China Begins Longest Bullet Train Service | Hacker News Reader

China Begins Longest Bullet Train Service

nytimes.com

43 pointslelf46 comments

That's the equivalent of crossing half the United States.

China must have around 7000 miles of track by now. The US still has none. It's really hard to convince Americans that it's worth the money.

We probably won't realize our mistake until later in the 21st century when China converts it's 20,000 miles of track to maglevs running at 300 mph.

Its not that its hard to convince Americans its worth the money. Its that its politically difficult to concentrate the money only in places it would yield the most bang for the buck.

The best strategy would be to take all the HSR money and funnel it to upgrading the Northeast Corridor as quickly as possible. Its easier because Amtrak owns the track and rights of way, and will yield the most bang for buck because its Amtrak's sole profitable line. A success there could create a lot of political pressure for further investment. But its politically impossible to support a project that doesn't piss away its money over a dozen states.

So what you're suggesting is that the taxpayer subsidize Amtrak's infrastructure, even though Amtrak runs a profitable business already and practically has a monopoly in northeast commuter rail.

Technically, once you count capital expenditures, Amtrak is not profitable in that corridor.

Also, finding a taxpayer in the middle of the country that wants to spend tax dollars making it easier for people to get to work in Washington DC would be a bit hard.

Thing about China's railway needs is that it has population density. That makes it a lot easier to charge a cheaper price for tickets that look affordable and worthwhile to passengers, and still turn a healthy profit for the operator.

What is the population density? How does it compare to major cities like NY, LA, or SF? If you look at the United States, you'll see that we do have areas with high population densities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...

Chinese here. Off top of my head, with about the same area of land, divided by about 5x more population, let's say about 5x time denser? Personally, I grew up in a "small town" with about 100,000 people, we call it a small town because relatively, it IS a small town. I do not have any statistics to back it up, but the density level of that third-level township feels to me to be higher than Brooklyn NYC.

The point is that we do have areas with high population densities. People seem to forget that HSR is available and has been available in much of the world. China is simply being very aggressive in building. Spain also has added a lot of track in recent years.

Local transit is probably a bigger factor. Almost all urban areas in China can be accessed without a car. So Boston, New York, DC, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, etc. make sense, but other cities might not.

If you have to rent a car on arrival, might as well fly.

The density of customers also has to be adjusted for affordability. Lots of Chinese will continue to use conventional trains, which have enormous capacity and cheap prices. Train station crowds in China can be epic.

Once upon a time I was traveling between Hong Kong and Shanghai on a sleeper train and had a conversation with a Chinese traveler about their trains, he thought the reason for the great train roll out (this was about 5 years ago) was that it was both feasible and affordable to do it at this point in history because in the future it would become increasingly much more expensive and difficult (in terms of land owner/user opposition) to lay the track.

In the USA you're already in that future, the Chinese aren't there yet and they're taking advantage of it while they can.

In 1970s when South Korea was still relatively poor, its government undertook national transportation infrastructure project connecting key cities. For years, there were hardly any cars on these new highways, and they became butt of people's joke. Considering SK's GDP was $300-$400/year back then, it was an understandable reaction. But after 10-15 years, no one was laughing.

I'd probably also bring up that building up a car culture in SK caused a domestic demand for product, which the government could then foster with protectionist tariffs.

It took a while, but as a consequence, these days nobody laughs at seeing a Hyundai or a Kia on the road. And the entire SK economy got a huge technological boost as well as countless "feeder" industries that provide products to the car companies.

But of course, SK also managed to cram in world class subway development, world class bullet train and two world class long haul passenger airlines into the economic development model as well. It's almost Elon Musk audacious.

Indeed; 'New York to Key West' doesn't really give the mental picture it's looking for.

NYC is also about 1200 miles (give or take 100) from Houston TX, Baton Rouge LA, Tulsa OK, Lincoln NE and Fargo ND.

How about NY to Boston, Philly, D.C, Atlanta or Miami? There's no reason to pick a distance then look at a map and say there's no where at 1200 miles where I'd want to go. In fact, most people would argue that 500-600 miles is the sweet spot for HSR. Otherwise, flying wins.

Decades from now, the optimal solution will be the Hyperloop for distances under 1000 miles, and an electric supersonic jet for distances over 1000 miles. Provided that nothing bad happens to Elon Musk and he decides to found companies to make those things a reality.

You have to also consider that China, is a centrally controlled authoritarian state. If the government says we want to build something here it is going to happen.

In the US you have a strong concept of individual property rights. The government can seize property through a process of eminent domain, but its difficult, takes time, and is politically unpopular.

Most of the HSR is built on stilts precisely so the Chinese government doesn't have to seize land, and most of the (agricultural) land it goes over is still being used in exactly the same way that it was before.

