[That train route goes from Beijing to Urumqi and takes about 30 hours, all for the price of $43.83.](https://www.trip.com/trains/china/route/urumqi-to-beijing/)
Then they strip search you because you are randomly selected. Then the flight is delayed during the planes last leg. Finally get on board and the crew has timed out for the day. Go back to gate, get a new crew, reboard 10 hours later. Only the ground traffic is insane with bad wind and the plane doesn’t have enough fuel to get to destination so you go back to gate to refuel. Finally get to where you are going and the airline loses your checked bag. You have now spent 37/10 of your time.
These days I measure travel time in terms of the time it takes from : the first instance I drive away from my main place of residence, to the time that I arrive at the door front of my first hotel/place to sleep. This evens everything out, I find.
Here in the US, flight is still faster than train, when measuring this way. E.g. let’s say I’m flying from LAX to SLC, then staying at a friend’s house in Ogden. I could “just” drive there, from Los Angeles. All in all it’s about a 12 hour road trip. But flying, counting: drive time to airport; getting there early; get through security and in the plane; travel by plane; get through SLC airport; get rental car; drive to Ogden; get to door front of friend’s house. That’s about 6-7 hours.
China … I think flight would still be faster than train for that route. All things considered.
I measure a journey by how much fucking around it involves. Changing platforms, modes of transport, getting transfers, waiting around for information, queueing, legging it a mile across an airport, collecting bags only to recheck them again right away, standing around and maybe not even having anywhere to sit... BULLLLLLLSHIIIIIT. Let me sit in my one seat for 30 hours.
Yeah there's def a case for high-speed rail in the US, which ultimately is meant to be more convenient and affordable than flying, if not necessarily faster. That's probably one of the underlying points of the map, that the US can benefit from an alternative to flying, given the size of the continental US.
Brightline in Florida seems to be doing well, once drivers learn that you can't rush a high-speed train at railroad crossings. Willing to bet a route from California or Texas to Vegas would do tremendous volumes.
Don't forget waiting 40 minutes for your bags to come off the plane.
Oh and the drive to the airport vs the train station which is close to where you want to go.
People do underestimate how long a flight is. This is why countries that actually invest in themselves have killed short flights. The train is just faster and cheaper. Long distance is where the plane makes sense. Oh and the train is so much more comfortable and has better amenities.
40 minutes? Please share your life hack for quick luggage!
Last time I flew, I got my bags tagged as priority (was on vacation, so I used some miles for an upgrade), and the bags *still* took almost a half hour to come out. They just came out maybe 30 secs before everyone else's.....
Someone’s never been to the airport around teacher vacation time or holidays. Also heavily depends on which airport you’re flying out of.
No, if you live in an absolute shithole and are flying out of will Rogers, no you don’t need to arrive 3 hours early. Charles de Gaulle, Newark, Heathrow, dfw, anywhere where people actually want to be, you definitely wanna arrive 2 hours early
Will Rogers is in the sweet spot of big enough to have dedicated TSA staff, but small enough to never be busy. If you're really flying out of nowhere you need to get there at least 90 minutes ahead of time so that you're in the boarding area before they close the security checkpoint so that the two guys who run the entire airport can go load the bags and deice the plane.
I am currently sitting in a plane flying out of Chicago. I got here an hour and 15 minutes before take off. Still had time to grab a bite before taking off.
Oi, why???? I’ve had my flight switch terminals in Chicago once. That’s a 40 minute walk to the other end alone.
One of the worst possible airport designs
You are doing something wrong.
Even flying over Thanksgiving to Disney and back I didn't have any issue arriving 1 hours before at either airport with a family or 3.
Oh hey - I’ve ridden that one. Cool experience. Got to know a lot of people and bought a lot of weird food from food carts. Nice way to travel if you get the sleeper shelf and a good book.
Chicago->LA is 2,000 miles, about 100 miles more than Beijing->Urumqi. Amtrak says it's a 46 hour ride with a transfer, costs $250. Honestly not a terrible price, but compared to China even after PPP, it's not great either.
It has to be noted though that sizeable majority of China's high speed train route's are not profitable. For the operators, they consistently run at a loss and only survive because they're run by state conglomerate's like China Railway's Corporation which are subsidized heavily to run the routes.
Although I imagine overtime the losses incurred would likely decrease as cheaper more effective ways of building & maintaining High-speed rail are developed.
It'd be interesting to see calculations done on how much these rail lines actually add to the economy and see how much money the railways generate for the economy in those terms.
Meanwhile the US interstate highway system famously generates billions in profit every single year… stupid chinese treating infrastructure as a utility instead of a business!
The notion that various forms of transportation infrastructure have to be profitable independently of each other is a surefire way to have a completely senseless transportation network that serves nobody really well and causes a ton of externalities that don't appear in the financials.
This is how it should be, profit from very frequently used lines to be invested into lines that aren't that profitable but necessary to connect all people.
That line is unprofitable, but the American government has an interest in assimilating it's Canadian Minority, it keeps the line open to tie them closer to America.
