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Is the graph showing that only China and South Korea are actively growing their rail networks? It kinda looks like that. Also apparently Istanbul has a train un

Is the graph showing that only China and South Korea are actively growing their rail networks? It kinda looks like that. Also apparently Istanbul has a train under the Bosporus.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
paxys 2y ago
It's adjusting for population, which skews the data too much.
- twiss 2y ago
  For China, you'd expect that to skew the data in the other direction, though. Since China has over 4x the population of the US, the number of metro lines is apparently over 4x higher (since China has more metro lines per capita than the US, according to the chart).
  - paxys 2y ago
    China has a decreasing population and is just building a ridiculous amount of everything. It is however now running into the opposite problem – entire cities and transit systems are sitting empty. A lot of development over there is happening for development's sake without trying to reasonably match actual demand.
    - twiss 2y ago
      > China has a decreasing population Not in the period shown in the chart, which seems to end in 2021.
    - maxglute 2y ago
      >without trying to reasonably match actual demand It's reasonably matching short/medium term demand. Actual demand is PRC increasing urbanization from current 65% to 80/90% in next 10/20 years = need infra+housing for 200m-300m people. Utilization rate of HSR increasing every year. Current excess housing sqft is enough for ~100m (persons not household), ~5-10 years of urbanization headroom. This is without accounting for depreciated housing stock, QoL upgrades. For reference 80% urbanized US is short on ~6M homes, that's 2% relative to population. PRC gunning for 80% urbanization = PRC is net short 7-10%. Realistically much higher since a lot of people in rural stuck in very shitty housing stock. Of course there's some misallocation when building so much, but few under (yet to be) occupied developements / ghost cities or 50-60m empty units reasonbly matches demand/what can be absorbed over 5-10 year horizon. Population decrease doesn't factor much until after 2050/60s, by which time need to start factoring deprecated housing stock / end of life for concrete buildings. Other "demand" consideration is demographics aging out blue collar workers, might as well as build now while labour is plentiful and cheap, better to leave future with too much built capita than too little, as many developed economies with insane building costs are finding out.
      - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        There is just no way farmers from the villages of China are going to be able to afford the million dollar apartments speculators are buying up anticipating this continued movement from rural to urban areas. Add to that a still inflexible hukou system where even if you buy the apartment, you still can’t put your kids in local schools, it makes me think that the cities are still in for a hard time. Many buildings are never going to be actually lived in before being torn down. The construction techniques they use to soak up unskilled labor results in concrete buildings that will only last 20-30 years.
        maxglute 2y ago
        Farmers (really the poor/underclass) directed o T3/4+ surplus that aren't worth $$$, where RE price declining. Also see central gov recently spending 300B rmb (imo just start) to transition vacancies into social housing. T1/T2 vacancies for more affluent/educated gen. Hukou likely self correcting problem (they'll keep reforming), lots of education surplus resources =going to free up YoY relative to trend of decline in past births. It's a big challenge - but IMO it's a easier problem to fill housing when you already have it then try to build enough housing when you don't/can't. Broader urban policy - central gov trying to distribute growth, urbanize/move ppl to less developed interior 2 tier cities with higher % vacancies with new industries. Big coastal hubs likely has soft upper bound in population (look at post 2014 population stalling for big T1s), I'd expect them to slowly settle 10% higher where they are by soaking up surplus to leave vacancies at healthy range, higher than 5% in hot western markets, lower than 15-20% in PRC. It's definitely a hard problem, but it's a problem where most of the physical pieces are are there. >The construction techniques they use to soak up unskilled labor results in concrete buildings that will only last 20-30 years. Unskilled gets trained by skilled, and do not remain unskilled. Bulk of building stock was built in last 15-20 years by migrant construction lifers already with 10+ years experience (entire demo skews old) with a lot of concrete pouring and steel welding experience. You don't build as much as PRC and have unskilled construction workers, half the world is built by diasphora migrant workers drawn from even less developed countries. TLDR on China collapse meme narrative of PRC construction, for what it's worth my previous field. The chinese buildings have 30-40 years life spans (no one credible guestimates 20) narrative conflates PRC construction standards in last 20 years, where vast majority of new building stock was accumuluated, and is fine for 50-75+ years (as in the concrete structure is durable), with not affluent at the time PRC choosing to cheapen out on building systems that can be easily retrofit up to modern standards. TLDR is concrete/structure/frame is FINE, "short" lifespan is really about shittier/lower quality mechanical systems, not ecological, expensive to maintain etc, and until recently because PRC so good at building fast, the answer is just to tear down and rebuild. Now PRC richer, can still choose to rebuild or retrofit (both of which they're still good at), new HVAC, facade etc, to meet performance standards now that vastly richer. This got twisted into PRC concrete last 30 years. Quality of towers being put up in CAN are comparable (and frequently worse) as stuff I see in PRC where the entire process of erecting hires has been optimized to death. There are some legit shit tier construction pre 90s (and much older) builds, i.e. all the gross mid rise you see in left behind township/village level admin divisions, exactly the kind of bad/poverty building stock reaching end of life that urbanization drive is designed to move people out of (stuff that's still all over SKR/TW). But even then, they're not collapsing out of nowhere in any numbers that actually matter, other than in event of natural disasters (i.e. Sichuan earthquake scandal), which is a real consideration, in some geographic areas. But most of building stock, built in last 20 years after - again we're really talking about the frame/structure - are fine for 50/60/70+ years like west. Also important to note vacant towers mostly not abandoned projects, there's still basic maintenance happening because they're on someone's portfolio. They're not sitting derelict for 10+ of years getting killed prematurely by elements -> they're not going to come falling down. Yes some will, but rounding error. Regardless, IMO broader consideration is RE surplus was 1-2% of GDP for ~15 years where boom was happening. Even if they sit idle/unproductive indefinitely, you're looking at in aggregate ~1 quarter of misallocation at current GDP over ~60 quarters. That's not too bad of inefficiency relative to how much was built, and inefficiency of too much > too little, especially when any solution to urban housing / infra congestion starts with having enough.
    - gruez 2y ago
      Nah, they're slowly filling up: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-ghost-cities-2021-binhai-zhengdong-new-districts-fill-up https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-g...
  - darth_avocado 2y ago
    China has 50% more metro length than next 10 countries combined: https://medium.com/@gravitonaiconsulting/china-has-50-more-metro-length-than-the-next-10-countries-combined-3e8ebc8e9c86 https://medium.com/@gravitonaiconsulting/china-has-50-more-m...
DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
Every curve in the plot is going up, except for the US and UK. South Korea and China just have the most dramatic rises.
- simonbarker87 2y ago
  UK is still building we’re just struggling for space and already have a tonne of railways. The issue here is more about getting extra capacity with what we have.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    Don’t you also have routing issues on many trips? Basically everything runs to or from London.
    - chgs 2y ago
      Long distance a lot of trains run through Birmingham. If you pick a journey between two of the top 20 urban areas cities by most direct rail routes very few go though London. There’s certainly a capacity issue though.
    - gerdesj 2y ago
      Take a look at say, Yeovil (Gifle for the historians) with its five stations from the past, of which two remain. If you look closely at a particular flag stone on platform 2 at Pen Mill station it doesn't have "TylerE is a wanker" chiseled into it. I can make a change. This is all rather silly. We don't engage. Bloody kids.
      - TylerE 2y ago
        What the hell is your problem?
        gerdesj 2y ago
        "Basically everything runs to or from London." No it doesn't. Yeovil is still a junction with only two stations these days. It used to have four or five. Its also the confluence of the A30 and A37 roads. I don't have a problem - you clearly are not from these parts. That's fine and you will be welcome.
nine_k 2y ago
To build (more of) a subway, you need density and wealth. So NYC or Shanghai or Moscow have extensive subway systems and keep extending them. OTOH Houston does not (lacks density), and Kinshasa does not (lacks wealth).
teractiveodular 2y ago
The graph is scaled per inhabitant, which means that eg. India's apparent minor bump is actually massive. Here's the Delhi Metro, which has gone from 0 to 350 km in 20 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjG0quY5uoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjG0quY5uoI And the rest of the country is following: https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/ https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  The graph doesn't account for population growth. Which is why India's growth is not looking great, but in reality, India has built almost 900 km (560 miles) of metro rail in the last 20 years, making it the third largest metro rail system in the world. (After US and China) They have additional 779 km (484 miles) under construction, which on completion will put them ahead of the US.