In the US and the West in general, that is considered an easement on the underlying land. Generally, acquiring new easements also requires eminent domain if faced with a hostile landowner.

well you also have a bigger problem than property rights in the US, we have politician's rights to deal with. The right they exercise in trying to dictate which stations open, stay open, and which routes trains will have.

There is already sufficient right of way in existing track to have high speed rail services but politicians are looking to grandstand which means primarily only new routes are proposed and conveniently in their areas regardless if service is warranted there, California's train to nowhere is a great example of this

I have been living in China for 6 years and last time I counted, I had already 1250 hours of travel time in Chinese trains. You can go to Lhasa, on the Himalaya, from Beijing by train. A friend of mine is going to Moscow from Beijing next week. My hours are increasing slower, now that high-speed trains are popping everywhere. Most high-speed are new paths, so little villages in middle of nowhere that had nothing, now suddenly have stunning modern mini Train Stations with High-speed trains (300 km/h cruising speed) stopping there. It's amazing. Many people say , in my home country Brazil, where trains are virtually non-existent, that a main reason our previous governments didn't build tracks was the lobby of Big Truck makers and Big Oil, that profit from all the transport being made by roads.

These little villages in the middle of nowhere typically have 1+ million people my wife's hometown, chenzhou Hunan, is connected on the Guangzhou-Changsha line. It's a small town by Chinese standards but would be huge by American standards. They are even getting a Starbucks soon...times are changing quickly.

Given that Transsib is not HSR, Beijing-Moscow is going to take around 7 days by train. It's not a pleasant trip. Especially compared to 7-8 hours by plane.

>China must have around 7000 miles of track by now. The US still has none.

None what? Acela is HSR. It's just not as nice as what you find in other countries.

No, it isn't. Its average speed is around 80 mph.

Here it is on the BBC if anyone gets stuck behind the paywall http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20842836

And both of those are blocked for those of us behind the great firewall.

well that ain't the fault of the bbc now is it?

BBC is not blocked, at least here in Beijing or other big cities. Are you in the countryside of Northern China? I advice to try www.myssh.cc , very fast and very cheap (2 USD a month), it unblocks everything, but then you have to turn it off when you want to watch all the free streaming movies, TV series, and music easy available inside the great wall.

It is blocked on my home ISP (telecom?) and CMCC and Unicom in Beijing; I just checked and got the dreaded invalid argument message. Blocking isn't exactly consistent between ISPs, but when three of the big ones block something, I'm assuming this is at least a citywide block, what ISP are you using? It could just be a misconfigured selective block, it is a weird error for a true block.

Every way of jumping the wall winds up not working 2 months after you've bought a year of service. I've giving up on trying.

1,200 miles Bullet train is just awesome! For railfans out there, I'd like to mention about Indian Railways' Himsagar Express[1]. It's one of the longest running trains in India, covering 2,306 miles from southern tip to northern tip. Average speed is only 33mph :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himsagar_Express

If that's the 'express', I'd hate to think of what the non-express train's travel speed & time is.

The ticket price of traveling in-between these two cities(Beijing and Guangzhou) by high-speed train is higher than the flight, which makes sense, considering the airplane is significantly cheaper after taking-off. The same logic with hyperloop vs. planes, one is designed for between-cities commutes, one for cross-country/continent travel. Personal story, now my mom can have her breakfast at my hometown, take the high-speed train for 2hrs to the closest international port Guangzhou and make it to the 1pm flight. It used to be 7 hours.

Am I the only person who really expected the major news services covering this story to include a map?

"covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Fla.,"

So I looked it up: the flight takes 3:17 or 2:49 depending on the direction. (Delta 1343, nonstop, B737. Only flies Saturdays).

Right, but the train is making multiple stops. People like to talk about the total length of the line, and some people will certainly ride from terminus to terminus, but the vast majority of riders will be traveling much shorter distances that are much more competitive with flying. Around the world the mode share split between flying and high speed rail has been around 50% when the rail trip is four hours, and there are plenty of segments on this line that are shorter than four hours.

Another difference: air travel usually require 3-4 hours more for travel to and from airport, check in, baggage claim. Railroad travel requirements usually a lot simpler and railroad stations usually located near center of city.

Also the planes always have at least 30 minutes delay before take-off (here in China),and yes, airports are usually far from the Downtown. Anyway, Trains are much more comfortable, less stressing, you can take more luggage, you can sit at the restaurant, have internet with a 3G stick, play cards and make friends, many trains have a smoking area (in China). I prefer trains over planes every time.

Not sure that I'd consider 'many trains have a smoking area' as a good thing. Last year, I spent two weeks travelling around China via trains, and without a doubt the most annoying part of the experience was the rampant second hand smoke wafting throughout the entire train. While there are designated 'smoking areas' on the trains, they don't work so well when the train staff keep all the doors wide open all the time. And I tried closing them a few times, and less than a few minutes later some 'helpful' train car attendant had re-opened the door. I'm pretty sure I increased my likelihood of contracting lung cancer by a few percentage points from the two weeks that I spent on Chinese trains (not to mention the polluted air throughout the country).

