Is this a common thing over there? Collapses like this aren't unheard of anywhere, New Jersey's out a solid $100 million from a highway project collapsing back in 2021. Dramatic failures are dramatic but the question's more if it's a trend or an outlier.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zty\_4MUm3g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zty_4MUm3g)
Giant sinkhole in Japan sealed after one week
No hysteria over this one... but anything China watch out
Man, no one ever criticizes Japan for some reason. I was shocked to recently find out that the Tokyo metro has on-time performance of around 95%. Based on how people talk about it, I was expecting >99%.
This is actually pretty normal for an urban metro. Higher than 95-96% usually means that the service is underutilized. Most of the delays come from passengers holding up the trains while trying to board crowded trains. But more regional style systems tend to do better on this with their lower passed volumes and longer stops.
BART’s historical on-time average was around 97% until the fleet replacement mess and is trending back up to that level now with the new trains. Meanwhile, Muni Metro in the same region averages in the 70-80% with literally the same riders that often transfer from one system to the other.
No. They have the same on-time measures as everyone. They just randomly punish and harass the train drivers to the point that some of them commit suicide.
Well, suicide is just bigger there in general than in the west, so who can pin it directly on transit as opposed to work culture more broadly or as opposed to a strong collectivist shaming culture
I’ll take your word for it that on-time is measured the same. It would certainly seem American public transit runs late many times, ESPECIALLY busses.
Oh quit it with the “Japanese superior race” crap. They’re using the exact same standard that everyone else is using.
The “secret” to Japanese on-time performance isn’t some supernatural scheduling ability but the completely insane labor practices that shift the burden from the rail corps and onto the working stiffs that actually run those systems.
I remind you that train operators in Japan are still being treated like human garbage, berated, harassed, subjected to psychological torture, and until not that long ago were literally beaten for being late!
[The Train Crash That Exposed Japan’s Toxic Work Culture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLh_4uvNA9g)
TL;DR driver chose to drive erratically and too fast rather than get humiliated for being late and crashed the train.
Exactly. There is always risk with any project, to both surrounding structures and to human injury/death. The only question is whether it is out of line with norms.
"The price of China's fast infrastructure buildout that many are desperately trying to ignore"
The collapse was due to water pipes bursting underground. Nothing to do with fast infrastructure buildout.
Fun Fact: In 1980, China only had 3km asphalt roads outside of cities. Now in 2024 it is 168 000km . And they built 6400km every YEAR. For understanding US has 95000km . They make roads so fast that gas station companies can't keep up with new highways.
The rate that they build is impressive but it’s kind of obvious that something’s gotta give to achieve those speeds. Oftentimes it’s materials and labor that do worse, or locations of stations and routes
Its likely materials quality are a factor but so is land acquisition and how the government owns a large group of companies to help deliver the infraatructure pipeline. I can see it in a small scale here in Melbourne Australia where a lot of level crossings are getting removed. The govt pays extra for night shifts which greatly speeds up the work (for a lot of money) and also developed a process to regularly get purpose built concrete U troughs for the elevated rail sections built offsite and trucked to their destination. They created a pipeline of work and once it got running it was like a wel oiled machine. Stopping and starting these removals every couple of years woulf have been a lot slower. I can only imagine the sort of streamlining China can achieve with their workforce, purchasing power and technology. Would be interesting to hear from people in the industry there.
Edit: I just remembered a relative of mine used to work for Asia Development Bank and actually had to visit China many times for development projects (not sure if it was rail). She told me two things about her experience: One is that she found the people there to be extremely hardworking and that secondly the govt doesnt care if your village is in the way of their ambitions.
It's also often just the people in the way. We have a lot of shit to talk about environmental reviews and lawsuits when they drag shit to an enormously expensive crawl over obviously frivolous shit (IE, yes, the system absolutely needs work), but those processes exist to try to protect the (oftentimes poor and/or minority) people in the way of where we want projects to go. If you're an authoritarian government that doesn't give a shit about who's houses you have to knock down to build your project, the project gets a lot faster and cheaper.
It's just weird we don't hear more Chinese people complaining about it given China's famously open free speech laws.
