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I have made my peace with the fact that Car and Airline Lobby will not let this happen. I mean we are the richest frikin country in the world and we cannot buil

I have made my peace with the fact that Car and Airline Lobby will not let this happen. I mean we are the richest frikin country in the world and we cannot build a decent high speed train network. Only reason is that some strong forces do not want this to happen. I hope I am wrong. I also hear funny arguments (in my opinion) about why high speed Rails are a bad idea. Oh it's too expensive. Oh it is ok for countries like China because they have lot of people etc etc. Excuses. I thought we like choices as Americans. Right now, if I don't want to drive, my only option is to fly mostly in a shitty plane cramped up with strangers on a 4 hour flight. I would gladly trade that with a train even if that takes say an additional hour or so. Are Amtraks the best we can do America ?

jbverschoor 5y ago
No, your country is bankrupt
- justaguy88 5y ago
  That would imply that the US can't pay it's debts, but it can by printing more money
5tefan 5y ago
You spend it on warfare and throw the rest after some billionaires.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Why do you make a comment like this when the US federal budget breakdown is clearly available online. Most goes to social services benefits, welfare, and socialized healthcare. https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/mandatory_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/mandatory_spend...
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    I'd like to see that overlaid with military spending at the same scale. Probably wouldn't mean that much anymore, then. Ah, well, not overlaid, not to scale, but nonetheless: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/guides/tipsheet-pentagon-spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/guides/tipsheet-pentagon-... tl;dr Military & Security Spending In fiscal year 2015, Pentagon and related spending will total $598 billion, accounting for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending. That's roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. Peanuts!
usefulcat 5y ago
> Right now, if I don't want to drive, my only option is to fly mostly in a shitty plane cramped up with strangers on a 4 hour flight. Would high speed rail be that different? Not being snarky, I really don't know. I just figure that if it's very fast and/or expensive, it's probably not going to be very roomy on the inside. That Chinese train looks like it's about the same width or less than most airliners.
- porphyra 5y ago
  As someone who has taken the Shinkansen in Japan, the seats and legroom are vastly bigger and more comfortable than on airplanes. Moreover, the view is nice and normal air pressure is nice too.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  In theory I agree, although in practice the experience is a lot different due to 1. less security theater (even in China, HSR security isn't as bad as American flights), 2. The vehicle itself is generally pleasant to ride on, as opposed to the turbulence, the takeoff/landing, and the air pressure that a passenger on a flight experiences, 3. It generally feels more scenic / touristy in the train because you can see the mountains and villages go by.
  - nradov 5y ago
    On most air routes severe turbulence is rare. Take off and landing only take a few minutes.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    Chinese surveillance allows them to operate the equivalent of TSA PreCheck without having to do a background check on people.
    - mikeblackson 5y ago
      With all the public and private surveillance, the US can do something similar.
mimixco 5y ago
The best explanation I've heard is that the interstate system killed the need for trains here. We're the only country in the world with anything like it. (Fun fact: It's the world's largest infrastructure project.) Because of highways, we're already connected in ways that wouldn't even be possible with trains. It's just faster and more practical to drive the entire way, or drive to an airport and from an airport to your destination, than to add a train station into the mix. In France, you can walk from your apartment to the metro, change to the regional train, and even go international without getting in a car. This will never be possible in the US because we build cities and suburbs around the highway system.
- mongol 5y ago
  What makes the interstate system globally unique?
  - mimixco 5y ago
    Well, it's the only thing like it in the world! We are the only country that has a highway network (as in, multilane, graded, exits, safety areas, services, etc.) that runs "from sea to shining sea" and top-to-bottom as well. Literally every city in America can be reached from it and, paramount in its construction, every military base. A design requirement was that military airplanes be able to land on major highways if necessary for military maneuvers. The interstate helped make America what it is. It created a massive westward expansion even greater than the railroads. It turned San Jose from prune and peach trees into Silicon Valley. It turned Florida from a useless swamp into Miami. It enabled the escape from Detroit that led to that city's bankruptcy. It wiped out countless communities (especially communities of color and rural farm communities) when it skipped over them in its development, or put a pylon right through a local neighborhood. I think the history of the interstate and what it's become is fascinating. This fab promo video from the construction era shows some of the PR they used to sell it to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnrqUHF5bH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnrqUHF5bH8
    - jbay808 5y ago
BitwiseFool 5y ago
Even in a state like California where the population is pro-rail and mass transit, the sheer cost of building high speed rail means the project won't come to fruition any time soon. The automobile and airline lobby is powerful, yes, but the sheer cost of public works projects in the US seems to be the biggest limiting factor. In the PRC, if the government wants to build a high speed rail line, it's getting built and F-U if you want to stop it. In the US the process is 'democratized' and every little busybody comes out to protest the construction, drag the process out, or get some variance approved for some hitherto unexpected concern.