Is the graph showing that only China and South Korea are actively growing their rail networks? It kinda looks like that. Also apparently Istanbul has a train under the Bosporus.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

paxys 2y ago

It's adjusting for population, which skews the data too much.

twiss 2y ago
For China, you'd expect that to skew the data in the other direction, though. Since China has over 4x the population of the US, the number of metro lines is apparently over 4x higher (since China has more metro lines per capita than the US, according to the chart).
- paxys 2y ago
  China has a decreasing population and is just building a ridiculous amount of everything. It is however now running into the opposite problem – entire cities and transit systems are sitting empty. A lot of development over there is happening for development's sake without trying to reasonably match actual demand.
  - twiss 2y ago
    > China has a decreasing population Not in the period shown in the chart, which seems to end in 2021.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    >without trying to reasonably match actual demand It's reasonably matching short/medium term demand. Actual demand is PRC increasing urbanization from current 65% to 80/90% in next 10/20 years = need infra+housing for 200m-300m people. Utilization rate of HSR increasing every year. Current excess housing sqft is enough for ~100m (persons not household), ~5-10 years of urbanization headroom. This is without accounting for depreciated housing stock, QoL upgrades. For reference 80% urbanized US is short on ~6M homes, that's 2% relative to population. PRC gunning for 80% urbanization = PRC is net short 7-10%. Realistically much higher since a lot of people in rural stuck in very shitty housing stock. Of course there's some misallocation when building so much, but few under (yet to be) occupied developements / ghost cities or 50-60m empty units reasonbly matches demand/what can be absorbed over 5-10 year horizon. Population decrease doesn't factor much until after 2050/60s, by which time need to start factoring deprecated housing stock / end of life for concrete buildings. Other "demand" consideration is demographics aging out blue collar workers, might as well as build now while labour is plentiful and cheap, better to leave future with too much built capita than too little, as many developed economies with insane building costs are finding out.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      There is just no way farmers from the villages of China are going to be able to afford the million dollar apartments speculators are buying up anticipating this continued movement from rural to urban areas. Add to that a still inflexible hukou system where even if you buy the apartment, you still can’t put your kids in local schools, it makes me think that the cities are still in for a hard time. Many buildings are never going to be actually lived in before being torn down. The construction techniques they use to soak up unskilled labor results in concrete buildings that will only last 20-30 years.
      - maxglute 2y ago
        Farmers (really the poor/underclass) directed o T3/4+ surplus that aren't worth $$$, where RE price declining. Also see central gov recently spending 300B rmb (imo just start) to transition vacancies into social housing. T1/T2 vacancies for more affluent/educated gen. Hukou likely self correcting problem (they'll keep reforming), lots of education surplus resources =going to free up YoY relative to trend of decline in past births. It's a big challenge - but IMO it's a easier problem to fill housing when you already have it then try to build enough housing when you don't/can't. Broader urban policy - central gov trying to distribute growth, urbanize/move ppl to less developed interior 2 tier cities with higher % vacancies with new industries. Big coastal hubs likely has soft upper bound in population (look at post 2014 population stalling for big T1s), I'd expect them to slowly settle 10% higher where they are by soaking up surplus to leave vacancies at healthy range, higher than 5% in hot western markets, lower than 15-20% in PRC. It's definitely a hard problem, but it's a problem where most of the physical pieces are are there. >The construction techniques they use to soak up unskilled labor results in concrete buildings that will only last 20-30 years. Unskilled gets trained by skilled, and do not remain unskilled. Bulk of building stock was built in last 15-20 years by migrant construction lifers already with 10+ years experience (entire demo skews old) with a lot of concrete pouring and steel welding experience. You don't build as much as PRC and have unskilled construction workers, half the world is built by diasphora migrant workers drawn from even less developed countries. TLDR on China collapse meme narrative of PRC construction, for what it's worth my previous field. The chinese buildings have 30-40 years life spans (no one credible guestimates 20) narrative conflates PRC construction standards in last 20 years, where vast majority of new building stock was accumuluated, and is fine for 50-75+ years (as in the concrete structure is durable), with not affluent at the time PRC choosing to cheapen out on building systems that can be easily retrofit up to modern standards. TLDR is concrete/structure/frame is FINE, "short" lifespan is really about shittier/lower quality mechanical systems, not ecological, expensive to maintain etc, and until recently because PRC so good at building fast, the answer is just to tear down and rebuild. Now PRC richer, can still choose to rebuild or retrofit (both of which they're still good at), new HVAC, facade etc, to meet performance standards now that vastly richer. This got twisted into PRC concrete last 30 years. Quality of towers being put up in CAN are comparable (and frequently worse) as stuff I see in PRC where the entire process of erecting hires has been optimized to death. There are some legit shit tier construction pre 90s (and much older) builds, i.e. all the gross mid rise you see in left behind township/village level admin divisions, exactly the kind of bad/poverty building stock reaching end of life that urbanization drive is designed to move people out of (stuff that's still all over SKR/TW). But even then, they're not collapsing out of nowhere in any numbers that actually matter, other than in event of natural disasters (i.e. Sichuan earthquake scandal), which is a real consideration, in some geographic areas. But most of building stock, built in last 20 years after - again we're really talking about the frame/structure - are fine for 50/60/70+ years like west. Also important to note vacant towers mostly not abandoned projects, there's still basic maintenance happening because they're on someone's portfolio. They're not sitting derelict for 10+ of years getting killed prematurely by elements -> they're not going to come falling down. Yes some will, but rounding error. Regardless, IMO broader consideration is RE surplus was 1-2% of GDP for ~15 years where boom was happening. Even if they sit idle/unproductive indefinitely, you're looking at in aggregate ~1 quarter of misallocation at current GDP over ~60 quarters. That's not too bad of inefficiency relative to how much was built, and inefficiency of too much > too little, especially when any solution to urban housing / infra congestion starts with having enough.
  - gruez 2y ago
    Nah, they're slowly filling up: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-ghost-cities-2021-binhai-zhengdong-new-districts-fill-up https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-g...
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  China has 50% more metro length than next 10 countries combined: https://medium.com/@gravitonaiconsulting/china-has-50-more-metro-length-than-the-next-10-countries-combined-3e8ebc8e9c86 https://medium.com/@gravitonaiconsulting/china-has-50-more-m...

