of GDP that is assigned to mortgages on the half the houses in the USA that have no mortgage, bank fees on free accounts, fictitious prices of electronics, etc. are the same as the entire value of the Japanese economy… GDP is a game that all countries play to try convince sovereign bond purchasers that the debt/GDP ratio is under control.
• beerandt 7y ago
  I haven't looked at the particulars for this project, but typically the practical limit of high speed rail is 300-500 miles. Beyond that, it's cheaper and greener to fly. If you aren't concerned with cheap or green, and want to focus on fast... Then high speed rail might be a better option until the TSA is involved.
  • NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Since when is air ever greener than rail? Everything I've seen puts air at a hugely higher carbon impact.
    • beerandt 7y ago
      Modern passenger jets are incredibly efficient. 1000-mile rail ROWs take a ton of resources to maintain and capacity does not scale well, especially as speed increases.
    • akvadrako 7y ago
      I can't find anything online that suggests air is ever cleaner than rail. The discrepancy is a factor of 20¹, so it would be surprising if circumstances overcame that, unless you are traveling across an ocean. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transp...
      • beerandt 7y ago
        For idealized shorter range distances (300~350 miles) I've seen claims of 2x or 2.5x, sometimes up to 5x, but that's using full LCA, not just fuel per passenger mile. The embedded energy in ROW and track are significant, and it doesn't scale well (capacity wise) compared to air travel.
        • akvadrako 7y ago
          2x/5x in which direction? Link? I mean transport uses so much fuel I would be surprised over the lifetime of a rail line the infrastructure costs are over 95% of the total cost.
• 20190820234322 7y ago
  It's not that hard to understand and it's not something to lament. To carry out a project on this scale you need people who in effect have no free will and are willing to function as machines for you for years on end. Most people in repressive regimes fit that description (i.e. essentially robots), and most people in democracies do not, and that's a good thing.
• melling 7y ago
  Depressing?!? It’s incredibly exciting! The United States wasn’t going to build these. Americans have been making excuses since the 1970s. Jerry Brown tried to build the CA bullet train 4 decades ago. Electric cars, electric buses, bullet trains, low-speed maglevs, high speed maglevs... China is making it happen! In America, all we want is “drill, baby, drill”
  • Gibbon1 7y ago
    > Jerry Brown tried to build the CA bullet train 4 decades ago. Amusing to me he did the Rip Van Winkle and popped up as Governor again after 30 years. In office he pushed hard to get CHSR built. Every time California's high speed rails come up on HN it's obvious that everyone here hates the idea. So the US is getting what it's collectively asking for and deserves here.
    • JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > Every time California's high speed rails come up on HN it's obvious that everyone here hates the idea California's major cities are almost in a line along the coast. That's the route that makes sense. California's HSR instead took a tour through the Central Valley's farming communities, taking a slam dunk pitch for linking San Francisco and San Diego via L.A. and turning it into a carcass.
      • MrFlynn 7y ago
        Unless you wanted to build an HSR line through a long coastal mountain range most of way from SF to LA further driving up the cost, having it go the majority of the distance through a relatively flat valley definitely has its benefits. I do think that the line should have paralleled i-5 instead of going through Bakersfield and Fresno, but that's not the choice that was made.
        • beamatronic 7y ago
          Not only that but you could put housing there
• NTDF9 7y ago
  > I took the train once from Irvine to Los Angeles and felt I had gone back in time to 1980. This in one of the richest counties in the world (OC) Have you considered that richness is not measured correctly? Since GDP is effectively consumption, the more a person consumes, the richer a country is. A thousand people driving 5 hours between LA and SF will make the country richer. Not the people, which China appears to be wanting to do.
• chao- 7y ago
  I agree with your sentiments overall, so don't take my "it's not all gloom and doom" comment as a disagreement... But there are people out there trying! The project from Texas Central Railways is looking like a sooner bet than California's line, for a number of reasons. An example of a reason is lower price, stemming from geography. The route doesn't require building tunnels through mountains and the like. Although even then there are some disappointing Catch-22 processes at work. A State Senator is using the existence of a particular court case to try and delay/prevent funding, and the plaintiffs of a court case using the Senator's opposition (which cites their case) as an argument in favor of their case. Nonetheless, I'm optimistic on the Dallas to Houston high speed rail. In my dreams, I see that project's completion as giving California a dose of motivation, so as not to be second fiddle to Texas.