- narrator 5y ago
  The way environmental legislation works in the U.S, if some environmental non-profit wants to start throwing spaghetti at the wall to stop infrastructure construction, they can stop it basically forever by tying it up in court for decades.
  - FreakyT 5y ago
    You're getting downvoted, but it's true -- CEQA is a great example of how well-intentioned environmental legislation can be abused by basically anyone to stonewall any project for any reason. A common-sense change might be requiring minimum quantities of local signatures to limit the potential impact of a small opposition.
    - narrator 5y ago
      Yeah CEQA is why the high speed rail project will never get built. It grants godlike powers to NIMBYs in California. Every single mile of the high speed rail project has the potential to get stuck in CEQA hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali... "In one case, anti-abortion activists filed a CEQA lawsuit to try to block a new tenant (Planned Parenthood) from using an already constructed office building in South San Francisco. They cited the noise caused by their own protests as the environmental impact requiring mitigation. This lawsuit delayed the new tenancy by at least 18 months." "Governor Jerry Brown, in an interview with UCLA's Blueprint magazine, commented on the use of CEQA for other than environmental reasons: "But it’s easier to build in Texas. It is. And maybe we could change that. But you know what? The trouble is the political climate, that's just kind of where we are. Very hard to — you can’t change CEQA [the California Environmental Quality Act]. BP: Why not? JB: The unions won’t let you because they use it as a hammer to get project labor agreements." "
okprod 5y ago
the fact that Car and Airline Lobby will not let this happen I think another factor here in the US is the government bidding process that results in driving up costs, time, etc.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  The bigger problem is the US "environmental review" process. That's its name — it is only minimally environment-oriented. It allows anyone who comments to sue and delay the project by months or years, which means that every big project is a big shakedown, paying off and appeasing groups who would otherwise threaten to sue. This is the primary reason why the nation hasn't really brought big new infrastructure projects to the table since the 1970s. Some places like California and San Francisco add their own layers, which exacerbate local crises in housing.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    what is this? only -2 points? surely with such corruption in our world you could downvote me further!!
pradn 5y ago
The reasons why we wont have a high-speed train network any time soon, in priority order (my opinion): 1. Eminent domain and generally-high construction costs make the initial time and money outlays exorbitantly high, resulting in projects never getting off the ground or having to compensate with much-too-expensive tickets 2. Even if you get to the middle of another city, having to rent a car to get to where you need is a pain. It's easier to drive from Dallas to Houston in a car, because you have a car at the end of the trip. Only some cities have fast public transport; the rest are so big it's hard not rent a car or Uber everywhere, both options are expensive and time-consuming. 3. Trains likely take more time than flights for the mid-to-long distance journeys planes are good for. 4. A cultural lack of interest in passenger rail. It's just not a part of the culture, and is seen as weird/enthusiast thing to do, unlike in Europe, India, or China.
- dnautics 5y ago
  3 is underappreciated and incredibly important (it should be #1) for the simple reason than labor cost. You have to pay flight attendants/rail attendants and that starts adding up. Moreover a rail attendant/engineer for a long haul trip cannot be back at home to family at the end of the day, for a transcontinental flight attendant or pilot it's possible, so the labor pool is meaningfully different, and supply and demand is a thing.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    > Moreover a rail attendant/engineer for a long haul trip cannot be back at home to family at the end of the day, That would be problematic for some long distance train connections in germany as well (north-south connections), but they just schedule around that: attendants change mid-journey as needed.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    That is all false. You don't need attendants on rail at all - what is there for them to do? For flight you need them to oversee preparing for a crash trains should get this failure mode should be designed out - which does imply doing the regular maintenance and using good safety systems. Just give a small discount to anyone with current first aid/CPR and you can be sure there are more than enough regular riders to take care of the remaining issues. Even if you do decide you want attendants for some reason, train should stop not less than once an hour, which means the crews can get off the train after 4 hours and staff the one back home. (I don't believe freight rail shouldn't do the same, but they have different operations from passenger rail such that more than an hour between stops might be reasonable) Note that if the train really is going through the middle of nowhere at one hour you just pick a random dot on the map and grant it a station just to get your stops. The cost to stopping a train is less than 5 minutes for the full trip (this adds up if you stop every few km, but when it is once an hour it isn't a big deal)
DrBazza 5y ago
It's a Western problem. China just moves people out of the way. In the West, you have go around, under, or over. Labour costs are low. The CCP answers to itself. Can I build this? Of course you can! In the UK, there's archaeological surveys, bio-diversity/green considerations, carbon impact, political lobbying. The list just goes on and on and on. The US, at least, is largely an empty continent. You can probably draw a line between cities and not hit many things. Plus the US love-affair with cars means you could, if you wanted to, build terminals outside major cities and rent a car to drive the last part and still conceivably run a profitable service. In the UK, we must have our terminals in the city centres which adds so much more to the cost as we have to tunnel under and into the cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > It's a Western problem It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. > You can probably draw a line between cities and not hit many things The empty parts are away from cities. The California and Capitol corridors are (a) prime rail routes and (b) almost contiguous megalopolises.