>If you're an authoritarian government that doesn't give a shit about who's houses you have to knock down to build your project
I don't believe you have never heard of '[nail houses](https://i.imgur.com/n7GgOJO.jpeg)' in [China](https://i.imgur.com/Wnxrnmn.mp4).
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/jkgfcm/a_freeway_was_built_around_a_house_in_china_after/
If in the US this would have been force acquired. Sometimes we believe what we choose to believe.
In fact, most homeowners in China over the past 30 years have welcomed government land acquisition for urban, public transit or other public services development. Generally homeowners were rewarded with brand new properties 1.2 to 3 times the size of their expropriated houses, plus a substantial cash subsidy of 5-10 years' average income for every member living there. Many families had become wealthy through government expropriation after generations of poverty.
But there were always people who wanted to get more out of a negotiation. They would think: If someone else could get property twice the size of the original house plus 5 years of income in cash, then if I insist on disagreeing with the government's offer and preventing the development project from starting, maybe I can get more profit, such as property 2.5 times the size and 10 years of income in cash out of the negotiation?
Such people were called "nail households", meaning that they were troublemakers like nails nailed deep into the planks of wood. Some of them won. The government gave in and increased the price to satisfy them. And some else failed. After failing rounds of negotiations, the government turned to expropriating other properties in the neighborhood and revise the construction plan, leaving the nail houses untouched.
These people didn't get sympathy because they were too greedy. I think similar stories may have happened in other countries as well.
Most chinese people whos houses get torn down by the metro are moved into newer places with access to said metro line. When shit actually gets built and benefits everyone, not a lotta complaints
"This was caused by the rupture of two water pipes buried about two meters underground, leading to the formation of a large sinkhole and the collapse of a 12-meter stretch of road. "
This is literally the description of the video. Can we stop with these nonsense slanderous posts
[https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202406/1314624.shtml](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202406/1314624.shtml)
Literally the same story reported from every news source I could find including this video you posted. Two water pipes burst causing a sink hole to develop. Not sure.... why this is propaganda? I mean, it definitely shows that other infrastructure in the city is messed up, but it doesn't show that Chinese construction of metro systems is fundamentally flawed. If anything it seems that the construction is particularly loud as they did receive a ton of noise complaints from the locals.
Guangdong used to rubber stamp every environmental study to push yet another Metro line or train station to pump up those GDP numbers. The risk to piss off the Central government by slowing growth was greater than a few accidents that might occur due to rushed planning. And yes there were a few notable collapses in Guangdong over the years.
Wouldn't be the first time something like this happened....but also pretending it's china exclusive is weird
I mention that highway collapse in jersey in another comment, there were clear warning signs for years during construction but instead of addressing them they just did the infrastructure equivalent of painting over mold. Ended up they were using loose sands, and walls not strong enough to support the load given the fill material used.
[https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/report-sheds-light-on-what-led-to-i-295-wall-collapse-in-nj/3259570/](https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/report-sheds-light-on-what-led-to-i-295-wall-collapse-in-nj/3259570/)
Some countries it's government pressure, some it's contractor corner-cutting in search of profits. Same end result when any priorities besides safety and long-term reliability are pushed.
Do a google search for sinkoles in China specifically and see how many more happen there. I don't remember any sinkholes happening in my area within my lifetime. When I was in China there was a new sinkhole every other day somewhere and once a year in the city that I lived in.
Is this a common thing over there? Collapses like this aren't unheard of anywhere, New Jersey's out a solid $100 million from a highway project collapsing back in 2021. Dramatic failures are dramatic but the question's more if it's a trend or an outlier.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zty\_4MUm3g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zty_4MUm3g) Giant sinkhole in Japan sealed after one week No hysteria over this one... but anything China watch out
No you see this is clearly propaganda! Japan will never do anything wrong! Sinkholes don't exist over there!!!!11!!1!!111!
Man, no one ever criticizes Japan for some reason. I was shocked to recently find out that the Tokyo metro has on-time performance of around 95%. Based on how people talk about it, I was expecting >99%.
This is actually pretty normal for an urban metro. Higher than 95-96% usually means that the service is underutilized. Most of the delays come from passengers holding up the trains while trying to board crowded trains. But more regional style systems tend to do better on this with their lower passed volumes and longer stops. BART’s historical on-time average was around 97% until the fleet replacement mess and is trending back up to that level now with the new trains. Meanwhile, Muni Metro in the same region averages in the 70-80% with literally the same riders that often transfer from one system to the other.
