
China approves $36B railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity - temp
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-infrastructure-idUSKBN13N050
======
ff10
It still baffles me that there are over 100 cities that have more than 1 Mio
citizens in China and I haven't heard of most of them. I wonder what their
everyday life is about, what kind of subcultures exist, who are the people
that are important for their local communities, what problems each city has.
It can't be that each of those cities is just merely a copy of each other,
although I understand that a lot of copy and pasting has been used in the
planning of those cities. I also understand that the cultures in each city is
not as heterogenous as western cities for a couple of reasons. But I still
wonder: where will they go from there?

~~~
kalasoo
I studied in western countries since undergraduate and came back to Beijing,
my hometown, after my graduation from Cambridge. It was surprisingly simple to
adapt to the current Beijing culture as everything has been changed towards
American and western style. We have H&M, Zara and Uniqlo everywhere and we eat
pancakes, waffles and Full British Breakfast for brunch during the weekend
morning.

Although, my family is quite old-fashioned and most of my middle school
classmates stay in Siheyuan 四合院 when they were children. People living in
Beijing and other modern cities in China have changed a lot because of the
explosion of Internet. By 2000, the Internet was free without the Great
Firewall so I could search on Google, read news on CNN and even met some
friends on reddit. Then, we tried so hard to find resources of
American/British TV series, movies and many TV programs. At that time,
American dream was somehow another formation of Chinese dream, to study
abroad.

Young people like me who study abroad for several years are very common in
Beijing and Shanghai now. We enjoy the great opportunities to work in China
while still miss our school life in US so we want more western-style
restaurants, bars, gyms and even apartments. There was a Harvard meetup I
attended where people spoke in English even though 90 percent of them were
Chinese. Then, we tried so hard to find resources to overpass the Great
Firewall in order to use Instgram, Facebook and Whatsapp.

But lately, I find out that these young people start to complain about Beijing
and they feel uncomfortable about this crowded city. People are everywhere and
you can hardly find a place to be quite and peaceful unless it's expensive.
Although these young people have excellent background, they always find
themselves helpless to work in such a business market with no fixed rules.
Then, we tried so hard to find resources to learn how to survive here and
forget everything learned abroad.

As China has grown stronger and stronger, the young generation has no
preference between mainland and Hong Kong / Taiwan or even western countries
and they were told to have their Chinese Dreams. But, we still have many many
things to learn from the success of western societies in the last several
decades otherwise China will fail quickly.

~~~
acchow
> we eat pancakes, waffles and Full British Breakfast for brunch during the
> weekend morning.

Is this an image thing? I really can't understand how you can learn to prefer
poached eggs and bacon over dim sum for the same price when your taste buds
started off with the latter.

~~~
kalasoo
It's not about the favor but young people miss their school life in US or
Europe. And for those who haven't been to other countries, they just think
it's a fashion

------
CPLX
Every year I wonder if Americans will finally learn how to build some proper
trains.

Not like hyperloop or self-driving fantasies, not fake trains like dedicated
bus lanes or incompatible Airtrain type projects.

Just some normal fucking trains. Trains with steel wheels that go pretty fast,
that run on a consistent schedule between center city downtown areas and
airports and so on. Like the kind every European country figured out how to do
properly like decades ago, and that northern Asia has completely leapfrogged
us in by now as well.

Like I want to go somewhere, so I figure out where the nearest train is, get a
ticket, get on the train, and go to the place. Why is this so fucking
difficult?

~~~
CmdrSprinkles
As someone who has recently spent a few months in various Western European
countries for work: You would be surprised

In many urban areas, it is basically NYC. Which is great, and makes getting
around easy. But once you get farther out, things dry up fast. And a good
comparison would actually be Amtrak and the like on the East Coast of the US.
Considerably cheaper (I would guess, off the top of my head, 60% of the cost
for a comparable trip). But much like with US trains, your savings are at a
cost of time. And a lot of the time, those savings aren't particularly
significant once you factor that in.

As someone who travels a lot for work, I didn't see a huge difference in how I
approached things while working on budgets. Fly to major city nearby and then
get a train/rent a car to go to a smaller town (if needed). The former was
more of an option, which was nice, but the latter was a lot faster if there
were a few connections. And even when there was the option to just do pure
train, the amount of time versus savings wasn't worth it.

And for personal travel? Even then, a flight was a lot more logical and not a
lot more expensive once I factored in vacation hours and the like to handle
transit times.

In terms of cities? Yeah, we are horrible (although, the UK and Ireland is
almost as crap as we are once you get out of London). In terms of general
(inter)national travel? A car is a lot less required, but not to the extent
that a lot of us would think.

~~~
CPLX
I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I recently returned from
Switzerland, and there is a good fast train going basically everywhere,
whenever you want to go, and it's amazing and stone cold simple to figure out.
You can do seemingly impossible things like wake up in _an entirely different
city_ to a place like Zurich, get on a train, and get off in the Zurich
airport terminal and check right in. It's not cheap, but nothing in
Switzerland is and it's relatively inexpensive by those standards.

It's amazing. And Switzerland has an unusually strong reputation for rail but
honestly my experience in places like France and even the UK has been similar.
If you want to go somewhere else, you go to the nearest train station and buy
a ticket to that place, and then you go to that place.

I live in NYC and it's not even close, and this is the best rail served area
in the country by far. I can't get on a train anywhere in this city and get
off in an airport terminal. Let's pause and think about that for a second. I
live in New York Fucking City and I can't get on a train and get off at an
airport. Newark is as close as it gets if you're near Penn Station, but you're
still dropped off a long and tedious "Airtrain" ride away. And the PATH that
runs from lower Manhattan just inexplicably stops short of that Newark Airport
Airtrain, despite the fact that the same mainline track system continues right
along. Same story at JFK. And Laguardia they don't even bother to pretend.

It's completely fucking dysfunctional, obviously so. The idea that U.S. rail
transport, or transport in general, is even semi-remotely comparable to
northern and western Europe is frankly ludicrous.