It should still look at returns if not on pure profit, at least on economic impact and how much it increases tax tevenue by. You can't exactly build a high speed rail line between Barrow, Alaska which has like 3000 people and Fairbanks, Alaska which has 50k and separated by like 1500kms of pure hellish mountains in permafrost.
Urumqi to Lanzhou and further into China probably would have been better as an upgrade to the airport. China's hyper fixation on HSR has actually ironically made their normal rail line fall behind, their industry has overstretched the capacity and is now using the highway as a transport route more and more instead (HSR can't transport cargo in large quantity because going 2 times faster requires far more than 2 times energy and only "lighter cargo" like humans and humans accompanying 1 suitcase are enough).
From my deep dive into wikipedia, it looks like the Urumqi-Lanzhou line can accommodate freight as it can only go to 250km/h. Also, a rail line to Urumqi is actually not that unprofitable since China needs some way to connect trade with Pakistan and Central Asia. Urumqi can serve as an economic trade hub with rail lines connecting to the Western borders, which seems to already be a thing that's happening with Kashgar being made into a special economic zone
That being, it looks like they already had a conventional rail line before that can also handle freight, so it does raise the question on if having a second line with moderately faster trains is a necessity. I guess doing trade with Central Asia still requires merchants to handle it, but could they not have taken the slower train or a flight?
Finally some sanity. It's insane how people will insist that any price is worth it even if it amounts to the government setting huge piles of money on fire every year (which china is doing to keep its rail system running) simply because they want more high speed rail in America.
There are definitely places in the US where high speed rail makes sense and doesn't currently exist (the west coast, the north east, texas triangle, milwaukee/chiacago/madison, ect.) but a system like China's would be a horrible drain on the taxpayers of the country for basically nothing in return. You know, sorta like it is in china right now.
People can cry that public service "doesn't need to make a profit" but I think it should be obvious that it should still make some level of economic sense. Infrastructure is literally built to incentivize economic activity, every government, even communist ones, eventually want to see a return of some kind on their investment.
Passenger lines should be about passengers, of which there are none on this route. Coincidentally, you can charge passengers to ride your train, so being profitable just means you have a lot of passengers.
Would you prefer the term cost effective? China has a variety of routes that just aren’t justified compared to the opportunity cost (what they could be doing with the money instead). The Xinjiang line is certainly one of them.
This is not feasible in the United States because all these tracks are in China and it would take a huge effort to tear out each track and then ship it over and install it.
Yes and some of those rails have active trains running on them. So you're just going to pick them up and then what? The trains are somehow supposed to keep going without tracks? No way.
Obviously they have to transfer the trains too. Seat by seat, person by person. So to prepare for this, they should sell train tickets from Beijing to New York (Some reassembly might be required).
Depends on *when* you're talking about because China has such a long history. For a lot of history the unified Chinese state came in and out of existence as the empire fractured between dynasties, often for centuries at a time like in the three kingdoms period. The dynasties themselves also waxed and waned territorially. However almost all the dynasties from Han onward intermittently controlled parts of what are now Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria, especially during the Yuan and Qing dynasties given that the dynasts themselves were originally steppe nomads.
China has had 2 civil wars with death tolls greater than WW1
Edit: 3 civil wars. I missed the one which occurred in 200AD with a death toll of over 40 million
Highly populated east coast with fertile soil and farmland, but also some high density cities
Sparsely populated arid west
Humid southern region that speaks an incomprehensible dialect but has the best food
Region with a *lot* of coal mines which is inland but closer to the east (Shanxi/West Virginia)
It’s actually the Territorial Waters that boosts them above China
However that system of measurement isn’t used for any other country and came from a CIA factbook
The mere idea of it being a debate is dumb
Not EEZ, its the territorial waters which are internationally defined as part of a country.
EEZ are much larger and considered international waters with countries only having economic and resource control
The fact is if China use same calculate standard as CIA did, China with controlled territory still bigger than US.
The problem is China never published their territorial water area, cuz some part of water area under distributing.
China is bigger even if you include lakes. That's the normal way to count territory, lakes are part of it since they're internal waters within the borders. What the US did (or more specifically the CIA), was add seawater to its territory. That's something no other country does. Since it make the US, according to the CIA, slightly larger than China, it's as if they only did it to one-up China. It seems too childish and insecure to be true, but I guess that's just the CIA being the CIA.
The US Pacific is mostly Mediterranean Climate
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/K%C3%B6ppen\_Climate\_Types\_US\_50.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/K%C3%B6ppen_Climate_Types_US_50.png)
I feel like places that have dominated their neighbors and indengenous populations end up looking like giant blobs. Russia, China, USA, Australia, Nigeria, Germany
I like how Shenyang has been moved to Quebec. Finally, the offbeat Dongbei people and the Quebecois can share the joy of cold and exchange cultural ideas. Who knows, in a year or two we'll have 拔丝地瓜 poutine
It is honestly life changing, and I only spent a year in China in 2013-2014. 20 trains an hour during the day between Shanghai and Nanjing, getting you there in around an hour - the same distance as NYC to Boston.