  • samtimalsina 7y ago
    I did not know about this project at all. I live in North Dallas, and this is absolutely fabulous news.
  • Boondox543 7y ago
    I travel from Dallas to Houston every week for work and have been following this closely. Often after a run of crummy trips by air due to delays and other common air travel issues I take an executive charter bus just to take a break. All the while dreaming of what it would be like transiting via maglev at 1kmph
    • mcny 7y ago
      > 1kmph Did you mean a thousand miles per hour? Dallas to Houston is under 300 miles so a thousand miles per hour would make the commute about eighteen minutes? But then, 1k miles per hour is 447.04 meters per second while speed of sound is about 343 meters per second so I don't know if that technology yet exists... At a thousand kilometers per hour, even including about fifteen minutes of speeding up and slowing down time, a train from Dallas to Houston shouldn't take more than an hour. It would be awesome. Speaking of dreaming, Google says Miami to Seattle is about 48 h (3,303.3 mi) driving via I-90 W. Lets round it up to 6000 kilometers to avoid sharp turns. A non-stop train at 1000 kmph would be a six hour train ride, down from a forty eight hour drive. Imagine a train on this route, full of quiet cars on this route.
• avocado4 7y ago
  > while the US govt is dropping taxes for the biggest companies California has no shortage of funding for the transit. The failed bullet connection had more funding then the system in China that carries 10x people. Stop blaming "evil corporations" for failures of local and State governments.
• baby 7y ago
  Living in San Francisco and seeing homeless people everywhere, it really doesn't feel like one of the biggest economies.
  • ARandomerDude 7y ago
    Your feelings are wrong.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    Biggest doesn't imply evenly distributed, the gini coefficient in the US tracks income disparity, and it's gone up since 1980 in the US.
• usaar333 7y ago
  The alternative to being stuck in traffic for hours is flying. A major problem with train systems in the United States (and this is both short and long haul) is that almost the entire country is sprawl - built around the automobile. In dense environments (China and the north-east coast of the US (which has Acela), it's great to take a train into the core -- you beat traffic and are near your destination. In sprawling environments (like most of CA), the benefit of ending up in the core is so much less (possibly even negative). Lower probability you are near your destination. And if you need to drive, now you are in a much worse situation (higher car rental prices due to high land values, you are stuck in traffic trying to leave the urban core, etc.). In other words, even if you had a train, most individuals still will prefer driving (you have a car with you) or flying (faster than trains) -- killing the ROI on building the train in the first place.
  • toephu2 7y ago
    Interesting, from https://www.amtrak.com/acela-train https://www.amtrak.com/acela-train: "Superior comfort, upscale amenities and polished professional service at speeds up to 150 mph, Acela offers hourly service downtown to downtown during peak morning and afternoon rush hours between New York, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other intermediate cities, as well as many convenient round-trips between New York and Boston."
    • kaishiro 7y ago
      “And at only five times the cost of a Jetblue shuttle from JFK to Logan!” Having lived between NY and Boston for most of my life, and being a massive fan of trains, I am always so disappointed this isn’t a more realistic option.
  • tyfon 7y ago
    Flying easily adds 1-3 hours to the trip just for bullshit and boarding and stuff so there is a certain distance where the high speed trains are faster. It's also way more comfortable and relaxed. I prefer train over driving when I'm going somewhere too.. well until I discovered lane assist functions in modern cars that is :) But I can't yet work while driving so I guess the train wins in overall productivity. Flying is also a massive hit to the environment so I try to minimise it. So far I've avoided three roundtrips with planes and driven my car instead, but I've had to fly twice when going Oslo->Helsinki->Oslo.. I should probably have driven there too but for this instance time was of the essence.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  I think there are two factors at play here. 1) We have the curse of being first. Our cities are old so our infrastructure is old. 2) We can't just say, "Your land is ours, get the fuck out, construction begins in one week" They can also cut corners on safety and pollution. The ends always justify the means.