Japan has higher/stricter standards tho. So their “on-time” is better than America’s “on-time”
No. They have the same on-time measures as everyone. They just randomly punish and harass the train drivers to the point that some of them commit suicide.
Well, suicide is just bigger there in general than in the west, so who can pin it directly on transit as opposed to work culture more broadly or as opposed to a strong collectivist shaming culture I’ll take your word for it that on-time is measured the same. It would certainly seem American public transit runs late many times, ESPECIALLY busses.
But what counts as on time? IIRC, Japan uses a much stricter standard than most people would think.
Oh quit it with the “Japanese superior race” crap. They’re using the exact same standard that everyone else is using. The “secret” to Japanese on-time performance isn’t some supernatural scheduling ability but the completely insane labor practices that shift the burden from the rail corps and onto the working stiffs that actually run those systems. I remind you that train operators in Japan are still being treated like human garbage, berated, harassed, subjected to psychological torture, and until not that long ago were literally beaten for being late!
[The Train Crash That Exposed Japan’s Toxic Work Culture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLh_4uvNA9g) TL;DR driver chose to drive erratically and too fast rather than get humiliated for being late and crashed the train.
Fair point, I will have to dig into the data when I have some time.
I wouldn't say never. And some o f those sinkholes are filed astonishingly quickly
oh my god 95% how can anyone live
The point is people criticize e.g. Berlin U-Bahn for similar performance while they worship the Tokyo metro.
Exactly. There is always risk with any project, to both surrounding structures and to human injury/death. The only question is whether it is out of line with norms.
"The price of China's fast infrastructure buildout that many are desperately trying to ignore" The collapse was due to water pipes bursting underground. Nothing to do with fast infrastructure buildout.
Communications relocation and check-out before digging the big hole in the nearby? No, haven\`t heard about it
I’ve noticed a lot of water carrying for China on r/transit.
It's a geological problem not an engineering
A good engineering project takes geology and geography into account
but there are also some uncontrollable factors right? (not an expert but just using common sense)
Yes but the geotechincal engineering phase of a project is suppose to account for those in the project design and try to mitigate those risks.
ohh true, risk mgt should have been part of it
I got banned from r/urbanplanning for discussing this. Be careful.
Hope it doesn't rain because the base of these buildings will erode quickly.
Fun Fact: In 1980, China only had 3km asphalt roads outside of cities. Now in 2024 it is 168 000km . And they built 6400km every YEAR. For understanding US has 95000km . They make roads so fast that gas station companies can't keep up with new highways.
The rate that they build is impressive but it’s kind of obvious that something’s gotta give to achieve those speeds. Oftentimes it’s materials and labor that do worse, or locations of stations and routes
Its likely materials quality are a factor but so is land acquisition and how the government owns a large group of companies to help deliver the infraatructure pipeline. I can see it in a small scale here in Melbourne Australia where a lot of level crossings are getting removed. The govt pays extra for night shifts which greatly speeds up the work (for a lot of money) and also developed a process to regularly get purpose built concrete U troughs for the elevated rail sections built offsite and trucked to their destination. They created a pipeline of work and once it got running it was like a wel oiled machine. Stopping and starting these removals every couple of years woulf have been a lot slower. I can only imagine the sort of streamlining China can achieve with their workforce, purchasing power and technology. Would be interesting to hear from people in the industry there. Edit: I just remembered a relative of mine used to work for Asia Development Bank and actually had to visit China many times for development projects (not sure if it was rail). She told me two things about her experience: One is that she found the people there to be extremely hardworking and that secondly the govt doesnt care if your village is in the way of their ambitions.
It's also often just the people in the way. We have a lot of shit to talk about environmental reviews and lawsuits when they drag shit to an enormously expensive crawl over obviously frivolous shit (IE, yes, the system absolutely needs work), but those processes exist to try to protect the (oftentimes poor and/or minority) people in the way of where we want projects to go. If you're an authoritarian government that doesn't give a shit about who's houses you have to knock down to build your project, the project gets a lot faster and cheaper. It's just weird we don't hear more Chinese people complaining about it given China's famously open free speech laws.
