Hyperloop was invented to try to kill light rail. It succeeded at killing Maryland’s new venture and Illinois’. Neither were built because Hyperloop promised bullshit. Elon hates public transport.
Elon’s main thing is selling cars, of course he actively opposes whatever would let people not buy a car.
guy who sells cars spreads FUD about competition to cars
Wait, what did Hyperloop kill in MD? It looks like the proposed route was from DC to Baltimore underneath MD 295 – we already have Amtrak and MARC serving that corridor.
He didn’t even invent it.
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Ya all looking at this like it’s a conspiracy. It’s just a guy looking to sell more cars. Shame on anyone who thought it’s a real thing.
I’m looking at China like this-
China has the advantage of not having to care about the citizens’ desires in regards to be relocated to make the rail possible.
Kelo v. City of New London. That’s all you need to know about the US’ “care” for citizens’ desires as far as eminent domain is concerned.
The US still has things like reelection to consider with these things. China doesnt. And if someone speaks up against the government they just get arrested
Oh is reelection a threat here? Which gerrymandered district are you from?
They also provide apartments to live in permanently for those displaced in the development.
Meanwhile, the US has not built high speed rail and has tent cities.
In the case of national infrastructure, China wins hands down.
Although it’s kind of ridiculous to compare California with an entire country…
Honestly not that ridiculous of a comparison considering California’s size and GDP, we could be doing a lot better
That’s a fair assessment.
Except it is considered “unamerican” for government to help people, and tue generosity of billionaires is hoped for instead
Spain wants to have a little chat with you
I don’t think America gives any shits either. They let the world’s most useless CEO dictate their future
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This is misleadingly reductionist. California high speed rail has made consistant progess in that time. That progress has been slower than ourslowest expectations. It demonstrates the void of expertise the US has in rail megaprojects. However, that expertise is being built, slowly and painfully. Its still forward progress for a nation which tore up half its rail overthe last 50 years.
America invented rail megaprojects.
America still has the largest rail network by far. It’s well more than twice the size of China’s.
The only interesting note is that it’s almost all freight compared to other nations’ use of passenger rail.
Hehehehe
With 0.92% of electrified rail it’s a joke to say that NGL. Absolute numbers are meaningless.
You have to see it into perspective per area then you’ll get to feel how dense and therefore useful the rail network actually is. Because what good is a rail network if you can’t reach your desired location.
And then you’ll see that swiss, Germany and Luxembourg for example end up with less than 10 square km per km of rail while the usa has around 40.
Okay, but the comment implied America doesn’t have the expertise to build a passenger network when it actually doesn’t have the political willpower. It has the expertise to spare, but no one in power actually cares.
That still is not correct.
Planning a high speed high throughput flexible passenger rail network is a whole different beast than laying non-electrified single track lines in a straight line through the middle of nowhere that basically only serves the occasional 2miles long freight train.
The parameters are vastly different and almost incomparable. And America has decidedly no expertise left in the former.
Other than the fact that there are several American firms who have already done it, and even if there was a knowledge deficit it’s the easiest thing in the world for an American company to headhunt foreign talent. Too easy in most industries.
Opposition to new railways is political, be it from establishment organizations or private owners, like in California. That’s all there is to it.
Which ones? Which company actually has put out a consistent, significant, structurally sound high speed rail network including stations and the trains themselves that is based in the US?
And headhunting foreign talent tells me that you have not worked in the rail planning sector. These companies are extraordinarily protective of their high value who are the executive “talent” behind their stuff. And the biggest rail tech companies are multinational conglomerates (Alstombardier, Siemens, CRRC, Hitachi) who have no desire or need to outsource to America.
There is noone currently who has both intimate knowledge of American geodetic planning and high stress track planning. And building that knowledge takes a lot of trial and error.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States
While their current average speed isn’t great compared to the highest speed rails in Europe and Asia, it is comparable to the average high speed services, and Amtrak seems confident in their claims for Acela in 2024.
Thats true. And then America stopped. And then the people who had actual on-the-ground experiance died of old age. Its really another effect of the slow tragedy that is the auto industry
Yeah, but who BUILT our rail system?