  • moju 7y ago
    Your country is not even 250 years old. There are older cities with better infrastructure.
    • mgolawala 7y ago
      Exactly. You see the high speed rail in Italy, Japan or China and think about just how old those countries are. All have excellent high speed rail. It isn't limited just to the outskirts either. For example, Rome itself has an amazing metro train system. The problem isn't the age of the country. The problem is bureaucratic dysfunction.
    • NikolaeVarius 7y ago
      Firebombing tends to.tear down old infrastructure pretty effectively
      • jbay808 7y ago
        By the time they started planning the bullet train, that was long in the past. This is what the surroundings would have looked like when the bullet train started. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0_series_Yurakucho_19670505.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0_series_Yurakucho_1967...
  • arcticbull 7y ago
    > 2) We can't just say, "Your land is ours, get the fuck out, construction begins in one week" You kinda can, via eminent domain. Maybe the will isn't there, but the way is.
• GoToRO 7y ago
  Different cultures: individualism (US) and team play (communism). Team play always wins if done properly.
  • tanzbaer 7y ago
    What a bunch of BS. Communism is not team play. It's slavery and tyranny. The US has more team play than most places because people are free to pick their teams.
    • GoToRO 7y ago
      Communism is the ultimate team play. Even the ones that are not thrilled by the idea, are forced to join (torture, killings). Also in my country, there were almost no private property. When communists came to power the first thing they did was to steal all the valuable private goods. When you pool all the resources together you can achieve much greater things. What ultimately happened was that the smart people really wanted freedom and if they don't have it they just stop contributing. Which is why communism China is not the same as the original communism because somehow they realized the flaws in the original design. Long term I believe China will not be the best overall due to this, but the bigger projects like this railroad, are much easier to achieve in any dictatorship.
• fasteddie31003 7y ago
  I am so glad California did not spend $80+ billion on the high-speed SF to LA rail project. It makes no sense. Flying from SF to LA would be faster than the train. Driving isn't that bad either and once you get to LA you need a car to get around. If you really want to take the train to LA there is already a beautiful route on Amtrak along the coast.
  • uwuhn 7y ago
    I did that Amtrak route (Coastal Starlight) recently and it just took so long. I'd rather take a bus next time. I won't be doing either, though -- I'll just fly. It costs the same anyways.
  • cnlevy 7y ago
    Take the Paris-Lyon TGV. For about 30$ minimum price, you get from city center to city center, 300 miles away in 2 hours. There are trains every 30 minutes.
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  > I hate the fact that an autocratic and repulsive Government The Chinese government is much more autocratic yet it obviously does a much better job in building infrastructure The problem with the US government is lobbyism. It does not work for itself, it does not work for the people, it works for big corporations and lawyers.
  • Ididntdothis 7y ago
    I also think that the people with influence, money and power have created a parallel world that almost has no overlap with the world most other people live in. They live in different areas, go to different schools, have different doctors or can afford the billing insanity in health care, have different career opportunities, don’t use the same air travel, have their incomes rise all the time. They probably really think that things are going great so why invest in or improve infrastructure and pay taxes?
    • HenryKissinger 7y ago
      What makes you think wealthy Chinese don't live in a separate reality too?
      • andrei_says_ 7y ago
        I think one of the differences is ability to think long term vs attachment to this quarter’s or this year’s bonus. Short term thinking is really destructive and limiting.
      • Aperocky 7y ago
        Wealthy Chinese people can't control what the country does, wealthy Americans certainly have the option if they wanted.
        • HenryKissinger 7y ago
          Interestingly enough, the collective net worth of the Chinese leadership is higher than the US leadership by at least an order of magnitude. > The richest 70 members of China’s legislature added more to their wealth last year than the combined net worth of all 535 members of the U.S. Congress, the president and his Cabinet, and the nine Supreme Court justices. > The net worth of the 70 richest delegates in China’s National People’s Congress, which opens its annual session on March 5, rose to 565.8 billion yuan ($89.8 billion) in 2011, a gain of $11.5 billion from 2010, according to figures from the Hurun Report, which tracks the country’s wealthy. That compares to the $7.5 billion net worth of all 660 top officials in the three branches of the U.S. government. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-26/china-s-billionaire-lawmakers-make-u-s-peers-look-like-paupers https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-26/china-s-b... So, if anything, wealthy Chinese people exert an even greater degree of control over the political process than wealthy Americans do over theirs.