DiogenesKynikos 2y ago

Every curve in the plot is going up, except for the US and UK. South Korea and China just have the most dramatic rises.

simonbarker87 2y ago
UK is still building we’re just struggling for space and already have a tonne of railways. The issue here is more about getting extra capacity with what we have.
- TylerE 2y ago
  Don’t you also have routing issues on many trips? Basically everything runs to or from London.
  - chgs 2y ago
    Long distance a lot of trains run through Birmingham. If you pick a journey between two of the top 20 urban areas cities by most direct rail routes very few go though London. There’s certainly a capacity issue though.
  - gerdesj 2y ago
    Take a look at say, Yeovil (Gifle for the historians) with its five stations from the past, of which two remain. If you look closely at a particular flag stone on platform 2 at Pen Mill station it doesn't have "TylerE is a wanker" chiseled into it. I can make a change. This is all rather silly. We don't engage. Bloody kids.
    - TylerE 2y ago
      What the hell is your problem?
      - gerdesj 2y ago
        "Basically everything runs to or from London." No it doesn't. Yeovil is still a junction with only two stations these days. It used to have four or five. Its also the confluence of the A30 and A37 roads. I don't have a problem - you clearly are not from these parts. That's fine and you will be welcome.

nine_k 2y ago

To build (more of) a subway, you need density and wealth. So NYC or Shanghai or Moscow have extensive subway systems and keep extending them. OTOH Houston does not (lacks density), and Kinshasa does not (lacks wealth).

teractiveodular 2y ago

The graph is scaled per inhabitant, which means that eg. India's apparent minor bump is actually massive. Here's the Delhi Metro, which has gone from 0 to 350 km in 20 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjG0quY5uoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjG0quY5uoI And the rest of the country is following: https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/ https://themetrorailguy.com/metro-rail-projects-in-india/

darth_avocado 2y ago
The graph doesn't account for population growth. Which is why India's growth is not looking great, but in reality, India has built almost 900 km (560 miles) of metro rail in the last 20 years, making it the third largest metro rail system in the world. (After US and China) They have additional 779 km (484 miles) under construction, which on completion will put them ahead of the US.