  - ttz 5y ago
    > It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. Asking out of genuine interest - do you have any ideas as to why this might be?
    - username90 5y ago
      Could also be that first past the post systems leading to less competent administrations than proportional representation and coalitions. Common law and first past the post seems to go hand in hand.
  - JPLeRouzic 5y ago
berto4 5y ago
We can argue all we want and present other points of view and narratives, but it seems the basic fact is just that the Chinese system is better...at least for these kind of big projects. Somehow America can't get it's act together for projects with some public good. we need to ease off the military shit for a while!
- shadilay 5y ago
  Chines public rail projects tend to come with an interpretation of property law (that you have none) that would not fly in the west.
- akiselev 5y ago
  Their system just hasn't been around long enough to accrue enough legal debt - pesky thing like "property rights", "environmental regulations", "labor laws", and "due process" that people start demanding as they go up Maslow's hierarchy.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    The enshrinement of property rights in America has led to such wonderful things as ridiculous housing prices, rampant income inequality, endemic homelessness, the absurdity of Prop 13, etc. and yet we still trumpet it. When do we start reexamining these foundations? We can always find something to justify putting on airs of superiority, but the fact remains that our infrastructure stagnates while the rest of the world manages to modernize. Forget the China comparisons if they are so triggering. Europe still manages public works. Individual rights have to give at some point for the good of society.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > When do we start reexamining these foundations? Start? The entire labor movement, the public accommodation portion of the civil rights movement, and the rest of the transition from gilded age capitalism to the modern mixed economy has been a process of reexamination of and evolutionary progress from the classic capitalist conception of properry rights. Just as, for that matter, the several centuries of evolution from feudalism and other pre-capitalist economic systems through Enlightenment liberalism to the peak of gilded age capitalism was such a reexamination of pre-capitalist ideas of property rights. And while you can conceptualize them roughly as successive and mobotonic, both of those are oversimplifications; elements of pre-capitalist patronage-oriented systems were still around past the peak of capitalism, and isolated points of reversions from capitalism to them or to purer capitalist models from their replacements occurred throughout the process and still do. But the idea that society is sitting on some static foundation of property rights that is waiting for a beginning of a reexamination is...not remotely tenable.
SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
It's too late now. It would take 20+ years; by then we'll probably have level 5 autonomous driving systems, making rail obsolete.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  200 cars traveling between L.A. and Phoenix vs. one train traveling at 350 MPH? Why would we ever want that?
  - SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
    I'm imagining that L5 vehicles will be able to travel at vastly higher speeds than human drivers, on a dedicated high-speed autonomous highway network, which could be constructed at a fraction of the cost of rail infrastructure. We would want that because it would eliminate the last mile problem.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      Feels like a last mile inconvenience to me.
pstuart 5y ago
It's the rail line's issue too -- they only care about shipping freight and passenger traffic is a second class citizen. They also are pushing back against Positive Train Control because they don't want to spend the money (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control) (sorry no citation on pushback because lazy). We could do much more with our existing rail lines if the will was there. I maintain that we should "nationalize" the rail lines (the literal rails and whatnot) and invest in making it safer and faster. Not maglev, but at least have passenger trains run at a decent clip and not have to be sidelined for freight.
6510 5y ago
> Oh it's too expensive. The Chinese probably have some funky calculation that shows it makes the country that much more efficient. For reference, it takes 4.5 hours to travel from one end of the Netherlands to the other by train. China is 231X larger. https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/netherlands/china https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/neth...
mensetmanusman 5y ago
China can do this because their technocrats have no issue demolishing the homes of half a million rural folks to help the urban elites. There are trade offs in a democracy, it is designed to be slow because as a feature everyone has a voice. We don’t get shiny trains, but we might have a more stable form of government?
- Fricken 5y ago
  I don't understand the nuances of Chinese property law, but I doubt you would see things like this if Chinese authorities could run people off their land for any old reason: https://abcnews.go.com/International/slideshow/stubborn-nail-china-residents-refuse-move-19827908 https://abcnews.go.com/International/slideshow/stubborn-nail...
  - pedroma 5y ago
    They can just demolish it, because it is their property. It's just the local authorities are stubborn in upholding the illusion of there being a choice in the matter. The media then got involved and it no longer became worth it demolishing it since it sets a good example for public opinion, and the owner will move out eventually anyways.