• lostlogin 7y ago
  I get that rail could be a lot better in the US, but I took a journey there by rail and was really impressed. Clean, prompt and easy. My benchmark is New Zealand so keep that in mind.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• Shivetya 7y ago
  The simple truth is, transportation projects are not created to solve problems but instead of pay off political affiliates, be they donors, family members, political parties, or the unions. Democrats have no more interest in high speed rail or energy independence than Republicans and for the same reason. Oh they will pay lip service saying otherwise but you can see the results of all those years they have made their claims and promises. The elected and appointed officials of both parties serve their parties first. The party is more important than any one elected official and certainly more important than the voters. high speed rail is romanticism from bygone days when rail was the only alternative to long distance travel. air travel pretty much superseded it and is doing so all over the world. the advent of self driving and electric cars will doom them regardless. In an authoritarian state like China the state can tell people were to live which makes it far easier to put services where those people are. Let alone the one item ignored is that much of the population does not travel long distance and that holds true for many countries. So rail is more of a benefit for the well to do and it makes a great jobs program and political payday as well
  • polemic 7y ago
    > high speed rail is romanticism from bygone days when rail was the only alternative to long distance travel. air travel pretty much superseded it and is doing so all over the world. This isn't true. High speed rail is alive and well in Europe. Geography, politics and history are all significant factors that you can't explain so easily. > the advent of self driving and electric cars will doom them regardless Highly speculative. Nothing beats rail for capacity to move a lot of people around quickly. > So rail is more of a benefit for the well to do Quite the opposite.
    • sandworm101 7y ago
      But there are plenty of chinese infrastructure projects that have languished for lack of use. Look at the olympic venues. Once the novelty of ribbon cutting is over, once the recuring costs start piling up, this project too may slow down.
      • 7y ago
• benbristow 7y ago
  Hearing this make me quite proud of the UK. Even though we have old Victorian-era infrastructure we still manage to run a decent intercity train system that can get you from Scotland to London in 4 hours or so. Much more pleasant than travelling by plane without the hassle of airport security.
  • xvilka 7y ago
    Yes, you even managed to build Crossrail, which is a huge project by European standards. It shows that even within a city of so expensive property, if there is a will, proper infrastructure can be built.
• perseusprime11 7y ago
  You will get more depressed if you visit Shanghai and compare it with Manhattan.
• trhway 7y ago
  >Can you imagine the impact of being able to train from San Diego to LA in 30mins? LA to San Fran in an hour and a half? well, that train railway and its stops and other infrastructure would have to be build over somebody's lands/homes - the somebody's lives would have to be significantly impacted against their will. "The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few"? Especially that in practice those "Many" are frequently just some other, more influential, "Few". >an autocratic and repulsive Government that is a one [brutally] efficient way to outweigh the needs of the few ...
• pmontra 7y ago
  > Why on earth isn't there a high speed rail between these cities? Any big economy has big incumbents. > Can you imagine the impact of being able to train from San Diego to LA in 30mins? Can you imagine what airlines and aerospace companies would think about it?
• michannne 7y ago
  From what I remember reading, the train infrastructure in the East would never survive here in the States because our urban and rural layout structures are fundamentally different, meaning there are some large scale construction projects that are not feasibly profitable here, likewise in the East.
• microcolonel 7y ago
  > So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. What would be really depressing would be getting stuck with the hidden bill for this stuff. Sentiment like yours is why politicians can dangle the carrot of rail in front of the public for decades and keep cashing out. It's just not that great a choice of transport on most legs in the U.S; and most places where medium- and high-speed rail makes sense in the U.S. already have it, at some price that keeps it somewhat occupied.
