>There is a case to be made that given the distances and ridership involved, China would have been better off building airline capacity between cities connected

>There is a case to be made that given the distances and ridership involved, China would have been better off building airline capacity between cities connected by HSR (which seems to be the US solution). That would be terrible for the climate no? Also I think rail is very much undersold in most places. On one hand airtraffic is given an unfair advantage over other modes of transportation in that it's fuel is basically not taxed across the board by most countries. On the other hand for road traffic the cost of infrastructure is socialised too and unfairly so. Industrial truck transport does lots lots more damage to roads than cars or the like yet they rarely pay the price for that. (where a special vignette does exist it generally doesn't match the cost) Meanwhile the environmental cost of road and air traffic is appropriately applied.