Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by ghaff on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @07:44PM
(#8726917)
A simple matter of programming :-)
It's easy to lose track of the distances in that area of the world. According to the site, there would be something like 4,000 miles of track required to connect to existing conventional rail. I doubt the whole project would be "easy" but economics is a showstopper in any case. Any any rate, Russia would need to be a much larger trading partner and--even if they were--it's not clear that easier routes from eastern Russia to the US would be a big win.
Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by grecy on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @09:58PM
(#8727442)
> It's easy to lose track of the distances in that area of the world.
Not when you live here :)
Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by ghaff on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @10:03PM
(#8727456)
I live in the eastern US and I constantly have to remind myself when I'm planning trips out West--even in the lower 48--just how big the relative distances are :-) I'm better at it than I used to be, but it's easy to plan "short" drives that are actually 6-8 hours.
Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by rdtsc on Wednesday December 10, 2014 @02:05AM
(#8728025)
It is always amusing when West European friends and relatives visit. Distances are so much shorter there between countries. We are in New York and they'll say "let's drive to Texas tomorrow" thinking it would be a day trip or something of that scale.
Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by nasmorn on Wednesday December 10, 2014 @02:04PM
(#8730974)
A friends cousin from Australia visited Austria and upon hearing that he will drive to another country brought 5 kilos of food and a sleeping bag. The drive was an hour and a half.
Re:The world’s longest train journey now begins in China
by grecy on Wednesday December 10, 2014 @01:43AM
(#8727987)
Hahaha. A 6-8 hour drive is short.
It takes a 12 hour drive for me to get to a city bigger than the one I'm in, and it's in another country :)
The closest next-biggest one in the same country is something like 18 hours drive.
I believe the price tag has been revised a few times too, as a Japanese company seriously underbid the competition to dig the actually tunnel. This article [1] lists the tunnel as only $10 to $12 billion.
(I live in the Yukon, right near Alaska)
Unfortunately, it likely won't happen until there are very good high-speed trains from that part of Alaska down to the lower 48, and from that part of Siberia over to Moscow, otherwise you'd have an awesome tunnel that goes literally from nowhere to nowhere.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a0bsM...