• crimsonalucard 7y ago
  >I hate the fact that an autocratic and repulsive Government is showing up the US I hate that you use this term. Every government is like a flawed human being. I see it as a spectrum but HN sees it as The USA way or the HighWay. The autocracy and maintenance of that autocracy is exactly how the Chinese government can show up the US. A centralized government with no ulterior profit agenda is exactly the central pillar to make unbiased decisions without resistance.
• modtarget 7y ago
  > stories like this are incredibly depressing. Don't despair. We have Greta Thundberg. Just look at https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/she https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/she - it's doing well!
• hinkley 7y ago
  infrastructure literally and figuratively underlays parts of society. Boston has infrastructure problems to a degree Seattle doesn't experience because when the Seattle core burned to the ground, it was rebuilt in some critical areas with newer infrastructure and thinking. If you were a Bostonian or Chicagoan in that era, you were patting yourself on the back because your town hadn't burned in 20 years, and would not again. Today Seattle residence scratch their heads at some of the problems that Chicago and Boston have. Similarly, residents of Tokyo were 'forced' into cellphones because even the 'burbs were so dense that installing new data lines was hugely expensive. 2-4 times the cost of a cellphone for a year. We were sucking down DSL+ speeds and looking jealously at their cool phones.
  • kalleboo 7y ago
    > Similarly, residents of Tokyo were 'forced' into cellphones because even the 'burbs were so dense that installing new data lines was hugely expensive And yet now Japan has a nationwide FTTH grid to the point where the telco has discontinued new ADSL signups.
    • hinkley 7y ago
      i didn’t mean to imply that installed base trumps all other concerns. It creates back pressure that takes a really big reason to overcome. Installing a small bundle of fiber optic is so much more interesting than giant bundles of 10MB copper that can’t even handle the entire neighborhood. I’m sure that will overcome friction in a lot of places. I’m wondering if part of that exorbitant cost was installing repeaters. Which fiber has much less need of.
• gerdesj 7y ago
  "So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing." "If California was a country" You (US) are now segueing into the introspective phase of Empire - that's when you learn a few lessons. When you realise that deploying more (aircraft)carriers than everyone else combined is simply a thing or spending way more on cough defence than anyone else is a thing as well, and it isn't as important as some other things. Anyway, I hope your journey from Irvine to Los Angeles was at least comfortable. The world turns ...
• haberman 7y ago
  My friend Zach Shaner wrote a really interesting article called "ST3 is Slow Because It Reflects Our Values." ST3 is a transit project in Seattle. https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/04/07/st3-is-slow-because-it-reflects-our-values/ https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/04/07/st3-is-slow-becaus...
• simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  The irony of a train called "bullet train" (San Francisco Bay Area) when it goes at an average of 30-35 mph.
  • eddieplan9 7y ago
    First, it’s called “baby bullet express service”. Second, even the high-speed trains in China do not travel at high speed in city core (IIRC <80kph).
• jkterhune 7y ago
  There are people trying to line up maglev in the northeast. The first leg proposed is between Baltimore and Washington DC: https://northeastmaglev.com/project/timeline/ https://northeastmaglev.com/project/timeline/
• geomark 7y ago
  I hear you. I lived in SoCal for many years and fought the traffic on all those routes you mentioned. When I came back from trips to countries with working mass transit the awareness was even greater. But I think it's a hard problem in the U.S. Autocratic governments just decide to do something and plow over anyone who gets in their way. The country I live in now is actually starting to lay track for a high speed rail system to connect the centrally located capital and major outlying cities, and all the way to the northern and southern borders. It did take a while to get started, because everyone had to decide how the contracts would be divided up among their cronies and how the kickbacks would be paid. But it is getting done, because if anyone stands in the way the government declares a threat to the security of the country and sends in the soldiers.
• deleted 7y ago
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• edwinyzh 7y ago
  Sorry but I'm exciting as a Chinese coz the gov think in long term and do good for the entire country in building such infrastructure. >>autocratic and repulsive... I agree the govt's autocratic but disagree it's repulsive.
• I_AM_A_SMURF 7y ago
  The whole West Coast is a perfect example for this. How does a train between Vancouver and Seattle take 4 freaking hours?
