tandempower

So what does countries in the rest of the industrialized world (Spain, Germany, China, Japan, France, Russia, South Korea, UK, etc.) know that we don't?

The Five Best High-Speed Rail Networks in the World




(KraneXL's post duplicated from another thread)

tandempower

I don't think it's "what they know that we don't." I think it's a concerted political effort to block alternatives to the status quo, which sells oil, cars, car insurance, highway and road projects, etc. etc. I think the global financial system has a strong interest in preventing transportation reforms and other efficiency reforms in the US or anywhere else more money can be made by blocking change.

tyrion

China "knows" authoritarianism. If they decide a high speed train from point A to point B is useful, they simply commandeer the land and allocate the resources - no public hearings, no voting on it, not much worry about those displaced, etc.

As for Europe and Japan - I don't know. Maybe it's because they had a rebuilding phase after WWII that enabled new railway systems. Maybe it's a cultural thing (less car culture than USA), or maybe geographical (USA having more spread out big cities put the focus on air travel).

FiftySix

I submit the simple idea that the average citizen in the USA gets paid more and gasoline costs less here. Which certainly helps make car ownership and operation easier for Americans.

Plus, a country's physical size and population density are something to be considered as well.

______________________

Average annual wages in USD

China $11,035
Spain $38,507
Germany $47,585
Japan $40,863
France $43,755
Sweden $42,393
UK $43,732
Italy $36,658
South Korea $35,191
Turkey $4,426
USA $60,558

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...y_average_wage
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages
https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/wages


Average gasoline cost per US gallon in USD

China $3.56
Spain $5.11
Germany $5.38
Japan $4.01
France $5.56
Sweden $6.09
UK $6.02
Italy $5.79
South Korea $4.54
Turkey $5.94
USA $2.73

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoli...ge_and_pricing


Population Density per square mile

China 375
Spain 238
Germany 601
Japan 865
France 319
Sweden 59
UK 704
Italy 518
South Korea 1,339
Turkey 272
USA 87

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...lation_density


Size of country by square miles (land)

China 3,600,950
Spain 192,660
Germany 134,623
Japan 140,751
France 247,270
Sweden 158,431
UK 93,410
Italy 113,570
South Korea 38,575
Turkey 297,157
USA 3,531,905

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...encies_by_area

Some numbers may be in error due to poor cut and paste.

Mobile 155

Would you look at that? Agreement.

KraneXL

There are advantages and disadvantages to every system. China has developed the world's largest HSR system within 1/3 the time of other nations.<br /><br />Remember, under capitalism innovation is held back in so many areas of development and advancement due largely to greed, power and control. Why would a pharmaceutical company even try to develop a cure for the common cold when they make billions annually selling people OTCs that only mask the symptoms?<br /><br />Like any statistics the results can be skewed depending on how they're applied and interpreted. For example, when you factor in China's much larger population living in poverty and the U.S. minimum wage, you can throw average income right out the window.

tandempower

Maybe once upon a time people thought it was fine to develop more sprawl, waste more resources, etc. if a country had low population density; but by now everyone should realize that population always keeps growing and so it is important to establish land-use patterns that are permanently sustainable.

KraneXL

Not only do they grow, but they grow exponentially. Imagine the cars we have on the road today doubled.

We need our politicians to stop living for today and think about our future. This "let the future people" deal with repercussions mentality needs to stop. Imagine if they had developed nuclear energy 1000 year ago. How much toxic waste would be floating around in our air and water?

Remember, before the EPA they just dumped toxins into the river. We can't grow anymore roads unless people want to travel on 100 ft highways.

Mobile 155

1000 years ago? I wonder how many Armies would have used Nukes rather than Bows and swords to expand their kingdoms back then? What did we know now that they didn't care about then?


I have been to Wyoming and Texas and I am pretty sure we can build roads and even cities for the next 100 years without driving on top of each other.


As far as politicians trying to stop living for today? They cannot get elected telling people that we must suffer for today for the people in the future? Not if our suffering has to start while China, India and Africa is allowed to build a nation that looks like ours for the next 30 years. I wouldn't start holding my breath just yet. Lets see how suffering for the greater good works in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba in the next five years.


Lets be real here, the modern western lifestyle represents possibly less than 33 percent of the worlds population. Almost 2/3 of the population living a car free life are trying to migrate to the west to get away from the simple totalitarian life. At this point it is very unlikely the west will back down their lifestyle and it seems as if there is no chance the third world will not claw its way to a western type of life. So we have at least till our society crashes and burns before politicians will wake up and do anything.


The bigger question is who wants to be first to give up their lifestyle for people in the future? Here in our state it seems as if 77 billion is more than the public is willing to support for the future. I could not see spending money on a train ride that is half as fast as a plane ride. And I don't care what the people in other countries think. I don't have to answer to them.

diphthong

i don't know how many other countries have bailed out their automotive industry multiple times and i don't care. for the western united states not to have high speed rail from san diego up to seattle, across to boise, down to denver,
drifting to dallas/ft. worth/houston/austin/san antonio, continuing over to abq/santa fe, then across to san diego through tucso/phoenix with some central hubs in las vegas, slc and reno/carson city is ridiculous. a clear cut example of grift,
greed and manipulation. no system is perfect and capitalism has more than its' share of faults as well.

ps...i love how we're nearly as large as china geographically in the one post that may have cut and paste errors. i guess that greenland purchase actually went through.

KraneXL

Really Mobile? Even from the most basic understanding we know it doesn't work like that. First, cities are must built willy-nilly on any random piece of land. Cities need a system to support them. And second, modern cities grow from expansion.