Misleadingly reductionist is what /c/memes should be renamed to.
California HSR expansion is going to get cancelled the moment the minimum viable route finishes, they’re going to lose the ROW and the expertise, then 10 years later the next leg will get approved.
This is what happens to transit projects in America, so there’s no reason to expect anything different for rail.
Indeed. We’re fixing the great car mistake at a glacialy slow pace
China wants unity, even in places where it doesn’t make economic sense.
edit: 100% downvotes are coming from people that don’t know the situation. The CCP wants fast travel to major population centers even when the rail line isn’t profitable.
It makes economic sense but not financial sense. Railways are almost always profitable once considering second and third order effects.
It’s the same story with Amtrak, so I’m not sure why people are so confused. Amtrak loses money on every train that’s not the NEC.
Isn’t that a good thing? sounds like the rail is being run as a public utility rather than a business. And its still likely profitable if you average the cost over all the lines.
I never said it was a good/bad thing. I’m saying the Chinese gov. isn’t as concerned with profit. Which explains the difference between California and China
Are they siding with the hunter or the emissary this time?
did you mean to say utility instead of unity?
Its a lot easier when you have slave labor and don’t care about the enviroment or human lives
It’s also a lot easier when you cut costs and all the rails will be unused in a few years due to poor construction materials.
Tofu Dreg construction and corruption is very real in China.
If that’s all it takes why doesn’t California have it?
Because they don’t have slave labor and they care about the enviroment and human lives. Were you paying attention at all?
There’s literally a bill on the floor called the “End Slavery in California Act” a bill that failed last year.
They can name a bill whatever the fuck they want. They usually get authoritarian bullshit passed by calling it something like the PATRIOT Act. Who wouldn’t vote for something so patriotic. If you don’t vote for it you’re anti-american!
Here’s the full text of the bill.
Literally all it does is replace the line in the California State Constitution that says “Involuntary servitude is prohibited except to punish crime” with a line that says “Slavery of any form is prohibited” and then defines slavery as “forced labor compelled by the use or threat of physical or legal coercion”
Nobody needed it. They don’t force people to work in prison, but if you do it shows your willingness to go with the program and better yourself instead of joining gangs. There’s a good reason for people getting reductions in sentences or good boy points for working and it’s not slavery.
I understand what this comment is trying to say, but I doubt US is very big on caring about environment. Remind me, how many fracking projects?
It unquestionably is but it sounds like you’re implying that high speed rail is some sort of utopian megaproject and not a solved problem of basic, reliable and effective infrastructure that is a great bang for your buck in every country that builds it.
The mistake is thinking Elon is a moron screwing everything up on accident. He isn’t. He’s an Afrikaner white supremacist Nazi who is causing all this damage on purpose.
Starlink and SpaceX should be nationalized before he gets a chance to weaponize those companies against the western world as well.
He literally came up with the hyperloop because he was afraid of a high speed rail hurting Tesla sales.
People who buy Teslas don’t want to take public transportation
People also like to get places fast. High speed rail does that. Why drive 3-6 hours myself when I can relax and read a book and something for a fraction of that on a train and dodge the headache that is air travel?
It’s much easier to build rail in places that weren’t designed around cars. Even in rural China people live in condos and apartments with parks between. This helps with NIMBYism and combined with the already large amount of green space left in Chinese cities such systems can be built with the only real concern being the engineering itself. But China is also in a good position for that, as their workforce is incredibly well educated with more engineering talent than they can even fully employ domestically. All that PLUS the political will of a single party state meant it was a very different situation than California.
And that’s before you even consider ridership, where even the best possible SF to LA route would still pretty much require you to get a car or taxi once you get to LA (because LA was basically torn down and redesigned for cars).
LA is slowly working on good rail transit. You can already get to Union station (where CA HSR will stop) from just about everywhere served by the rail and busway network
In LA it is supposed to end at Union Station, which amazing access to commuter rail, a metro system, which admitly is small, but still can take you to a lot of places, bus rapid transit and it is right next to downtown. Obviously it is not comparable to NY, London or Paris, which are of a similar size, but you should be able to go to a lot of intressting places, without needing a car once you arrive in LA.