• mymythisisthis 7y ago
  Think of something better. Buy an car transporter, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Truck.car.transporter.arp.750pix.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Truck.ca... Convert it to being an electric trolley bus https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Vancouver_E40LFR_trolleybus_2214.jpg/1200px-Vancouver_E40LFR_trolleybus_2214.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Va... Haul people and their cars around from city to city, saving them gas, letting them work with wifi.
• refurb 7y ago
  I understand why there is no high speed rail. I can jump on a plane and get there in 1 hr for about $50-75 each way. I also have a choice of 3 different airports around the bay and similar options in LA. San Diego is just another 15 min by air.
• countryqt30 7y ago
  I think the surprisingly simple bottom line is: Infrastructure is EXTREMELY expensive (are you willing to pay 10'000 for every ride?) and the upside NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE to gauge.
• dosy 7y ago
  maybe it's got something to do with your arrogance. every time a positive story about China comes out where you could learn something from it and go hey that's inspiring why don't we try to emulate that. no no no instead of doing that constructive thing you indulge the ego protective fake payoff of criticizing China dismissing the achievements on the basis of made-up and double standards so-called human rights. and all kinds of other mental gymnastics to protect yourself perception and make it easier to avoid facing the reality of China's rise and learning something from their achievements. c I like both the US and China but I think this Western ego protective pathology that the West has towards a different system achieving success is only hurting the West because instead of as you say being a shining example it is an example of decay and stagnation. when China was struggling relatively compared to the West they opened their minds and looked Westward to absorb all the best ideas and try to emulate them and make them their own. and that succeeded wonderfully. so in the ideal sense competition and cooperation between great palace should proceed along these lines of mutual respect on inspiration and emulation. then everyone can go up together. when the free market of ideas is held back by ideology or the desire to protect once he go that gets in the way of the introspection required to create the improvements then you won't get the results. so whatever the geopolitical justifications the more the fires of anti-chinese sentiment in the US has started the more the US Mass consciousness is unable to absorb and progressing learn from the achievements of China. stagnation and decay inevitably results. this has nothing to do with the Trump ERA this sort of pathological aversion to introspection has been part of Western mindset probably since colonial times. maybe the West just like a self-destructive adolescent? the youngest empire maybe they're not accustomed to the responsibilities of that and so they act out self-destructively. perhaps China more mature and grounded in a sense of their mission as a civilization is more accustomed to taking on the responsibilities of long-term growth? I really like the US. and if I think about if America was a person in my high school class it would be the bully always picking fights, with the fragile ego and whenever anyone else achieved they want to insult them and bring them down. it's quite a toxic personality. China would be the hard-working achiever that was a firm in its own perspective and also trying to build alliances without the coercion of conflict. either one would be perfect but everyone could see which one was holding themselves back by refusing to be inspired by others achievements. inkling in an entitled man into their own sense of Glory that was hard won but perhaps is forgotten also needs to be continually recreated. just some perspective.
• zaroth 7y ago
  No need to get glossy eyed over China. Yes, there are advantages to a totalitarian regime where the population isn’t allowed to own land. There are also modern day concentration camps and mass organ harvesting. Unfortunately you don’t really get one without tending to get the other.
  • chii 7y ago
    that's a false dichotomy. The USA's rail system is shit because of lack of investment, and misaligned incentives. It's cheaper to fly, or drive, than to invest in rail, even though rail is very efficient (and i suspect, more environmentally friendly than either of the above).
    • zaroth 7y ago
      Rail, at the utilization rate that is observed in the real world in the US, is actually less efficient than a 2-passenger automobile, per passenger-mile. Note that average real-world occupancy rates of vehicles is 1.5, so that is not to say that rail is more efficient than automobiles. But merely 33% more efficient per passenger-mile than automobiles at the current fleet mpg of 25mpg, which to me was very surprising. At 60mpg and above (EVs in particular) the automobile at existing occupancy rates is more efficient than rail per passenger-mile. Part of the challenge with rail efficiency is that it's a fixed point-to-point transit and not a dynamic door-to-door transit. So getting from Point A to Point B has significant wasted overhead distance traveled. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/carbon-footprint-transportation-efficiency-graphic/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/carbon-fo...