jbverschoor 5y ago

No, your country is bankrupt

justaguy88 5y ago
That would imply that the US can't pay it's debts, but it can by printing more money

5tefan 5y ago

You spend it on warfare and throw the rest after some billionaires.

missedthecue 5y ago
Why do you make a comment like this when the US federal budget breakdown is clearly available online. Most goes to social services benefits, welfare, and socialized healthcare. https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/mandatory_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/mandatory_spend...
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  I'd like to see that overlaid with military spending at the same scale. Probably wouldn't mean that much anymore, then. Ah, well, not overlaid, not to scale, but nonetheless: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/guides/tipsheet-pentagon-spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/guides/tipsheet-pentagon-... tl;dr Military & Security Spending In fiscal year 2015, Pentagon and related spending will total $598 billion, accounting for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending. That's roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. Peanuts!

usefulcat 5y ago

> Right now, if I don't want to drive, my only option is to fly mostly in a shitty plane cramped up with strangers on a 4 hour flight. Would high speed rail be that different? Not being snarky, I really don't know. I just figure that if it's very fast and/or expensive, it's probably not going to be very roomy on the inside. That Chinese train looks like it's about the same width or less than most airliners.

porphyra 5y ago
As someone who has taken the Shinkansen in Japan, the seats and legroom are vastly bigger and more comfortable than on airplanes. Moreover, the view is nice and normal air pressure is nice too.
helen___keller 5y ago
In theory I agree, although in practice the experience is a lot different due to 1. less security theater (even in China, HSR security isn't as bad as American flights), 2. The vehicle itself is generally pleasant to ride on, as opposed to the turbulence, the takeoff/landing, and the air pressure that a passenger on a flight experiences, 3. It generally feels more scenic / touristy in the train because you can see the mountains and villages go by.
- nradov 5y ago
  On most air routes severe turbulence is rare. Take off and landing only take a few minutes.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  Chinese surveillance allows them to operate the equivalent of TSA PreCheck without having to do a background check on people.
  - mikeblackson 5y ago
    With all the public and private surveillance, the US can do something similar.