The bullet train stations are as inconveniently located as airports though. Beijing south train station is much farther for me than Beijing capital, and the same is true in Changsha and Guangzhou. You've also got to budget time to get through security, but it's more lax than the airport. I fly more often because bullet train tickets can be hard to get, the train ministry isn't as efficient as an airline ticketing outfit.

The likely roll-out of self-driving cars in the United States over the same time frame[1] is one reason not to expect high-speed train lines in the United States. The United States already has the infrastructure in place (the Interstate Highway system) to make self-driving cars a quite feasible means of long-distance, point-to-point transportation. The United States cities and towns in the central part of the United States are largely where they are because they are along historic railroad lines, but the railroad lines in my region of the country are increasingly being turned into rails-to-trails dedicated biking and walking paths, which I can take on very long trips from my immediate neighborhood, and except for the parts of the United States where there are already a lot of train users (notably the Northeast Corridor), there is not likely to be much increase in consumer demand for train rides, no matter how great the government subsidies supporting them.

China has rushed ahead in high-speed rail development, at the cost of human life[2] and corruption,[3] but the United States has no need to follow this example. We will mostly be taking long-distance trips here by plane (as we already do) or by car (as we also already do, except with self-driving becoming more and more commonplace). There isn't any particular need in the United States to build new high-speed train lines.

[1] http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_autonomouscars/

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732380820...

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/01/safety-self-driving-car...

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230442800...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/world/asia/design-flaws-ci...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/22/121022fa_fact_...

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/08/liu-zhijun-sent...

Railroads and streetcars were hugely profitable in the US, until the government subsidized cars by:

- giving everyone high-quality roads

- setting road tolls to zero or almost nothing

- making dense housing illegal to build with zoning laws

- requiring businesses to provide free parking

- requiring home builders to provide free parking

- all the crap US does internationally to secure oil supply lines

- not taxing pollution, noise, or other car externalities

- enacting crazy regulations on railroads; for example, American railroads can't buy European trains, they must build their own custom-designed trains at enormous expense

and on and on and on it goes, all at taxpayer (or business owner) expense. An American on a road trip thinks cars are cheap because everyone else is forced to absorb the cost.

Your reasons are flawed even if your conclusion is right. People want non dense housing, it isn't required or even promoted by most city governments....quite the opposite in a city like Seattle that is trying to become more dense with incentives. Ditto with free parking.

Americans can't buy euro trains because our tracks share freight traffic, so passenger trains have to be built to survive collisions with heavier freight trains.

Tl;dr people want cheap driving, it isn't the evil government that forces them to drive.

"China has rushed ahead in high-speed rail development, at the cost of human life[2] and corruption,[3] but the United States has no need to follow this example."

I'm not sure how well the US is doing on those 2 counts.

34,080 people died in the US as a result of motor vehicle accidents in 2012. This is a high number (compared to recent wars (a bit more on that later), terrorism or rail deaths).[1]

On the corruption side, it's more subtle and kleptocratic and oligarchic tinged with some regulatory capture. There is no road pricing or carbon pricing in the US so taxpayers subsidize drivers. The cost of gas/petrol is not allowed to rise and has led to a skewed foreign policy and "strategic" wars that are paid for by taxes. There are also instances such as the GM/Los Angeles transit story which have a certain ring of truth and corruption to them. [2]

In short the US policy around automobiles has a high cost in lives and corruption too, possibly far greater than anything in China.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Train is smoother and more spacious, and almost certainly faster even without HSR. Self driving cars won't change the physics of road/tire friction, nor the fact that the interstate system was not designed for cars traveling 100+ mph. In cities like NYC, self driving technology won't change the fact that rail tunnels have far higher passenger capacity than roadway tunnels.

Indeed, I think self driving cars will lead to a resurgence in rail travel. The biggest problem with rail is the last mile. Cheap self driving taxis will go a long way to addressing that issue.

There are billions of dollars in private money betting that you're wrong in Texas, one of the most car-oriented regions of the country.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/09/politics-high-speed-r...

Self-driving cars will increase road capacity, but I don't think they'll make driving costs cheaper than rail costs per passenger when all subsidies are taken into account. Rail lines are expensive, but so is expanding interstates, and Texas's three major interstates, I-10, I-35 and I-45, are all near capacity.

Self driving cars will be bigger in china before they are in America given chronic road capacity and pollution problems. There is just nowhere left to build roads in dense cities, and going self driving city-wide would automatically use limited infrastructure 10 times more efficiently. Americans just don't have as bad traffic and wouldn't want to give up manual control, while china has no problem dictating these kinds of things top down.

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