Quote:
Originally Posted by Onn
Japan high-speed rail 1980s = 200 billion dollar bailout. Do your homework before thinking you know everything, China's system is way beyond any country's capacity. China is not even the largest economy in the world.
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1) China's population is way beyond any other country, bar India, which is only getting started with its high speed railway plans. The enormous population which is emerging from poverty surely won't be moving around by air or road, that's for sure.
2) China is even further ahead in an expressway plan which dwarfs the Interstate Highways of the United States. Funny, since no one is complaining about them requiring bailouts.
3) It doesn't really matter in itself if the high speed railways lose money. The main purpose of China's high speed railways is to free up space on the regular system for more freight trains, which are profitable. The increase in profit should pay for the loss in passenger trains.
4) There were plenty of naysayers when France, Germany, Spain, and Britain opened their high speed railway systems. Where are they now?
It's also interesting to note that China's creation myth also involved a great flood. But unlike the Bible, where humans are helpless in the face of God's wrath, China's flood involved a wise engineer commanding an army of workers to build innovative drainage systems to defeat the flood. So the obsession with massive projects is as central to Chinese culture as Noah's Ark is to the Abrahamic religions. Some were white elephants, while others were crowning achievements in history. But I don't think high speed rail is the former.