Why China Is so Good at Building Railways
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as the go-to short video when threads compare Chinese and US rail and infrastructure.
What it is
A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2018 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec WilliamEdward · 2019-10 · on “China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains”
[this video] Please, I urge you to watch this. It explains thoroughly why the situation for railroads is very different between China and America. tl;dw: America is more spread out, has better airline control, and less of a political incentive to expand public transport, than China.
Recommends lunchbreak · 2018-12 · on “As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new transport system (2017)”
Wendover had a good video about China's rail network a while ago. [1] Major points are: 1. China is willing to build loves that aren't self sustainable - whereas the USA isn't (and the US doesn't factor in the social benefits) 2. China's airspace is mostly military - leading to only small flight corridors and therefore significant delays for flights - making trains more reliable 3. China is willing to make train lines that make no sense beyond connecting areas that are not as friendly to the government to areas that are in the hope of increasing government support in those areas [1] [this video]
Recommends Fricken · 2018-12 · on “As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds new transport system (2017)”
Here's a good video summarizing what China has done with high speed rail in a little over a decade: [this video]
Recommends s1mon · 2019-02 · on “Chinese New Year Is World’s Biggest Human Migration”
This Wendover Productions video "Why China Is so Good at Building Railways" [this video] also explains a lot about how things have changed recently to make this migration even more possible in China. They've built so much high speed rail in the last decade that they now have more than the rest of the world, combined. Hong Kong to Beijing is under 9 hours, while comparable distances in other parts of the world are over 40 hours.
Cites neither_color · 2021-02 · on “Biden warns China will ‘eat our lunch’ if U.S. doesn’t move on infrastructure”
Eat our lunch? They already had dinner and dessert. Public urban transit in tier 1&2 cities is world class. In 2014, Shanghai began line 17 construction and opened the line with 13 stations by 2017. [LINK] In 2014, Washington DC started the 6 station silver line extension(phase 2) to connect to the airport at Dulles and it's still not done. [LINK] As for passenger trains, the US is not even a contender. [this video]
Critical repolfx · 2019-10 · on “China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains”
You're assuming HSR is a "good" decision versus the alternatives, but who's to say it is? Further down this thread is a link to this video called, "Why is China so good at building railways?" [this video] The presenter and quite a few commenters seem to have a built-in bias towards rail. Don't get me wrong. I love a good train journey and prefer it to flying when it's competitive. But the video tries to be an optimistic take on what a cold eye could only describe as totally mad and dysfunctional government. The situation according to the video can be summed up like this: • China has built tons of high speed rail very fast, this is amazing! • But they do it because their internal airlines suck inc