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Comment by snow_mac | Hacker News Reader

This is so true. I went to Shanghai about 3 summers ago right when Denver was finishing up the "A Line" train from Downtown to the Airport. This project cost over a billion dollars and the damn thing can't run smoothly or stay operational. Tons of issues. Meanwhile we took the Maglev train from the Pudong Airport to the Shanghai City Center. The Maglev cost $1.2 billion dollars [1]. The train can travel up to 270 MPH [1]; it takes about 15 minutes to get from the Airport to the city. The Denver train? 45 minutes, goes somewhere around 45 MPH for $1.1 billion dollars [2]. The train in China goes 6x faster then the Denver train.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/go_east_young_man/2005/03...

[2] https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2016/05/31/otoole-takin...

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And in case anyone doesn’t realize just how far behind US trains are, consider that Japan built its first bullet trains in the 1950s, when they went 130 mph. Today, Japan’s bullet trains have top speeds as high as 250 mph.

The technology to build fast trains has existed for more than 60 years.

Amazing -- they get a Maglev train for $1.2B, and in only 2.5 years of construction[1]. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, we get a [flawed] bridge for $6+B that took 11 years to build[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train#Construc...

[2] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/10/from-250-million-to-6...

Another example is about Boston's Big Dig. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig $6 billions with 15 years for 1.5 miles tunnel. What a horrible project!

Sadly it was supposed to be a nicer project, but the person who finally got it under control wasn't at the helm from the beginning. I suspect it would be far better if he had. :(

We could have that too if our government had unchecked eminent domain power. Is that what we want? Seems to be one or the other.

I am not convinced that lack of unchecked eminent domain power is the only thing keeping the United States from building modern infrastructure.

I've been on the train that OP is talking about.

It's only possible because they built it through the slums, which are essentially in medieval conditions. The train terminates in the region where the people had enough political/actual capital to object to it going through their neighborhood.

But it is very, very fast.

I’m not disputing that other communities benefit from unchecked eminent domain power. I see lots of other problems in the United States more fundamental than land acquisition.

Not saying it’s the solution, but giving the government that power might incentivize people to be more involved with local government and demand more accountability. Right now nobody really pays attention to what they are doing.

The US government could build out infrastructure if it desired. We did in the past and we could today. It doesn't meet the profit margins that the MIC can.

Hmm, nobody pays attention... So let's give the government even more power... Maybe that will wake everyone up.

And it doesn't really matter how involved you are in local politics. The federal government can already take your land with emminent domain.

The U.S. federal government used unchecked eminent domain power when building out interstate system infrastructure. So this is not really applicable.

U.S. governments basically do have unchecked eminent domain power, see the Kelo Supreme Court decision.

Helps to have millions of workers willing to work for pennies a day as well.

edit: I guess that is redundant under unchecked eminent domain power.

you mean waiters in the US?

Waiters and service industry people have done pretty well in every state I've lived in... minimum wage plus tips would equate to $20-$30/hr or more. But I could see it being tougher in states where the minimum wage is far less for service industry jobs.

Waiters and some service industries where tips are expected are not paid standard minimum wage typically. They are paid a separate, lower minimum wage which essentially pays the tax and are taxed on income expected even if they don't receive 15% tip.

In VA that was $2.13/hr + tips, with tips to be declared at the end of the shift. Obviously, you could declare lower tips than what you made, but if the customers paid by credit cards then you could get nailed if/when you got audited; cash was a different story.

If your hours + declared tips were less than minimum wage then they had to pay you minimum wage. That only happened at one large chain I worked at but not at the local, one-off places. Tips were large enough on weekends that it didn't matter much, or at least not enough to risk your job complaining.

The locally run bars I worked at didn't care about tip ratios, but the corporate chains expected you to average 18% tips and would penalize you if you were pulling less than 13% for several weeks -- cuz it either meant you were absolutely terrible at your job, or else you were lying.

Do you live in the us? It's only anecdata but I made about $40/hr in college waiting tables. It's not a bad job.

Entirely depends on where you are working and what place you're working for. $40/hr is a lot for most of the waiters I know and is significantly more than I made at approximately $10/hr. I'm personally supportive of just raising prices and paying people a standard wage, but those at the top end of the tipping industries tend to make a really solid take home pay.

Having a political party that wasn’t intent on destroying the government itself would be a start.

A president that isn’t a man child too.

It seems like everyone forgets this when these kind of stories appear. Soft authoritarianism looks impressive in these kind of results, but its means are often ugly if not anathema to Western values.

Hitler built the autobahn, a road system that is still enviable to this day—doesn't mean we want the system of governance that guided this project into being.

This isn't a necessary dichotomy either, you can invest in infrastructure without being authoritarian. But I think we celebrate China forgetting how some of these projects are greased through the system and carried out.

Given how far California has swung in the other direction; yes, yes I do.

Because good construction projects take "unchecked eminent domain power"?

Japan, Korea, EU countries et al seem to make modern train lines and other infrastructure just fine without that.

Or how about modernizing the NYC subway for example? No "domain power" needed for that, just political will...

Like in Europe?

and that maglev train is basically a show piece and was considered way too expensive to develop. the high-speed trains in china aren't as fast, but they are still fast, quite cheap, as smooth as the maglev, comfortable, and most importantly, convenient in terms of their stops. so the u.s. is getting destroyed in regional travel options. it's embarassing.

US has self driving cars, which is much fancy.

I wouldn't really say that the Shanghai transrapid maglev train is a great example to use, since it was a one-off showpiece thing. Transrapid (the german company) is now pretty much defunct and its test track is demolished. Traditional high speed rail is booming in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

Well, median income in China is less than $3,000 and in the US it's around $55k. So if their project cost more, that leaves a lot of slack time to engineer the train to go faster.

So potentially nearly 20x more man hours to get a train 6x faster.

> Meanwhile we took the Maglev train from the Pudong Airport to the Shanghai City Center

This has been operational since 2002/2004 so about 15 years ago.

precisely. The Denver train was brand new and went 1/6 the speed as a 15 year old train!

Car is king in the US. Theres no hope for a robust, reliable and fast mass transit system in the US. Driverless cars and are our only hope.

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