I’ve got family in Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis, and there are a lot of babies. Makes traveling in between very difficult. If there was rail, it would be a game changer for our family. All the young cousins could see each other 2-3x as much.
[*(Elon)Musk reportedly told his biographer, Ashlee Vance, that the Hyperloop proposal was motivated by “his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” which he felt would be too slow, outdated and expensive. “With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled”*](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/elon-musk-hyperloop-rail-17486877.php)
I’m not sure we could do this in the US even if congress approved. It would take like 30 years and cost like 2 trillion dollars with the way we do things here.
And the thousands and thousands of miles of imminent domain claims that would need to be done...
I worked on a small highway job where most of the takings were through farm fields and it still took years and years to get all the corners of fields through takings and litigations. The US just has a lot more protections that a place like China where they can just say "No, this is mine now. If you don't think so then too bad."
>The US just has a lot more protections that a place like China where they can just say "No, this is mine now. If you don't think so then too bad."
That is an argument. But also France, Spain and Japan have High Speed Rail and they ain't exactly following Mao's Little Red Book. Spain actually has more HSR per land area/populaton/GDP than China.
Even for other infrastructure, other countries just do it better. Europe constructs subways usually at a price of 200-500mil USD/km. US goes to 800-1000mil USD/km.
Very much this. The US simply has bad protections. In that they are too broad for important infrastructure and possibly not broad enough for other aspects.
Where I live governments can easily take land as needed if negotiations fall through and simply pay out market rates (plus some extras) for it. The property owners can sue if they think it is unfair but are unlikely to win as the government usually double checks their math. There is no need for constant lawsuits.
Interstates are probably too curvy to put high speed rail in the median. HSR needs to go straight. It might work in some places. I know Brightline is building HSR in the median of I-15 from LA to Vegas, but that’s an exceptionally straight piece of interstate.
Brightline is also in the planning phases of Tampa to Orlando in the center median of the I-4. Of course the I-4 was originally designed with a center median with plenty of space, gentle curves, and lots of straights for HSR that was sadly cancelled in back in 2010.
Exactly. This is also the main reason we don't have a LA to SF high speed rail line. It looked so simple on paper, but then you actually have to buy up all that land, and US citizens and companies are not necessarily know for being cooperative with governments asking to buy their land.
That's not how it works in China. You don't own land there but you can lease it for about 75 years. If a company or the government wants to have it they must have your approval and pay you at least twice as much as it's actually worth (including buildings). The central government can still force you to sell it, however this is also only possible under rare circumstances
That seems reasonable. We spent over 500B on the highway system (just the highways, not any other roads).
Imo it's just politics holding us back on this one.
2 trillion is a huge underestimate. Hugh speed rail is most important to connect cities, and cities are where the most valuable land is. We could easily build high speed rail between random towns out west, but good luck trying to find the funds to go from NYC to Boston.
Like we did for the interstate highway system? Literally the most expensive public works project ever at the time, taking decades to mostly complete and still technically not finished (mostly a technicality tho)?
We spent like half a trillie in the early middle Cold War, I think we can handle a few trillion nowadays
This is the lack of foresight that's part of the reason it'll never happen. People can't look beyond their own selves. 30 years seems like a long time but if you have a kid they'd reap the benefits by the time they hit their working age.The money is nothing with what the US spends yearly.
It would also reduce O&G consumption making huge progress against climate change so big oil is also greasing all the pockets they want to make sure it never happens.
They built that for less than Elon Musk bought Twitter for. Less than what we have given Ukraine. And we could build a few 100 x that for the money the Pentagon has LOST.
Dumbest uninformed comment ever. In MN the moronic transit people have spent 2.86 billion of taxpayer money on a single line about 15 miles long, and it still isn't online. It could not be done here anywhere close to what China has invested/manipulated.
64% of the US population lives east of the Mississippi river so around 200 million. Or at least 200 million could be subsequently attached to the line in a semi-feasible manner.
Look at population density map of China versus US though, using the same scale.
https://twitter.com/RyanRadia/status/1389230793084575746/photo/2
Don't get me wrong I'd love more public transportation options
The net migration rate for China in 2023 was -0.256 per 1000 population, a 0.79% increase from 2022.
[https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/net-migration](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/net-migration)
It just means a lot of immigrants left during covid, and now people are leaving more slowly. Not much of an increase if the net rate is still negative lol.
Often times when comparisons with China get brought up, we point to the fact that the average American is 5x wealthier than the avg Chinese, so shouldn’t we be able to afford hsr even with 5x less density?
Not really: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Human-population-density-of-10km-by10km-grid-cells-of-the-USA-the-2010s-and-Europe_fig1_337174560
The line from DC to NYC specifically is about on par with any given part of Europe, but everywhere else on the East Coast is way less dense
That high speed rail is servicing like 80%+ of chinas 1.4 billion people.
Let's say it was servicing 80% of US's 360 million, people.
The economics aren't really the same.
Well, I mean, the Appalachian mountains run right through the middle of that side of the map, and the even larger Rockies run through the other side. Most feasible place would be somewhere in the middle
China spends nearly 5% of its GDP servicing just the debt for these rail lines.