Its easy to build up and put 10,000 people in the same space that used to house 1000. But the roads are fixed, and there's no way to make them wider. That is unless you want to donate your home and property to the cause? Yes, the government does occasionally apply eminent domain to usurp private property for public use but that's not something that can be done for every block in every town everywhere. Since when do politician speak directly to their constituents? They use double speak and "spin" to words to their advantage. They are building for the benefit of your children's future.

Anyway, I'm talking about the U.S. only. Let the rest of the world handle its own affairs, unless or until it encroaches on my rights to live the way I choose. "Never put all your eggs in one basket." That old saying exist for a reason. Its ashamed that with all these smart people leading us choose to ignore that.

tandempower

I think you have the correct way of thinking. You imagine yourself as far ahead in the future as you can and then think about what it will be like to look back and decisions that were made by people in our time now.

We have more access to more information across a broader timeline. We have more time and skill with reading, thinking, and synthesizing large amounts of information so that we can see broader patterns with greater clarity.

100 years is an irresponsible time-frame to consider. Even planning for 1000 years without thinking about many more millennia coming after the end of those 1000 years is irresponsible.

We should be striving for permanent sustainability wherever possible. We have to distinguish between needs and wants to do that.


You're right, but as long as people use the inaction of others to justify their own inaction, liberty fails as a basis for responsible self-governance.

It's already crashing and burning in many ways. What exactly would you expect it to take before everyone, not just politicians, starts taking the responsibility to make prosperity sustainable seriously?

The question is how long can everyone avoid action by waiting for someone to go before them without some lunatic randomly punishing people for inaction?

It is doubtful that US governments (federal and/or local) can succeed at producing functional rail systems. It is far more likely that rail projects will keep starting up, creating jobs and contracts, and then failing so that people keep spending the money on driving. If that is the case, then there won't be any political-economic escape from driving or even any political-economic failure of driving as an economically-unsustainable form of transportation. Even so, people aren't stupid and awareness of unsustainability is growing and intensifying.

So at what point will the sustaining of unsustainability give way to random assaults more so than is already going on in the news practically every day? I don't think there's a way out. I think we may have painted ourselves into a corner and now we just have to suffer there until who knows when.

fietsbob

Word is; Uber has a goal of killing , privatizing, all public transportation ..

Uber & Lyft Drivers on Strike today, over 25% pay cut, just , Just before IPO...

tandempower

Please don't turn this into an anti-Uber thread. It's all too clear how many different critiques have been devised to stop Uber from competing with the established taxi industry and otherwise threatening the market positions of anyone whose market position is threatened by cheap ride-sharing.

Try to stay on the topic of high-speed rail.

fietsbob

.. new feudalism.

tandempower

Here, I just created this new thread that addresses this new feudalism issue you seem to be raising:
https://www.bikeforums.net/living-ca...l#post20920024

Now please use this thread to discuss high speed rail and not ride-sharing.

Mobile 155

To answer this question you only have to look at what people do. They look at their own comfort first and then if there is any excess they might think about some future they will not live to see.

When it comes to public sacrifice people what someone else to carry the load. We fight wars with people that want something different than we do. Every country and every government wants to believe they are the best and their ideas are worth more than any other country or government. It has been that way since someone was putting drawings on cave walls. It isn’t likely to change now.

As as long as people believe technology can keep us going sustainability becomes just a word. People will gamble against sustainability by living on an island made by an active volcano. They will believe scientists that say we have climate change but when the same people hear from the same scientists that the largest Caldera in the world is over due for an eruption they will give tours there and build s national park.

That at is how the human race is. We bet against the future. We aren’t as likely to invest in something that will not benefit our group directly, that goes for HSR when we had higher speed planes.

Rollfast

Why don't more people fix up old Colsons, Firestones and course Rollfasts and Schwinns?

You would think people were dying or something from the tone of this argument coming from a scant few members in Texas.

What others know that 'we' don't is that they are at work on time while it takes more than half an hour to drive from Canyon County, Idaho to Boise. The speed limit on the rural portion is 75 mph and there are sections with six lanes and plenty of exits, flyovers, connectors, you name it. They built noise walls for the residents living next to the freeway. There are businesses galore all the way through.

Now you take a network of dedicated rails not generally shared by freight trains and send them off at over 100 mph. No auto crossings, no drivers who try to beat the train or simply don't hear it. If done right little chances of derailment.

Efficiency.

It boils down to if you don't like it, don't use it. You have no right to object to the will of many other people, no more than who won the presidency, even if it stinks to you. Now I'll go back over these threads and try to figure out what reasons are objected to but maybe you should watch Kraftwerk's ode to train travel...

diphthong

yah but there's no iggy pop and david bowie on our routes...

FiftySix

Perhaps a poll should be taken to see who's for or against the Texas high speed rail, with part of the question where do they currently live?


It would be interesting to know how many of the BF members polled are inhabitants of Texas and how many are not. It seems that the most vocal proponents of high speed rail here at BF live in areas that aren't going to get high speed rail anytime soon.

KraneXL

One of the first places I'd like to experience if I visit Europe or Japan is their HSR system. I've been reading the articles and watching the documentaries ever since the Japanese invented it.

KraneXL

An interesting report from CNBC on HSR in other countries, and some of the obstacles evolve with adapting it to standards here in the U.S. .

Mobile 155

Nice set of videos and some HSR press releases. But if we are thinking about the future isn't HSR simply looking at old technology that easily could prove obsolete if Elon Musk had his way? After all SpaceX is working and he has a plan that would be even greener than electric generated power for a HSR. And there would be lots more private investment and less increased taxes. Does he know something other countries don't? If you are going to tie HSR to being Green some things are even greener and faster.

Rollfast

I've never had a train all to myself.

Rollfast

My favorite polls are in the band Chicago and Basia.