mimixco 5y ago

The best explanation I've heard is that the interstate system killed the need for trains here. We're the only country in the world with anything like it. (Fun fact: It's the world's largest infrastructure project.) Because of highways, we're already connected in ways that wouldn't even be possible with trains. It's just faster and more practical to drive the entire way, or drive to an airport and from an airport to your destination, than to add a train station into the mix. In France, you can walk from your apartment to the metro, change to the regional train, and even go international without getting in a car. This will never be possible in the US because we build cities and suburbs around the highway system.

mongol 5y ago
What makes the interstate system globally unique?
- mimixco 5y ago
  Well, it's the only thing like it in the world! We are the only country that has a highway network (as in, multilane, graded, exits, safety areas, services, etc.) that runs "from sea to shining sea" and top-to-bottom as well. Literally every city in America can be reached from it and, paramount in its construction, every military base. A design requirement was that military airplanes be able to land on major highways if necessary for military maneuvers. The interstate helped make America what it is. It created a massive westward expansion even greater than the railroads. It turned San Jose from prune and peach trees into Silicon Valley. It turned Florida from a useless swamp into Miami. It enabled the escape from Detroit that led to that city's bankruptcy. It wiped out countless communities (especially communities of color and rural farm communities) when it skipped over them in its development, or put a pylon right through a local neighborhood. I think the history of the interstate and what it's become is fascinating. This fab promo video from the construction era shows some of the PR they used to sell it to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnrqUHF5bH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnrqUHF5bH8
  - jbay808 5y ago

BitwiseFool 5y ago

Even in a state like California where the population is pro-rail and mass transit, the sheer cost of building high speed rail means the project won't come to fruition any time soon. The automobile and airline lobby is powerful, yes, but the sheer cost of public works projects in the US seems to be the biggest limiting factor. In the PRC, if the government wants to build a high speed rail line, it's getting built and F-U if you want to stop it. In the US the process is 'democratized' and every little busybody comes out to protest the construction, drag the process out, or get some variance approved for some hitherto unexpected concern.

narrator 5y ago
The way environmental legislation works in the U.S, if some environmental non-profit wants to start throwing spaghetti at the wall to stop infrastructure construction, they can stop it basically forever by tying it up in court for decades.
- FreakyT 5y ago
  You're getting downvoted, but it's true -- CEQA is a great example of how well-intentioned environmental legislation can be abused by basically anyone to stonewall any project for any reason. A common-sense change might be requiring minimum quantities of local signatures to limit the potential impact of a small opposition.
  - narrator 5y ago
    Yeah CEQA is why the high speed rail project will never get built. It grants godlike powers to NIMBYs in California. Every single mile of the high speed rail project has the potential to get stuck in CEQA hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali... "In one case, anti-abortion activists filed a CEQA lawsuit to try to block a new tenant (Planned Parenthood) from using an already constructed office building in South San Francisco. They cited the noise caused by their own protests as the environmental impact requiring mitigation. This lawsuit delayed the new tenancy by at least 18 months." "Governor Jerry Brown, in an interview with UCLA's Blueprint magazine, commented on the use of CEQA for other than environmental reasons: "But it’s easier to build in Texas. It is. And maybe we could change that. But you know what? The trouble is the political climate, that's just kind of where we are. Very hard to — you can’t change CEQA [the California Environmental Quality Act]. BP: Why not? JB: The unions won’t let you because they use it as a hammer to get project labor agreements." "

okprod 5y ago

the fact that Car and Airline Lobby will not let this happen I think another factor here in the US is the government bidding process that results in driving up costs, time, etc.