I finally found one in the wild!
One what?
A delusional fetishist. I wonder how much time they’ve spent in China.
How much time have you spent in China?
About six months, prior to covid. Enough to know the commenter is full of shit.
China is a wonderful country but basically the entire first paragraph is wrong.
He’s not entirely accurate with his definition of “apartment and condo,” but if you’ve actually lived in a rural village you’d know that they have remarkable density compared to even Western suburban development.
Are you saying China didn’t build that rail?
I don’t see where I typed that.
So, what’s the delusion? Are you saying California has built comparable levels of HSR?
Thinking “even in rural China people live in condos and apartments with parks between” is hilarious. Tons of rural Chinese still use outhouses and only have communal water sources, no indoor plumbing. They live in simple wooden shacks and cook over an open fire.
I have absolutely no idea where they 're getting the ideas they have but they’re laughable.
edit: though to be clear, their high-speed rail system between cities is great and an example the US should look.
Giant infrastructure projects are a weakness of democracies. It’s tough to get everyone to agree and pay for huge projects that take long term vision and planning.
Or you could call it a strength because it’s stable and can’t be changed too fast by one guy with a short term bad idea.
Mainly in the US, though. The automobile lobby successfully undermined many attempts at mass transit infrastructure. And the existing rail network is privatized into oblivion.
Roosevelt showed that there is a way of tackling infrastructure in the US. Only his approach has a minute slither of what can be framed to be socialist, so it’ll never happen again…
see NEOM
It’s an unbelievably stupid idea that’s really going to happen. The prince of Saudi Arabia knows that their oil economy is going to wither away soon, so he’s trying to make SA appealing to people with money and have them move there. How? By building a city that’s a line 160 km (110 mi) long and 200 m (660 ft) wide…in the middle of fucking nowhere. The whole idea is based on technology that we don’t have and is just terrible city planning. Look into it to get a laugh.
Hahaha yes you’re right. This is an example of ill-advised big infrastructure.
No, you don’t get it.
It’s blessed by god so it’ll be good no matter what. God is good to his faithful. Lamborghini Akbar.
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Wouldn’t high speed rail go bzzz, instead?
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/a-whopping-900b-debt-chinas-once-profitable-high-speed-railways/?amp
It’d be good to have high speed rail but not at any cost.
Queue tankies going crazy to defend the absurd cost…
LOL 🤣
comparing CCP China to California…
Noice 👍👌
Maybe compare California with Spain (4000 km of high speed rails).
I like that better… Spain probably has a full democracy to boot…
And doesn’t feel the need to make fake videos about their rail.
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No, it’s authoritarianism vs democracy. It’s a very well-known concept in political science that authoritarian regimes can make decisions and execute on them far faster than democracies. The problem is that autocratic decision making ultimately creates instability by implementing policies and decisions that don’t have a broad base of stakeholder support. Why should any citizen support a decision that was made without their input or consent?
It’s also a reflection of how much power money still holds even in the US’s democratic system. The decision to not build high speed rail in California was heavily influenced by a single billionaire, it wasn’t voted on.
America isn’t a democracy. It’s a democracy of the rich and always has been, the rest us were begrudgingly allowed a vote over centuries but our influence is still very limited
A plutocracy, you might say.
And yet the Titans of Industry tended to support Clinton over Trump: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/10/25/donald-trump-a-billionaire-shunned-by-the-very-rich
In this case I would have preferred the outcome of the billionaire-backed candidate winning.
Do you understand how the Chinese political system works? I’d recommend that you learn a bit more about it from the Chinese perspective because Western generalizations of it miss a lot of details.
I’d recommend that you start from the bottom (how people can join the party and take office, how rural collectives work, how protests influence local policy) and make your way up to the municipal, provincial, and national level.
You’ll see how each level has checks and balances to make sure that they make good decisions, and you’ll see how the incentive structure rewards “good” decisions. You’ll also see where a lot of the corruption comes from (in rural collectives) and why efforts to fix that haven’t worked as well as they could.
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So same as the US democracy then. All that matters is money and nothing else. Musk did the Hyperloop bullshit just so it would delay the train and people would be more Tesla’s.
