HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Eat our lunch? They already had dinner and dessert. Public urban transit in tier 1&2 cities is world class.

In 2014, Shanghai began line 17 construction and opened the line with 13 stations by 2017. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_17_(Shanghai_Metro)

In 2014, Washington DC started the 6 station silver line extension(phase 2) to connect to the airport at Dulles and it's still not done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Line_(Washington_Metr...

As for passenger trains, the US is not even a contender. https://youtu.be/0JDoll8OEFE

You're assuming HSR is a "good" decision versus the alternatives, but who's to say it is?

Further down this thread is a link to this video called, "Why is China so good at building railways?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoll8OEFE

The presenter and quite a few commenters seem to have a built-in bias towards rail. Don't get me wrong. I love a good train journey and prefer it to flying when it's competitive. But the video tries to be an optimistic take on what a cold eye could only describe as totally mad and dysfunctional government.

The situation according to the video can be summed up like this:

• China has built tons of high speed rail very fast, this is amazing!

• But they do it because their internal airlines suck incredibly badly.

• There are only three carriers, none of which are budget. Planes are on time only about 65% of the time, which is a staggeringly low figure. The cause is enormous congestion in the air leading to air traffic control frequently denying takeoff rights.

• This bizarre situation occurs because the Chinese Army controls almost all the airspace above China and refuses to let civilian flights anywhere except a few corridors.

• Rather than get the army under control and open up flying to competition, China decided to build tons of railways instead.

• These railways are all heavily subsidised. Theoretically some in the east are profitable, but this is more than offset by railways built along totally unviable routes. For one route the ticket sales don't even cover the cost of electricity, let alone construction debt.

• Because HSR requires long straight lines without sharp curves, HSR railway stations are often as far away from city centres as airports are (France has this problem too). That eliminates one major advantage of rail over flying.

The Chinese taxpayer is forced to pay for these economically insane projects because it's all a part of Beijing's control (or oppression) of Xinjiang and Tibet.

For vague and to me inexplicable reasons, Beijing thinks building expensive and slow railway lines between outer region cities that don't have much travel demand will somehow prevent rebellions. The logic of this is not elaborated in the video, but it's hard not to assume the railways are intended for future military use if there's a need to move lots of troops into these regions.

Now let's compare this to America, which according to Hacker News consensus is some terrible backwater in comparison.

America has perhaps the world's best domestic airline network. Competition is intense, prices are low, travel times are very low, planes travel freely in huge quantities and the airlines are (sorta) profitable without taxpayer subsidies.

America also has an extensive and heavily used railway network, but it's used for freight rather than passengers. This makes sense for all kinds of physical and economic reasons.

HSR doesn't really exist in America, but this isn't because American society is dysfunctional. It's because the massive subsidies and land clearance required are hard to justify when you have an excellent flight network, which operates just fine. Take away "suppress rebellion" and "the military causes 40% of flights to be delayed" as motivating reasons and suddenly the US decisions don't look so bad. Those checks and balances seem to be working out pretty well.

⬐ credit_guy

Whatever baggage China had, France and Japan didn't, and they are criss-crossed with high speed rail. A flight from Paris to Marseille takes 1:20h and starts from $133 and a TGV takes 3:09 and starts from $35 [1]. I would take the train any time.

I personally take the train even if the comparison is not that clear cut. Recently I travelled with Acela from NYC to Boston for journey time of about 4h. The flight time would only be 1:05, but considering the security wait time and the airport to city center time, you'd probably end up around 3-4 hours depending on luck. Oh, and luck is what you don't want do depend if you can avoid it.

Unfortunately, Acela is an HSR only in name. But allow one to dream that Acela could run at 200mp (like the Shinkansen or TGV) and extended all the way to Miami. That would be about 6:15h travel time vs 3h for the flight time. Many, many people would take the train without blinking.

Not sure if we should start talking CO2 emissions, where I feel the airplanes don't stand a chance.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Marseille,+France/Paris,+Fra...

⬐ repolfx

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.

⬐ credit_guy

> 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?

⬐ repolfx

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.

⬐ credit_guy

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoll8OEFE

Please, I urge you to watch this. It explains thoroughly why the situation for railroads is very different between China and America.

tl;dw: America is more spread out, has better airline control, and less of a political incentive to expand public transport, than China.

⬐ simion314

Isn't the density a bad excuse since you can add the infrastructure only in regions with large density like California?

⬐ geogra4

Yeah - this is why I find that argument very specious. Florida has a higher population density than France but there's no TGV equivalent running from Jacksonville to Miami

⬐ WilliamEdward

It's only one of the arguments. Florida has neither the political incentive nor the restrictions on air traffic to put pressure on government to build these things.

⬐ simion314

But the excuse is wrongly used, nobody is expecting bullet trains in Alaska or low populated places. So mostly people/politics are to blame and not terrain or density.

This Wendover Productions video "Why China Is so Good at Building Railways" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoll8OEFE also explains a lot about how things have changed recently to make this migration even more possible in China. They've built so much high speed rail in the last decade that they now have more than the rest of the world, combined. Hong Kong to Beijing is under 9 hours, while comparable distances in other parts of the world are over 40 hours.

Here's a good video summarizing what China has done with high speed rail in a little over a decade:

https://youtu.be/0JDoll8OEFE

Wendover had a good video about China's rail network a while ago. [1]

Major points are:

1. China is willing to build loves that aren't self sustainable - whereas the USA isn't (and the US doesn't factor in the social benefits)

2. China's airspace is mostly military - leading to only small flight corridors and therefore significant delays for flights - making trains more reliable

3. China is willing to make train lines that make no sense beyond connecting areas that are not as friendly to the government to areas that are in the hope of increasing government support in those areas

[1] https://youtu.be/0JDoll8OEFE

⬐ tanilama

Maybe US should rethink a little bit why it takes until 2029 to build a railway in between SF and LA, maybe the due diligence is exaggerated and wear the whole process down?

⬐ masonic

  it takes until 2029 to build a railway in between SF and LA

SF to LA has had rail service for over 140 years.

The failure of HSR in CA has nothing to do with "the US" and everything to do with graft internal to CA.

⬐ techsupporter

And, in general, where the government of China says a rail link goes is where it goes, with minimal planning and outside input from citizens and residents. In the U.S. and other Western-style governments, that's simply a non-starter.