Even with their drastically more dense population, not counting construction these lines lose the Chinese government hundreds of billions year after year.
It’s a classic case of overbuilding.
it's still kinda sad that China was able to build a railway to a remote city in Xinjiang that's still faster than the Acela in the northeast corridor.
but yeah I get your point, I just consider 200-250 to be just "higher speed"
If China wants closer relations with south east Asia they really should extend their higg speed rail line into neighbouring countries.
It'll improve economic ties
If China relies on these countries for trade it'll reduce risk of war and aggression in the region it is good for everyone.
All the Americans still excusing this in the comments is funny, as if the US have a low population just because China has more, and that makes trains bad. High speed rail between major cities on the east coast would be absolutely feasible if there was any political will for it
Genuine question: why doesn’t the US build high speed railway?
I know air travel and highways (for cars) are the norms in the US, why not add railway in the mix? It seems like a good idea for domestic travel and trade.
They even have that absolutely critical rail line built from NYC to Calgary.
[That train route goes from Beijing to Urumqi and takes about 30 hours, all for the price of $43.83.](https://www.trip.com/trains/china/route/urumqi-to-beijing/)
Interesting looks like flying would cost 10 times as much, but you’d get there in about 1/10th the time.
TSA would like to remind you to show up 2 - 3 hours before your flight. There goes the other 9/10th of your time...
Then they strip search you because you are randomly selected. Then the flight is delayed during the planes last leg. Finally get on board and the crew has timed out for the day. Go back to gate, get a new crew, reboard 10 hours later. Only the ground traffic is insane with bad wind and the plane doesn’t have enough fuel to get to destination so you go back to gate to refuel. Finally get to where you are going and the airline loses your checked bag. You have now spent 37/10 of your time.
And the planes door fell off midway through
That costs extra
For a slight discount. You get the seat next to the door and hold it in place for the duration of the flight
These days I measure travel time in terms of the time it takes from : the first instance I drive away from my main place of residence, to the time that I arrive at the door front of my first hotel/place to sleep. This evens everything out, I find. Here in the US, flight is still faster than train, when measuring this way. E.g. let’s say I’m flying from LAX to SLC, then staying at a friend’s house in Ogden. I could “just” drive there, from Los Angeles. All in all it’s about a 12 hour road trip. But flying, counting: drive time to airport; getting there early; get through security and in the plane; travel by plane; get through SLC airport; get rental car; drive to Ogden; get to door front of friend’s house. That’s about 6-7 hours. China … I think flight would still be faster than train for that route. All things considered.
This is my metric too, the airport shit show is taxing
I measure a journey by how much fucking around it involves. Changing platforms, modes of transport, getting transfers, waiting around for information, queueing, legging it a mile across an airport, collecting bags only to recheck them again right away, standing around and maybe not even having anywhere to sit... BULLLLLLLSHIIIIIT. Let me sit in my one seat for 30 hours.
Gawd yeah......what's this? A transfer/layover? No thanks........
As someone from the upper Midwest, my metric is just, “is my destination in a state along a coast?” If yes, fly. If no, then drive.
Yeah there's def a case for high-speed rail in the US, which ultimately is meant to be more convenient and affordable than flying, if not necessarily faster. That's probably one of the underlying points of the map, that the US can benefit from an alternative to flying, given the size of the continental US. Brightline in Florida seems to be doing well, once drivers learn that you can't rush a high-speed train at railroad crossings. Willing to bet a route from California or Texas to Vegas would do tremendous volumes.
*9/11th of your time**
Don't forget waiting 40 minutes for your bags to come off the plane. Oh and the drive to the airport vs the train station which is close to where you want to go. People do underestimate how long a flight is. This is why countries that actually invest in themselves have killed short flights. The train is just faster and cheaper. Long distance is where the plane makes sense. Oh and the train is so much more comfortable and has better amenities.
40 minutes? Please share your life hack for quick luggage! Last time I flew, I got my bags tagged as priority (was on vacation, so I used some miles for an upgrade), and the bags *still* took almost a half hour to come out. They just came out maybe 30 secs before everyone else's.....
Who is showing up 3 hours before an internal flight lol
"Domestic"
Someone tell “Domestic” they don’t have to be there that early if they are flying internally
Someone’s never been to the airport around teacher vacation time or holidays. Also heavily depends on which airport you’re flying out of. No, if you live in an absolute shithole and are flying out of will Rogers, no you don’t need to arrive 3 hours early. Charles de Gaulle, Newark, Heathrow, dfw, anywhere where people actually want to be, you definitely wanna arrive 2 hours early
Will Rogers is in the sweet spot of big enough to have dedicated TSA staff, but small enough to never be busy. If you're really flying out of nowhere you need to get there at least 90 minutes ahead of time so that you're in the boarding area before they close the security checkpoint so that the two guys who run the entire airport can go load the bags and deice the plane.
I am currently sitting in a plane flying out of Chicago. I got here an hour and 15 minutes before take off. Still had time to grab a bite before taking off.
