Re:Germany's New Crowdfunded Train
by mschuster91 on Saturday December 17, 2016 @07:53AM
(#13200516)
China has unique advantages over Europe:
1) it's a quasi-dictatorial regime. Which means, when the government wants something, like a high-speed train track, being built, then it's built, without many ways for affected people to impede/cancel the project or drive up its price (e.g. in Germany train projects are usually delayed or the cost driven up by environmental concerns or noise complaints).
2) Money. China doesn't care about printing money or raising debt to finance the expansion of infrastructure. In Europe, especially in Germany, this is not the case. Printing money is only acceptable to sustain banks. (A policy which I absolutely hate)
3) Local politicians. In Germany, many regional/local politicians want their village connected to the ICE network for their personal fame - one particularly wasteful example is Montabaur, it has regular ICE stops with only 12k inhabitants. Every stop creates a huge delay for trains and kills their average speed. Once again, not so much a problem in China.
1) it's a quasi-dictatorial regime. Which means, when the government wants something, like a high-speed train track, being built, then it's built, without many ways for affected people to impede/cancel the project or drive up its price (e.g. in Germany train projects are usually delayed or the cost driven up by environmental concerns or noise complaints).
2) Money. China doesn't care about printing money or raising debt to finance the expansion of infrastructure. In Europe, especially in Germany, this is not the case. Printing money is only acceptable to sustain banks. (A policy which I absolutely hate)
3) Local politicians. In Germany, many regional/local politicians want their village connected to the ICE network for their personal fame - one particularly wasteful example is Montabaur, it has regular ICE stops with only 12k inhabitants. Every stop creates a huge delay for trains and kills their average speed. Once again, not so much a problem in China.