fennecfoxen 5y ago
The bigger problem is the US "environmental review" process. That's its name — it is only minimally environment-oriented. It allows anyone who comments to sue and delay the project by months or years, which means that every big project is a big shakedown, paying off and appeasing groups who would otherwise threaten to sue. This is the primary reason why the nation hasn't really brought big new infrastructure projects to the table since the 1970s. Some places like California and San Francisco add their own layers, which exacerbate local crises in housing.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  what is this? only -2 points? surely with such corruption in our world you could downvote me further!!

pradn 5y ago

The reasons why we wont have a high-speed train network any time soon, in priority order (my opinion): 1. Eminent domain and generally-high construction costs make the initial time and money outlays exorbitantly high, resulting in projects never getting off the ground or having to compensate with much-too-expensive tickets 2. Even if you get to the middle of another city, having to rent a car to get to where you need is a pain. It's easier to drive from Dallas to Houston in a car, because you have a car at the end of the trip. Only some cities have fast public transport; the rest are so big it's hard not rent a car or Uber everywhere, both options are expensive and time-consuming. 3. Trains likely take more time than flights for the mid-to-long distance journeys planes are good for. 4. A cultural lack of interest in passenger rail. It's just not a part of the culture, and is seen as weird/enthusiast thing to do, unlike in Europe, India, or China.

dnautics 5y ago
3 is underappreciated and incredibly important (it should be #1) for the simple reason than labor cost. You have to pay flight attendants/rail attendants and that starts adding up. Moreover a rail attendant/engineer for a long haul trip cannot be back at home to family at the end of the day, for a transcontinental flight attendant or pilot it's possible, so the labor pool is meaningfully different, and supply and demand is a thing.
- Xylakant 5y ago
  > Moreover a rail attendant/engineer for a long haul trip cannot be back at home to family at the end of the day, That would be problematic for some long distance train connections in germany as well (north-south connections), but they just schedule around that: attendants change mid-journey as needed.
- bluGill 5y ago
  That is all false. You don't need attendants on rail at all - what is there for them to do? For flight you need them to oversee preparing for a crash trains should get this failure mode should be designed out - which does imply doing the regular maintenance and using good safety systems. Just give a small discount to anyone with current first aid/CPR and you can be sure there are more than enough regular riders to take care of the remaining issues. Even if you do decide you want attendants for some reason, train should stop not less than once an hour, which means the crews can get off the train after 4 hours and staff the one back home. (I don't believe freight rail shouldn't do the same, but they have different operations from passenger rail such that more than an hour between stops might be reasonable) Note that if the train really is going through the middle of nowhere at one hour you just pick a random dot on the map and grant it a station just to get your stops. The cost to stopping a train is less than 5 minutes for the full trip (this adds up if you stop every few km, but when it is once an hour it isn't a big deal)

DrBazza 5y ago

It's a Western problem. China just moves people out of the way. In the West, you have go around, under, or over. Labour costs are low. The CCP answers to itself. Can I build this? Of course you can! In the UK, there's archaeological surveys, bio-diversity/green considerations, carbon impact, political lobbying. The list just goes on and on and on. The US, at least, is largely an empty continent. You can probably draw a line between cities and not hit many things. Plus the US love-affair with cars means you could, if you wanted to, build terminals outside major cities and rent a car to drive the last part and still conceivably run a profitable service. In the UK, we must have our terminals in the city centres which adds so much more to the cost as we have to tunnel under and into the cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> It's a Western problem It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. > You can probably draw a line between cities and not hit many things The empty parts are away from cities. The California and Capitol corridors are (a) prime rail routes and (b) almost contiguous megalopolises.
- ttz 5y ago
  > It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. Asking out of genuine interest - do you have any ideas as to why this might be?
  - username90 5y ago
    Could also be that first past the post systems leading to less competent administrations than proportional representation and coalitions. Common law and first past the post seems to go hand in hand.
- JPLeRouzic 5y ago

berto4 5y ago

We can argue all we want and present other points of view and narratives, but it seems the basic fact is just that the Chinese system is better...at least for these kind of big projects. Somehow America can't get it's act together for projects with some public good. we need to ease off the military shit for a while!