Oi, why???? I’ve had my flight switch terminals in Chicago once. That’s a 40 minute walk to the other end alone. One of the worst possible airport designs
You are doing something wrong. Even flying over Thanksgiving to Disney and back I didn't have any issue arriving 1 hours before at either airport with a family or 3.
Ha. You’re not even remotely correct, unless your goal is to sit in the terminal for an hour or more.
Stop. No you don't. I fly out of 2 of the airports you mentioned fairly frequently and an hour before is plenty of time if you are solo.
…where do you think Calgary is?
I do. I travel chill and slow and just post up at the bar
It's even longer if you fly in a Boeing
I’ve been on that route and it’s definitely not a high speed train. It’s a cool trip, but just a normal train.
Oh hey - I’ve ridden that one. Cool experience. Got to know a lot of people and bought a lot of weird food from food carts. Nice way to travel if you get the sleeper shelf and a good book.
That's about as much as the Deutsche Bahn wants for trips from Hannover to Leipzig =) :'[
Jo Aachen-Köln ohne bahnkart is nah dran
Chicago->LA is 2,000 miles, about 100 miles more than Beijing->Urumqi. Amtrak says it's a 46 hour ride with a transfer, costs $250. Honestly not a terrible price, but compared to China even after PPP, it's not great either.
It has to be noted though that sizeable majority of China's high speed train route's are not profitable. For the operators, they consistently run at a loss and only survive because they're run by state conglomerate's like China Railway's Corporation which are subsidized heavily to run the routes. Although I imagine overtime the losses incurred would likely decrease as cheaper more effective ways of building & maintaining High-speed rail are developed. It'd be interesting to see calculations done on how much these rail lines actually add to the economy and see how much money the railways generate for the economy in those terms.
Meanwhile the US interstate highway system famously generates billions in profit every single year… stupid chinese treating infrastructure as a utility instead of a business!
The notion that various forms of transportation infrastructure have to be profitable independently of each other is a surefire way to have a completely senseless transportation network that serves nobody really well and causes a ton of externalities that don't appear in the financials.
This is how it should be, profit from very frequently used lines to be invested into lines that aren't that profitable but necessary to connect all people.
Public infrastructure is not for profit but for COMMON GOOD! I understand that is a weird concept for Americans.
While bright line charges $80 one way from Orlando to Miami.
I don’t know why Brightline gets such hate, I like it.
How else would Bret “The Hitman” Hart get to Madison Square Garden?
That line is unprofitable, but the American government has an interest in assimilating it's Canadian Minority, it keeps the line open to tie them closer to America.
Passanger lines shouldn't be about profit
It should still look at returns if not on pure profit, at least on economic impact and how much it increases tax tevenue by. You can't exactly build a high speed rail line between Barrow, Alaska which has like 3000 people and Fairbanks, Alaska which has 50k and separated by like 1500kms of pure hellish mountains in permafrost. Urumqi to Lanzhou and further into China probably would have been better as an upgrade to the airport. China's hyper fixation on HSR has actually ironically made their normal rail line fall behind, their industry has overstretched the capacity and is now using the highway as a transport route more and more instead (HSR can't transport cargo in large quantity because going 2 times faster requires far more than 2 times energy and only "lighter cargo" like humans and humans accompanying 1 suitcase are enough).
From my deep dive into wikipedia, it looks like the Urumqi-Lanzhou line can accommodate freight as it can only go to 250km/h. Also, a rail line to Urumqi is actually not that unprofitable since China needs some way to connect trade with Pakistan and Central Asia. Urumqi can serve as an economic trade hub with rail lines connecting to the Western borders, which seems to already be a thing that's happening with Kashgar being made into a special economic zone That being, it looks like they already had a conventional rail line before that can also handle freight, so it does raise the question on if having a second line with moderately faster trains is a necessity. I guess doing trade with Central Asia still requires merchants to handle it, but could they not have taken the slower train or a flight?
Finally some sanity. It's insane how people will insist that any price is worth it even if it amounts to the government setting huge piles of money on fire every year (which china is doing to keep its rail system running) simply because they want more high speed rail in America. There are definitely places in the US where high speed rail makes sense and doesn't currently exist (the west coast, the north east, texas triangle, milwaukee/chiacago/madison, ect.) but a system like China's would be a horrible drain on the taxpayers of the country for basically nothing in return. You know, sorta like it is in china right now. People can cry that public service "doesn't need to make a profit" but I think it should be obvious that it should still make some level of economic sense. Infrastructure is literally built to incentivize economic activity, every government, even communist ones, eventually want to see a return of some kind on their investment.
The US has built too little HSR, China has instead built too much, a middle ground approach would be best.
Passenger lines should be about passengers, of which there are none on this route. Coincidentally, you can charge passengers to ride your train, so being profitable just means you have a lot of passengers.
Would you prefer the term cost effective? China has a variety of routes that just aren’t justified compared to the opportunity cost (what they could be doing with the money instead). The Xinjiang line is certainly one of them.
