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Re:China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains by repolfx on Monday October 07, 2019 @06:42AM (#21179306)
Both French and Japanese HSR were/are financial black holes that bankrupted the relevant railway companies. French TGV is nice but again, stations are often far outside the city centres. Compared to flying (profitable on its own) it's not at all clear any of these countries made the right decisions.

WRT CO2, it's not quite so clear cut unfortunately. Planes emit more only because they travel further. Mile for mile they aren't that different these days.

Re:China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains by credit_guy on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @06:53AM (#21190824)
> Planes emit more only because they travel further. Mile for mile they aren't that different these days.

May I point out that electric trains have zero emissions?

Re:China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains by repolfx on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @11:57AM (#21193654)
Only if powered entirely by non-emitting power sources, which requires you to assume nuclear power creates no pollution. Not much CO2 I'll give you that, but no pollution, not the case.
Re:China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains by credit_guy on Wednesday October 09, 2019 @06:06AM (#21201677)
If we were to be in a debate class, and you were assigned to argue in favor of electric trains, I'm sure you would point out that in a single month California build more than enough solar capacity to power all 16 trains for the Phase 1.

Every month for the next 5 years, California is projected to build an average of 250 MW solar (15 GW overall [1]). The highest power TGV: 12.24 MW [2]. It's in fact enough to power 20 trains.

[1] https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/california-solar [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV#Rolling_stock