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For decades, rail travel in China meant an arduous overnighter in a crowded East German–designed train, riding along a rickety old track. Now China is undergoing a rail revolution. Over the next three years, the government will pour some $300 billion into its railways, expanding its network by 20,000 kilometers, including 13,000 kilometers of track designed for high-speed trains capable of traveling up to 350kph. Result: China, a nation long defined by the vastness of its geography, is getting, much, much smaller.
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Newsweek: China's high-speed rail revolution
News Type: Event — Seeded on Tue Oct 27, 2009 2:56 PM EDT
Article Source: Newsweek{"contentId":"3431316","authorDomain":"douglasq"}
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{"commentId":10316909,"authorDomain":"douglasq"}
China is going to be a force to be reckoned with (culturally, economically, hopefully not militarily) sometime VERY soon.
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- 1 vote
#1 - Tue Oct 27, 2009 2:58 PM EDT{"commentId":10370364,"authorDomain":"yumi-fukuzawa"}
This crushes the theory that "US is too big for high speed rail" remark that the anti-HSR Republicans loves to use. The lower 48 is smaller in size than China, yet they're able to get this done in only a few years as opposed to the thirty odd years of leaving Amtrak in its sorry state.
And in the meantime China is investing in HSR, it's the German, French, and Japanese companies that are making money money off of China because they have the companies and expertise to make high speed rail cars and systems.
To be fair though, the Chinese do have an edge when they want something built FAST. They're Communist so they can bulldoze anything that's in it's path, regardless if they're homes, businesses, or ecological protection zones. You'd have to admit, crushing NIMBY opposition and doing no environmental impact research does speed things up a lot. It took us fifty years of quarreling with local governments and homeowners to build the Interstate. China OTOH, can say screw you to anyone its path and go from blueprint to startup in less than a decade.
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#2 - Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:47 AM EDT{"canLink":false,"threadId":"710843","isPrivate":false}
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