  • hrson 7y ago
    Few years back there were stories about officials removing graveyards to give way for industrial developments. It's really easy to get things done when one only need to answer to above, not below. I've tried to dig for references, but it's very difficult to find discussions 2+ years back, let along official news.
    • ajscanlan 7y ago
• iamsb 7y ago
  It is incredibly hard to get things done in a fully functioning democracy. Ask us Indians and we know how difficult it has been for us to build any large scale project. First time a road building project was outsourced to private contractors was in 1995. People who wanted to use the road were asked to pay a fee (toll). There was an outcry from media, other political parties. That government lost power and only came back into to power 20 years later and no other big projects happened until then. Right now in Mumbai, one of the densest urban clusterfuck on the face of planet is resisting a rail project which will elevating pains for 5 million people everyday, saving enormous amount of carbon, reduce pollution. And all the resistance in for cutting down 2700 trees, most of which will be transplanted. See in Australia how difficult it has been to build a high speed rail between Melbourne - Sydney one of the busiest domestic route in the world. Edit - I dont mean to imply democracies are bad. It is just that things are hard to get done.
• deleted 7y ago
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• growlist 7y ago
  I thought the M25 was bad, and then I experienced LA traffic in rush hour.
• rayiner 7y ago
  As a former rail fan, I’ve gotten over it. We don’t build infrastructure because we don’t value it. Not just in a “we don’t want to spend the money”—but we don’t want to make the political compromises necessary to make it easy to build infrastructure. Dropping taxes on companies has nothing to do with it. Many European countries have lower corporate taxes than we do, and no OECD country raises significant revenue from corporate taxes. It’s a red herring and a distraction. The issue is we have a political system that makes infrastructure enormously more expensive and hard to build than in Europe (much less China). In Maryland, people are lobbying to get light rail stations torn down that have already been built! The average time spent in “environmental review” for a government project is 5 years, and its really just an opportunity for a small minority to hold up and delay infrastructure projects. But that system is a reflection of our values. We don’t build things because we would rather prioritize other values. That is what it is. We are good at other things! We’re good at things like Silicon Valley, that don’t require centralized cooperation and people falling in line. Lots of countries have the political discipline to build rail. But there is no other Silicon Valley! (What more needs to be said about why California doesn’t have rail, beyond noting that the state’s most significant industry is based in the suburbs/exurbs of an otherwise second tier city?)
• kapuasuite 7y ago
  Been in New York City for the last ten years, so I certainly understand where you’re coming from. A few points: 1. Corporate income taxes don’t generate much revenue, and the revenue they do bring in is even smaller relative to the amount of harm and economic distortion it causes. It really only carries on because it’s a useful political football and because having it appeals to a certain sense of “fairness.” There’s really no correlation between corporate taxation and infrastructure, and we might even be better off without the former altogether. 2. The US does spend a lot every year on infrastructure, but it gets relatively little bang for its buck, especially in comparison to places like China; even other advanced economies (France, UK, etc.) seem to be better at controlling costs for these types of projects. 3. We also spend a ton of money every year on precisely the wrong type of infrastructure. The Federal government, in addition to every state and local government, spends enormous sums every year on not only maintaining existing roads, but also widening, adding lanes, or even building new ones. In fact I remember reading that something like one out of every two dollars spent on roads goes to build new ones, even as people decry that the government isn’t adequately maintaining the roads that already exist. That’s insane - but it’s tied up in how funds are allocated, cost sharing agreements, etc. that often comes out of Congress. In short, the Feds will pick up an enormous proportion of the tab for building new state and local roads, but contribute very little to maintaining them. It should be easy to see, then, that building new roads is often more lucrative for contractors, politicians, governments, etc. than simply maintaining what they already have. 4. All the money we just talked about spending on roads is money that was not spent on upgrading sewers, water, power, public services, and everything else that help support denser urban areas like New York. So in effect, we are starving economically vibrant cities like NY of federal funds at the same time we subsidize the continued expansion of suburbia, none of which have the density required to make massive investments in things like railroads anywhere close to economically viable.