~~~
L_Rahman
Also a New Yorker, but my reference point is Hong Kong instead of Europe.

Hong Kong has a high speed rail link from the middle of the airport that gets
to city centre in 30 mins flat, making two stops along the way at major mass
transit junctions.

How does the 7 not go to LGA? Why doesn't the E go to JFK What stopped the
PATH from extending to EWR?*

* I actually know the answer to this one and it's actually a technical constraint. The PATH system uses MTA like third rails for power. The mainline track system uses overhead lines for power. Having the PATH continue to EWR would require investment in parallel infrastructure between Newark Penn Station and EWR. Of course PATH is maintained by the Port Authority and the mainline track by NJ Transit, each of which has its own agenda and budget so it'll never happen.

~~~
CPLX
> * I actually know the answer to this one and it's actually a technical
> constraint.

Not really. I mean sure in the sense that they'd have to run the third rail as
you mention, but that's not a technical constraint given how simple it is. And
theoretically it's in progress.[0]

The problem here is plainly political. If the politics of building trains in
this country weren't completely broken it would have been done long, long ago.

[0]
[http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2016/04/newark_elizabeth_l...](http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2016/04/newark_elizabeth_leaders_urge_port_authority_to_ke.html)

Oh while we're talking about dysfunctional PATH decisions based on mindless
political/organizational divisions here's another one that'll make your blood
boil: [http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/09/the-port-authoritys-
missed-c...](http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/09/the-port-authoritys-missed-
connection-the-path-lex-line-that-never-was.html)

------
chrishacken
It still baffles me how the United States is unable to do anything similar.
Our projects are half the size and double the cost.
[http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-
train-c...](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-
final-20151025-story.html)

~~~
narrator
How about San Francisco spending 1.6 Billion dollars for 1.7 miles of Subway?
([http://www.enr.com/blogs/14-gold-rush/post/38027-san-
francis...](http://www.enr.com/blogs/14-gold-rush/post/38027-san-
franciscos-16-billion-central-subway-stays-on-course))

~~~
khuey
Most of the cost of the Central Subway is the stations, not the tunnel.
Distance is perhaps not the best measure in that case.

------
dx034
And at the same time they're thinking about connecting Beijing and Shanghai
via maglev train. [1] Could be hugely successful, the current line (5hr trip)
is already at capacity and there's a lot of air traffic.

Offering a 2.5hr drive between the 2 major cities should pay off financially.

[1]
[http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2049785/china...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2049785/china-
tries-catch-japan-maglev-train-can-exceed-600km/h)

~~~
gnipgnip
Do they have the tech though (the Pudong one is built by Germans I think) ?
Chuo Shinkansen in neighboring Japan is likely not be completed until 2045
(!).

~~~
dx034
The Japanese train is already running on a test track. The reason it takes so
long to build is that they want to keep costs down to finance it privately.
They could probably open it in '25 if they threw a lot more money into the
project (which China will likely do).

I'd guess that they have the tech to build a maglev train. The German
technology is mostly 20-30 years old and well known. They already have trains
running, so figuring out how to build a train and track shouldn't be too hard.

~~~
aninhumer
Hmm, I assumed that part of the reason it would take so long is that it's
mostly going to be tunnels through the mountains, and ultimately you can only
bore so fast.

------
drusepth
$36,000,000,000 is such an unfathomable amount of money. I know it's mostly
done in debt/etc, but jesus, taking a second to think about the _quantity_
itself is mind bottling.

Edit: 36B, not 360B, but still damn -- that's a lot of money.

~~~
jdietrich
You want a really unfathomable amount of money? The Department of Defence's
Joint Strike Fighter program is forecast to cost $1.1 trillion over its
lifespan. The program is already $117 billion over budget.

China is building a world class railway system for a third of the cost of the
_budget overrun_ of a single fighter aircraft project.

[http://gao.gov/assets/600/591608.pdf](http://gao.gov/assets/600/591608.pdf)

~~~
arkwar
World class - maybe, but they have certainly cut corners on their high speed
regional network that has resulted in some horrific accidents (that go
unreported in the rest of the world). Also, something of like this in the US
would be an order of magnitude most expensive to build. The current NEC 'high-
speed' plan is around $151 Billion (in 2012 dollars) which is only about a 450
mile run between Boston and DC. Planned to be completed by 2040 (if ever
funded), the travel time would still be just over 3 hours to go the ~450
miles.

------
devy
This could be a infrastructure stimulus project that helps millions of
construction worker (railway construction for the most part) stay employeed.
And it will also help alleviate the pressure of highly populous capital metro:
skyrocketing real estate market (due to supply-demand imbalance), traffic
congestion, garbage processing, food/water supply, all become a big headache
when Beijing has to support 23 million people (probably more if you count
those unregistered migration workers etc.)

------
siquick
Just spent 2 weeks in Japan using their incredible Shinkansen trains. Every
single train was on time and they were so clean and comfortable with about a
metre of leg room.