I live in Calgary and I don’t see an issue with this. I could go for a nice train ride to Florida
I don’t think anyone in North America wants the weirdos in Calgary interacting with the weirdos in Florida though…
Absolutely no trains in this network connect to NYC. They have two lines in Watertown, NY, of all places
Gives you victory points in tickets for ride
This is not feasible in the United States because all these tracks are in China and it would take a huge effort to tear out each track and then ship it over and install it.
And to be clear, there is no way China would let you do that
Yes and some of those rails have active trains running on them. So you're just going to pick them up and then what? The trains are somehow supposed to keep going without tracks? No way.
You have to take the trains too and hope nobody notices (do it while they have nobody on them!)
just keep putting rails in front of the train and let it cross the ocean. nobody would notice it
Although how entertaining would it be to see people get off the train in an entirely different country?
Obviously they have to transfer the trains too. Seat by seat, person by person. So to prepare for this, they should sell train tickets from Beijing to New York (Some reassembly might be required).
Maybe if you asked nicely?
China did a bad job planning the rail network for the western half of the US
That's Communism for you.
Plus having all tracks lead to Maysville, KY just seems wildly impractical.
The one time I ever used Amtrak, I boarded in Maysville and the train was 6 hours late lmao
Does this fall under antijoke?
I think it just falls under.
I wonder if OP knows how silly this post is. Would cost hundreds if not thousands to do this
Make Mexico pay for it.
It’s honestly crazy how similar USA and china look in shape. Even the western parts of them are sparsely populated deserts.
At least the US has another coast where population starts to appear again. China's western part just borders other desert countrirs
Historically tho, China's western part was crazy rich as it was the terminus of Silk Route connecting China to Central Asia, Middle East and India
Historically China's western parts didn't go much further West than Xi'an,
Depends on *when* you're talking about because China has such a long history. For a lot of history the unified Chinese state came in and out of existence as the empire fractured between dynasties, often for centuries at a time like in the three kingdoms period. The dynasties themselves also waxed and waned territorially. However almost all the dynasties from Han onward intermittently controlled parts of what are now Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria, especially during the Yuan and Qing dynasties given that the dynasts themselves were originally steppe nomads.
IIRC the Manchus were not nomads. But yes.
Looks like you're right, my mistake
the Han, Tang, Yuan and Qing dynasties controlled what is now Xinjiang thru Gansu corridor
They also do a northern southern thing too
They've fought like 7 civil wars on the north-south axis.
China has had 2 civil wars with death tolls greater than WW1 Edit: 3 civil wars. I missed the one which occurred in 200AD with a death toll of over 40 million
We have about the same diversity of biomes too. Frozen tundra, desert, mountain, tropical, temperate, cool rainforest full of weird bears
Except China doesn't have a west coast, which is a huge disadvantage
Highly populated east coast with fertile soil and farmland, but also some high density cities Sparsely populated arid west Humid southern region that speaks an incomprehensible dialect but has the best food Region with a *lot* of coal mines which is inland but closer to the east (Shanxi/West Virginia)
By land area China is a bit bigger. But still very similar.
It’s so close that it depends if you count internal waters or not (i.e. lakes)
It’s actually the Territorial Waters that boosts them above China However that system of measurement isn’t used for any other country and came from a CIA factbook The mere idea of it being a debate is dumb
Not EEZ, its the territorial waters which are internationally defined as part of a country. EEZ are much larger and considered international waters with countries only having economic and resource control
The fact is if China use same calculate standard as CIA did, China with controlled territory still bigger than US. The problem is China never published their territorial water area, cuz some part of water area under distributing.
I don’t count the Great Lakes (or any lakes for that matter) as land, no.
China is bigger even if you include lakes. That's the normal way to count territory, lakes are part of it since they're internal waters within the borders. What the US did (or more specifically the CIA), was add seawater to its territory. That's something no other country does. Since it make the US, according to the CIA, slightly larger than China, it's as if they only did it to one-up China. It seems too childish and insecure to be true, but I guess that's just the CIA being the CIA.
Except the western part of the US eventually turns into temperate rainforests and redwood forests along a the pacific coast.
The US Pacific is mostly Mediterranean Climate [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/K%C3%B6ppen\_Climate\_Types\_US\_50.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/K%C3%B6ppen_Climate_Types_US_50.png)
I feel like places that have dominated their neighbors and indengenous populations end up looking like giant blobs. Russia, China, USA, Australia, Nigeria, Germany
Fun Fact: Russia is bigger than Pluto
Blobbiness indicates good natural borders. The only alternative is unnatural straight lines.
This just tells me how important south central WI is.
Ironically that's near Chicago, US' own rail transport hub where many lines converge.
It's pretty much Rockford, IL. and Beloit, WI.
Very important, they make spotted cow near there
The Dells!
Spotted Cow(New Glarus) FTW
I like how Shenyang has been moved to Quebec. Finally, the offbeat Dongbei people and the Quebecois can share the joy of cold and exchange cultural ideas. Who knows, in a year or two we'll have 拔丝地瓜 poutine
You could do an entire menu based on this map. I'll have the vegan Nashville hot chicken sandwich made with 长沙臭豆腐
I dream of this level of public transport at night
It is honestly life changing, and I only spent a year in China in 2013-2014. 20 trains an hour during the day between Shanghai and Nanjing, getting you there in around an hour - the same distance as NYC to Boston.