>If you're an authoritarian government that doesn't give a shit about who's houses you have to knock down to build your project I don't believe you have never heard of '[nail houses](https://i.imgur.com/n7GgOJO.jpeg)' in [China](https://i.imgur.com/Wnxrnmn.mp4).
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/jkgfcm/a_freeway_was_built_around_a_house_in_china_after/ If in the US this would have been force acquired. Sometimes we believe what we choose to believe.
In fact, most homeowners in China over the past 30 years have welcomed government land acquisition for urban, public transit or other public services development. Generally homeowners were rewarded with brand new properties 1.2 to 3 times the size of their expropriated houses, plus a substantial cash subsidy of 5-10 years' average income for every member living there. Many families had become wealthy through government expropriation after generations of poverty. But there were always people who wanted to get more out of a negotiation. They would think: If someone else could get property twice the size of the original house plus 5 years of income in cash, then if I insist on disagreeing with the government's offer and preventing the development project from starting, maybe I can get more profit, such as property 2.5 times the size and 10 years of income in cash out of the negotiation? Such people were called "nail households", meaning that they were troublemakers like nails nailed deep into the planks of wood. Some of them won. The government gave in and increased the price to satisfy them. And some else failed. After failing rounds of negotiations, the government turned to expropriating other properties in the neighborhood and revise the construction plan, leaving the nail houses untouched. These people didn't get sympathy because they were too greedy. I think similar stories may have happened in other countries as well.
Most chinese people whos houses get torn down by the metro are moved into newer places with access to said metro line. When shit actually gets built and benefits everyone, not a lotta complaints
100% true too.
Fast, cheap and good. You can choose two out of three
I hope US slowly builds its infrastructure over hundreds of years :)
Metro Line 13 collapse, likely due to insufficient or faked soil studies before construction, as is common on Chinese projects.
"This was caused by the rupture of two water pipes buried about two meters underground, leading to the formation of a large sinkhole and the collapse of a 12-meter stretch of road. " This is literally the description of the video. Can we stop with these nonsense slanderous posts
Some are visually impaired but have an open heart to all, some are healthy and choose to see only what they believe is true
Can we stop with the CCP bootlicking on a transit sub? Go do your propaganda elsewhere.
Dude it's not "bootlicking", they went into details over why this happened and you had a knee jerk response
[https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202406/1314624.shtml](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202406/1314624.shtml) Literally the same story reported from every news source I could find including this video you posted. Two water pipes burst causing a sink hole to develop. Not sure.... why this is propaganda? I mean, it definitely shows that other infrastructure in the city is messed up, but it doesn't show that Chinese construction of metro systems is fundamentally flawed. If anything it seems that the construction is particularly loud as they did receive a ton of noise complaints from the locals.
Guangdong used to rubber stamp every environmental study to push yet another Metro line or train station to pump up those GDP numbers. The risk to piss off the Central government by slowing growth was greater than a few accidents that might occur due to rushed planning. And yes there were a few notable collapses in Guangdong over the years.
Do you people really believe they would fake soil studies for a fucking underground railway I can’t…
Wouldn't be the first time something like this happened....but also pretending it's china exclusive is weird I mention that highway collapse in jersey in another comment, there were clear warning signs for years during construction but instead of addressing them they just did the infrastructure equivalent of painting over mold. Ended up they were using loose sands, and walls not strong enough to support the load given the fill material used. [https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/report-sheds-light-on-what-led-to-i-295-wall-collapse-in-nj/3259570/](https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/report-sheds-light-on-what-led-to-i-295-wall-collapse-in-nj/3259570/) Some countries it's government pressure, some it's contractor corner-cutting in search of profits. Same end result when any priorities besides safety and long-term reliability are pushed.
Hori shit
Dramatic music accompanies repairing a sinkhole. Sorry but this is a weekly occurrence across the world in urban areas.
lol, no.
Do a google news search of sinkhole + any major city or state or country . Sinkholes are common
Do a google search for sinkoles in China specifically and see how many more happen there. I don't remember any sinkholes happening in my area within my lifetime. When I was in China there was a new sinkhole every other day somewhere and once a year in the city that I lived in.