Chinese trains now link Beijing to Shanghai in 4 hours 18 minutes. Even in the “slow” version, with stops, the journey takes less than 8 hours. With 100 trains a day on this line, frequency is optimal.
800 miles in 4.5 hours
For comparison, getting from Washington DC to NYC via Amtrak is 220 miles and takes 3.5 hours, 3 hours if you use the Acela “American high speed rail”
with 37 lines a day, with the cheapest price being $80 (one way)Wow, our high-speed rail averages like 125kmh, while real high-speed rail tends to average 250kmh or more. lmao
China’s fastest operating trains have a maximum speed of 350km/h and those tend to be the express lines, so I’m not sure what they tend to average but they sustain speed for the most part I think.
Per the article, their fastest locomotives can now do 450 (!!!), but the infrastructure isn’t there to support those speeds yet.
And 100 trains a day means there is one leaving every 10-15 minutes. Most bus routes in the US don’t have that good of a frequency.
Acela’s the good one. Getting from Cincinnati to DC on the Cardinal takes anywhere from 14 to 20 hours and involves catching the train in Cincy at 2 or 3AM. If you miss that train there won’t be another for days. The bathrooms get so nasty that shit and piss slide around on the floor. Cost is on par with flying.
This is actually really funny because all the :smuglord: anti-China libs/fascists like to say that “uhm ackshully, the Chinese HSR isn’t even profitable, therefore it’s a bad thing because evil SeeSeePee waste money on vanity project!!”
I wish these nerds were capable of actually thinking and understanding that even if building the infrastructure itself isn’t profitable it doesn’t need to be because the point of the infrastructure is the economic activity it facilitates
Oh, this article does it too:
The model is not without its limitations. While the Beijing-Shanghai line is an exemplary success story, other Chinese domestic lines are showing far less flattering results, with low occupancy rates and significant economic losses.
I wonder how profitable the interstate highway system is
it makes everyone get a car, and oil/gas, and maintenance, so it’s very profitable for corporations, the only thing that matters
Over on
the armchair urbanism and train experts were talking about how they’re using substandard steel on the rails and all the trains were gonna derail in a few years. They always gotta come up with a reason why China can when the USA can’t.“China is going to have trains derailing all over the place, trust me”
Meanwhile USA has frequent catastrophic derailments of hazmat…
“China is going to have trains derailing all over the place, trust me”
Always a wild accusation, they have like 2/3 of the world’s HSR track and have had only a single major accident in the network’s lifetime, almost 15 years ago now.
It’s statistically the second safest network in the world if I remember right, and that’s only really because the Shinkansen has avoided having any major accidents at all.
Yeah but the US Interstate system has zero derailments and has been around for decades, so technically it is safer.
The line generated 42,000 million yuan in revenue (around 5.4 billion euros), with a net profit of nearly 1.8 billion dollars.
So this means that of their revenue, £3.35 billion is operating costs. I wonder how many ₩ got paid out to shareholders?
These measurements are crucial for a Canadian news org.
MFW Chinese infrastructure projects aren’t beholden to shareholders demanding profits on every quarterly report.