• nswest23 7y ago
  as someone who lives on the other side of the US from family members this is incredibly depressing.
• credit_guy 7y ago
  > So, as someone that lived in New York for 6 years and California for 6 years, stories like this are incredibly depressing. The US is a country of checks and balances. Viewed differently, it's easy to obstruct changes. On average this works well, as it's far more likely for any random change to be bad rather than good. The unfortunate side effect is that many good changes don't happen, because it's so difficult to overcome all the "checks and balances". In an authoritarian regime, changes edicted from the top encounter very little opposition. In post-Mao China, lots of these changes were wise, but not all. In the majority of the authoritarian regimes though the story is a bit less rosy. Can we have our cake (checks and balances) and eat it too (more good changes get done) ? That's a tough question, I personally don't have the answer. But it seems more likely that once China builds a larger network of high-speed rail, the US would get some type of competitive impulse, and start investing in this too. One can only hope ...
  • repolfx 7y ago
    You're assuming HSR is a "good" decision versus the alternatives, but who's to say it is? Further down this thread is a link to this video called, "Why is China so good at building railways?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoll8OEFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoll8OEFE The presenter and quite a few commenters seem to have a built-in bias towards rail. Don't get me wrong. I love a good train journey and prefer it to flying when it's competitive. But the video tries to be an optimistic take on what a cold eye could only describe as totally mad and dysfunctional government. The situation according to the video can be summed up like this: • China has built tons of high speed rail very fast, this is amazing! • But they do it because their internal airlines suck incredibly badly. • There are only three carriers, none of which are budget. Planes are on time only about 65% of the time, which is a staggeringly low figure. The cause is enormous congestion in the air leading to air traffic control frequently denying takeoff rights. • This bizarre situation occurs because the Chinese Army controls almost all the airspace above China and refuses to let civilian flights anywhere except a few corridors. • Rather than get the army under control and open up flying to competition, China decided to build tons of railways instead. • These railways are all heavily subsidised. Theoretically some in the east are profitable, but this is more than offset by railways built along totally unviable routes. For one route the ticket sales don't even cover the cost of electricity, let alone construction debt. • Because HSR requires long straight lines without sharp curves, HSR railway stations are often as far away from city centres as airports are (France has this problem too). That eliminates one major advantage of rail over flying. The Chinese taxpayer is forced to pay for these economically insane projects because it's all a part of Beijing's control (or oppression) of Xinjiang and Tibet. For vague and to me inexplicable reasons, Beijing thinks building expensive and slow railway lines between outer region cities that don't have much travel demand will somehow prevent rebellions. The logic of this is not elaborated in the video, but it's hard not to assume the railways are intended for future military use if there's a need to move lots of troops into these regions. Now let's compare this to America, which according to Hacker News consensus is some terrible backwater in comparison. America has perhaps the world's best domestic airline network. Competition is intense, prices are low, travel times are very low, planes travel freely in huge quantities and the airlines are (sorta) profitable without taxpayer subsidies. America also has an extensive and heavily used railway network, but it's used for freight rather than passengers. This makes sense for all kinds of physical and economic reasons. HSR doesn't really exist in America, but this isn't because American society is dysfunctional. It's because the massive subsidies and land clearance required are hard to justify when you have an excellent flight network, which operates just fine. Take away "suppress rebellion" and "the military causes 40% of flights to be delayed" as motivating reasons and suddenly the US decisions don't look so bad. Those checks and balances seem to be working out pretty well.
• Gibbon1 7y ago
  > I took the train once from Irvine to Los Angeles and felt I had gone back in time to 1980. That's what California gets for electing governors George Deukmejian. Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• jmpman 7y ago
  Sure, I voted for the California high speed rail... mostly because I expected to move after a few years and not have to pay for it.. but even when I voted for it, I knew it was going to be a cluster...
• profalseidol 7y ago
  "dropping taxes for the biggest companies and lowering spending on infrastructure and public works" = repulsive "green tech investment and high tech public transport systems" = actually helps the people Start by fixing misinformation about what is the PRC and the "democractic" US.