They opened their first dedicated high speed rail line in 2008
Meanwhile the USA’s infrastructure is crumbling.
But “Lol communist China breadlines lololol” right?
Tom Friedman wrote a piece years ago, that was actually good. It compared China and the US from 2001-2008. They spent about $1 trillion on infrastructure in anticipation for their olympics, while we spent that amount invading Iraq. And here we are now. And this is why I get into arguments with liberals about who was worse, Bush or Trump. They’re both extremely bad, but I think Bush might have done more lasting damage. He did have two terms, so lets say its debatable.
They spent about $1 trillion on infrastructure in anticipation for their olympics, while we spent that amount invading Iraq.
Yea but look at what got out of it! I guess I remember when it crossed the $1 trillion mark and stopped keeping track. $1 trillion is enough to make my point. What the fuck were we doing?
Also of note is that China is the poorest country with high speed rail at all.
Japan also has over double the population density though so they get more bang for their buck.
I’ve taken the high speed rail from Hangzhou to Shanghai AMA
Is it true that a woman cannot handle the speed of a train because it will go so fast her uterus will fall out?
Is it actually affordable? Nobody I know actually uses the AVE trains in Spain because they’re so damn expensive.
I’m pulling this from memory, I have the ticket at home so I can double check later. But I think it was 119 yuan which is about 17 USD. The train was completely full from what I could tell and it was in the middle of the week at noon or so, so it seems like it’s affordable.
It was amazingly smooth and quiet. I slept through some of it because I was still very jet lagged. The weirdest part was there was assigned seats, which I’d never encountered on any public transit. That’s how I knew the train was full, I had to walk through like 5 train cars hauling all my bags lol.
I rode high speed rail from Guangzhou to Guilin once and it was the best train journey of my life. Those things go so fast I couldn’t believe it. It’s specially fun because the displays have a speedometer so you can see how fast the zoom zoom train is going in real time.
