Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by aninhumer on Monday November 28, 2016 @12:51PM
(#13057070)
While an interesting observation, I'm not sure this really addresses the point. The conversation was implicitly about passenger rail, and the US is clearly bad at that.
Also I can think of a few practical reasons why Europe might have less developed long distance freight rail off the top of my head. Not least the fact that most of Europe is a lot better connected by sea than opposite coasts of the US (especially before the Panama canal was built).
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by mikeash on Monday November 28, 2016 @02:18PM
(#13057662)
Our freight system is a big part of why our passenger system sucks, though. Most of our cities see infrequent or nonexistent passenger service because the rails are all tied up with freight.
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by CPLX on Monday November 28, 2016 @03:16PM
(#13058029)
That doesn't really make sense. If we got rid of the freight trains the rails would just start to rust, it's not like there's a ton of money/interest/profit in passenger rail thats stymied by all the jam packed tracks.
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by aninhumer on Monday November 28, 2016 @03:10PM
(#13057986)
That doesn't really follow. If freight rail is getting in the way of passenger rail then the cause is insufficient capacity, not the existence of freight. And the solution is to build more track (or allocate more of the existing capacity to passenger services) but that costs money, and there's no political will behind it.
If anything it sounds like the freight rail is the only reason you have any passenger rail at all.
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by CPLX on Monday November 28, 2016 @12:55PM
(#13057113)
Or I can just say "their passenger trains are so much better" and not miss any of the picture.
Which, plainly, was the original point.
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by mikeash on Monday November 28, 2016 @01:57PM
(#13057534)
A lot of the infrastructure is shared between the two types, so you can't just ignore one.
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by treebeard901 on Monday November 28, 2016 @01:55PM
(#13057523)
> Being able to cheaply ship goods from coast to coast seems far more valuable than having high speed passenger trains that "only" take a day or two to make that same trip.
Why can't we have both?
Re:China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity
by hx87 on Monday November 28, 2016 @02:55PM
(#13057883)
In order to have both we need segregated passenger and freight rail systems, which is extremely expensive. AFAIK, China is the only country to have both, and avoids the high costs through a mix of weak property rights, lax environmental regulation, and a strong domestic supply chain.
Given the size of our country, I'm not at all sure we made the wrong tradeoff here. Being able to cheaply ship goods from coast to coast seems far more valuable than having high speed passenger trains that "only" take a day or two to make that same trip.
Certainly, there are some corridors where we ought to to better. DC-Boston and LA-SF, for example, would probably benefit greatly from high-speed rail. But I don't think the idea of ubiquitous passenger trains is really a good one for us, much as I might like to see it.