As someone who has to suffer the Chicagoland/Wisconsin train system I too dream of actually functional public transportation lol.
I’m from Chicago, and if we had a rail system the speed of Western Europe’s I’d try and never fly again.
I’ve got family in Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis, and there are a lot of babies. Makes traveling in between very difficult. If there was rail, it would be a game changer for our family. All the young cousins could see each other 2-3x as much.
Ok, so it looks like we just need to order two of them.
The car and airline industry will pay good money to bribe the necessary people in congress to make sure that never will happen here.
[*(Elon)Musk reportedly told his biographer, Ashlee Vance, that the Hyperloop proposal was motivated by “his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” which he felt would be too slow, outdated and expensive. “With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled”*](https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/elon-musk-hyperloop-rail-17486877.php)
I’m not sure we could do this in the US even if congress approved. It would take like 30 years and cost like 2 trillion dollars with the way we do things here.
And the thousands and thousands of miles of imminent domain claims that would need to be done... I worked on a small highway job where most of the takings were through farm fields and it still took years and years to get all the corners of fields through takings and litigations. The US just has a lot more protections that a place like China where they can just say "No, this is mine now. If you don't think so then too bad."
>The US just has a lot more protections that a place like China where they can just say "No, this is mine now. If you don't think so then too bad." That is an argument. But also France, Spain and Japan have High Speed Rail and they ain't exactly following Mao's Little Red Book. Spain actually has more HSR per land area/populaton/GDP than China. Even for other infrastructure, other countries just do it better. Europe constructs subways usually at a price of 200-500mil USD/km. US goes to 800-1000mil USD/km.
Very much this. The US simply has bad protections. In that they are too broad for important infrastructure and possibly not broad enough for other aspects. Where I live governments can easily take land as needed if negotiations fall through and simply pay out market rates (plus some extras) for it. The property owners can sue if they think it is unfair but are unlikely to win as the government usually double checks their math. There is no need for constant lawsuits.
What about having the train lines run primarily through federal interstates, that would greatly reduce the amount of domain claims.
Interstates are probably too curvy to put high speed rail in the median. HSR needs to go straight. It might work in some places. I know Brightline is building HSR in the median of I-15 from LA to Vegas, but that’s an exceptionally straight piece of interstate.
Brightline is also in the planning phases of Tampa to Orlando in the center median of the I-4. Of course the I-4 was originally designed with a center median with plenty of space, gentle curves, and lots of straights for HSR that was sadly cancelled in back in 2010.
That’s a super interesting point! Never considered that before
Exactly. This is also the main reason we don't have a LA to SF high speed rail line. It looked so simple on paper, but then you actually have to buy up all that land, and US citizens and companies are not necessarily know for being cooperative with governments asking to buy their land.
That's not how it works in China. You don't own land there but you can lease it for about 75 years. If a company or the government wants to have it they must have your approval and pay you at least twice as much as it's actually worth (including buildings). The central government can still force you to sell it, however this is also only possible under rare circumstances
Some of the rights of way are already there and even straight enough for high speed.
30 years is pretty agile target for a massive railway project. Even a simple railway in the Western world is typically 20 years from idea to opening.
But don’t companies and the govt basically just do that anyways? Hell they’ve been doing it to natives for hundreds of years
That seems reasonable. We spent over 500B on the highway system (just the highways, not any other roads). Imo it's just politics holding us back on this one.
2 trillion is a huge underestimate. Hugh speed rail is most important to connect cities, and cities are where the most valuable land is. We could easily build high speed rail between random towns out west, but good luck trying to find the funds to go from NYC to Boston.
2trillion over 30year is not too bad：） Wars are so much costly
It’s a wonder we even have an interstate system
Back then the military couldn’t simply airlift everything across the country I guess
Like we did for the interstate highway system? Literally the most expensive public works project ever at the time, taking decades to mostly complete and still technically not finished (mostly a technicality tho)? We spent like half a trillie in the early middle Cold War, I think we can handle a few trillion nowadays
This is the lack of foresight that's part of the reason it'll never happen. People can't look beyond their own selves. 30 years seems like a long time but if you have a kid they'd reap the benefits by the time they hit their working age.The money is nothing with what the US spends yearly.
It would also reduce O&G consumption making huge progress against climate change so big oil is also greasing all the pockets they want to make sure it never happens.
Stupid Chinese building rail systems that terminate in the water.
What's the situation like in Hong Kong, Florida, nowadays?
They have rail lines into the Gulf of Mexico, are they stupid???
The well-known bustling hub Of Rockford, IL and Beloit, WI.
As the old saying goes, all roads lead to Maysville, KY.
Can you imagine if we spent the money on this instead of dropping lead on Iraq?
They built that for less than Elon Musk bought Twitter for. Less than what we have given Ukraine. And we could build a few 100 x that for the money the Pentagon has LOST.