shadilay 5y ago
Chines public rail projects tend to come with an interpretation of property law (that you have none) that would not fly in the west.
akiselev 5y ago
Their system just hasn't been around long enough to accrue enough legal debt - pesky thing like "property rights", "environmental regulations", "labor laws", and "due process" that people start demanding as they go up Maslow's hierarchy.
- bllguo 5y ago
  The enshrinement of property rights in America has led to such wonderful things as ridiculous housing prices, rampant income inequality, endemic homelessness, the absurdity of Prop 13, etc. and yet we still trumpet it. When do we start reexamining these foundations? We can always find something to justify putting on airs of superiority, but the fact remains that our infrastructure stagnates while the rest of the world manages to modernize. Forget the China comparisons if they are so triggering. Europe still manages public works. Individual rights have to give at some point for the good of society.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > When do we start reexamining these foundations? Start? The entire labor movement, the public accommodation portion of the civil rights movement, and the rest of the transition from gilded age capitalism to the modern mixed economy has been a process of reexamination of and evolutionary progress from the classic capitalist conception of properry rights. Just as, for that matter, the several centuries of evolution from feudalism and other pre-capitalist economic systems through Enlightenment liberalism to the peak of gilded age capitalism was such a reexamination of pre-capitalist ideas of property rights. And while you can conceptualize them roughly as successive and mobotonic, both of those are oversimplifications; elements of pre-capitalist patronage-oriented systems were still around past the peak of capitalism, and isolated points of reversions from capitalism to them or to purer capitalist models from their replacements occurred throughout the process and still do. But the idea that society is sitting on some static foundation of property rights that is waiting for a beginning of a reexamination is...not remotely tenable.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago

It's too late now. It would take 20+ years; by then we'll probably have level 5 autonomous driving systems, making rail obsolete.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
200 cars traveling between L.A. and Phoenix vs. one train traveling at 350 MPH? Why would we ever want that?
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  I'm imagining that L5 vehicles will be able to travel at vastly higher speeds than human drivers, on a dedicated high-speed autonomous highway network, which could be constructed at a fraction of the cost of rail infrastructure. We would want that because it would eliminate the last mile problem.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Feels like a last mile inconvenience to me.

pstuart 5y ago

It's the rail line's issue too -- they only care about shipping freight and passenger traffic is a second class citizen. They also are pushing back against Positive Train Control because they don't want to spend the money (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control) (sorry no citation on pushback because lazy). We could do much more with our existing rail lines if the will was there. I maintain that we should "nationalize" the rail lines (the literal rails and whatnot) and invest in making it safer and faster. Not maglev, but at least have passenger trains run at a decent clip and not have to be sidelined for freight.

6510 5y ago

> Oh it's too expensive. The Chinese probably have some funky calculation that shows it makes the country that much more efficient. For reference, it takes 4.5 hours to travel from one end of the Netherlands to the other by train. China is 231X larger. https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/netherlands/china https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/neth...

mensetmanusman 5y ago

China can do this because their technocrats have no issue demolishing the homes of half a million rural folks to help the urban elites. There are trade offs in a democracy, it is designed to be slow because as a feature everyone has a voice. We don’t get shiny trains, but we might have a more stable form of government?

Fricken 5y ago
I don't understand the nuances of Chinese property law, but I doubt you would see things like this if Chinese authorities could run people off their land for any old reason: https://abcnews.go.com/International/slideshow/stubborn-nail-china-residents-refuse-move-19827908 https://abcnews.go.com/International/slideshow/stubborn-nail...
- pedroma 5y ago
  They can just demolish it, because it is their property. It's just the local authorities are stubborn in upholding the illusion of there being a choice in the matter. The media then got involved and it no longer became worth it demolishing it since it sets a good example for public opinion, and the owner will move out eventually anyways.