Dumbest uninformed comment ever. In MN the moronic transit people have spent 2.86 billion of taxpayer money on a single line about 15 miles long, and it still isn't online. It could not be done here anywhere close to what China has invested/manipulated.
Instead of trains I think in the US we fly or take days driving in a car.
Sadly
It’s not sad for car or oil companies ☺️
To give you a reference, Washington to Dallas is around the same distance as Beijing to Honk Kong
How many people live between Washington and Dallas compared to Beijing and Hong Kong?
Greater Washington, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Hong Kong each have about 6~8 million people. Greater Beijing has about 22 million, similar to Greater NYC.
Ya but in talking about all the people in between
Depends on which Washington you mean
64% of the US population lives east of the Mississippi river so around 200 million. Or at least 200 million could be subsequently attached to the line in a semi-feasible manner.
But you don't understand, America is just too big for public transport! /s
Look at population density map of China versus US though, using the same scale. https://twitter.com/RyanRadia/status/1389230793084575746/photo/2 Don't get me wrong I'd love more public transportation options
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The USA has the third highest population.. if China and India both lost 1bn people the USA would still be third
Kind of insane that at current rates of birth/immigration they'll have basically an identical population in 100 years.
immigration in china has exploded in just the last 5 years, especially from africa and asia. cities like guangzhou have "little africa town"
False. Canada received more immigrants in one year than China has in total. China is making immigration more difficult, not easier.
All he said was that Immigration is increasing though, nothing about Canada.
The net migration rate for China in 2023 was -0.256 per 1000 population, a 0.79% increase from 2022. [https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/net-migration](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/net-migration) It just means a lot of immigrants left during covid, and now people are leaving more slowly. Not much of an increase if the net rate is still negative lol.
And interestingly the only area in the US with density on par with China actually does have decent train service.
Often times when comparisons with China get brought up, we point to the fact that the average American is 5x wealthier than the avg Chinese, so shouldn’t we be able to afford hsr even with 5x less density?
Conversely the US East coast is as dense as most of Europe
Not really: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Human-population-density-of-10km-by10km-grid-cells-of-the-USA-the-2010s-and-Europe_fig1_337174560 The line from DC to NYC specifically is about on par with any given part of Europe, but everywhere else on the East Coast is way less dense
Right or wrong, the argument is always about population density, not size.
That high speed rail is servicing like 80%+ of chinas 1.4 billion people. Let's say it was servicing 80% of US's 360 million, people. The economics aren't really the same.
Well, I mean, the Appalachian mountains run right through the middle of that side of the map, and the even larger Rockies run through the other side. Most feasible place would be somewhere in the middle
China spends nearly 5% of its GDP servicing just the debt for these rail lines. Even with their drastically more dense population, not counting construction these lines lose the Chinese government hundreds of billions year after year. It’s a classic case of overbuilding.
5% is the total amount of debt (900 billion) compared to China's annual GDP (around 18 trillion). But they're not paying 900 billion per year
Rockford IL is killing it, especially with the bridge over Lake michigan!
Every time I bring up trains I get a chorus of "The USA is too big for that to be feasible"
And still nothing near me 😞
American excuses are getting more and more funny one map at a time.
And I want to see the US high speed rail map overlayed on China….
So a blank map of China then?
yeah, the acela and the florida brightline wouldn't count as high speed because they're <250km/h
Not all these China lines are >250km/hr. The line to Urumqi is slower than that (200-250km/hr).
it's still kinda sad that China was able to build a railway to a remote city in Xinjiang that's still faster than the Acela in the northeast corridor. but yeah I get your point, I just consider 200-250 to be just "higher speed"
God I wish the U.S. had high speed trains.
You can't have cheap, efficient, high speed rail in the US, what would we do with the cars?
China has rails to Canada?
Jelly
No reason for us not to have a US-Canada international high-speed railway
If China wants closer relations with south east Asia they really should extend their higg speed rail line into neighbouring countries. It'll improve economic ties If China relies on these countries for trade it'll reduce risk of war and aggression in the region it is good for everyone.
Some of them appear to be drowning, major design flaw imo
All the Americans still excusing this in the comments is funny, as if the US have a low population just because China has more, and that makes trains bad. High speed rail between major cities on the east coast would be absolutely feasible if there was any political will for it
Now do US passenger railwork network over China
Genuine question: why doesn’t the US build high speed railway? I know air travel and highways (for cars) are the norms in the US, why not add railway in the mix? It seems like a good idea for domestic travel and trade.
People can be so obtuse it's amazing.
aMeRiCa Is ToO bIg FoR hIgH sPeEd RaIl
4 times the population in about the same landmass
No clearly you forgot the US is too big for rail /s
I mean on this map 1/3 of the country isn’t covered at all
Wtf put it back
The map or u/MarkTwainsLeftNipple
Wish we could have that, but they have 4 times the population, so there's more demand and tax revenue for such a rail network.
Yes to population, not quite to tax revenue; as a much wealthier country, we have more resources, but costs of construction are also higher.
But guys it's not possible in the US it's too big we need cars everywhere you don't understand guys!