Most public transport in China is not for profit, like some old trains in mountain areas, their price has not changed for decades that a 9 hour/ 400km ride only cost you 5 dollars, these trains are running for poor people there and they even provide special cargo cars to let people carry goods for no extra cost, so people can sell goods in cites in order to make money and get rich
I live in China. A few years ago, I chose planes for long-distance travel, but now I will choose high-speed rail(even if the plane is cheaper). China's hsr is too punctual, and there are basically direct subways. Compared with many remote and untimely airports, hsr is more stable and comfortable, and can bring people a sense of security
best pat of HSR is that an economy ticket costs the same as business class on a HRS on the same route (in China Business class is the best class, above first class unlike in other parts of the world)
Air travel used to be convenient. Security checks were brief and you could expect to arrive at the airport within an hour of takeoff. Your family members could accompany you to the plane and you could bring food and drink with you. Then some gits decided to fly into the twin towers and it's been shit ever since.
Maybe a little bit over 1000Km is fine, but I once stupidly took a 2000km HSR trip from West to East in China, that 8 hours was not very comfortable lol, especially the last 3 hours. However, I've also experienced an 8 hour flight delay, which was of course even worse.
the HSR's advantage is that it leaves the station exactly on time. Also the stations are normally close to city center. The hours saved are not those on the trip, but those before and after the trip.
Meanwhile _Singapore's_ long-distance train station (Woodlands Train Checkpoint) is ~10km further from downtown than our _Changi_ Airport though (because the trains are operated by neighbouring _Malaysia's_ rail operator KTM & _Singapore_ felt it was losing its sovereignty when KTM operated services further into _Singapore_ & closer to its downtown. You now need a ~50min subway/metro/MRT ride to get to/from downtown plus a bus transfer that I heard sometimes skips the long-distance train station due to congestion from the nearby Woodlands Checkpoint border crossing
I'm from Switzerland and I'm currently staying at Brownsville TX for 3 months. Buildings are stupidly far from each other, the population density is super low, but despite of that traffic is insane. I'm now convinced that lower population density leads to more traffic and not the opposite because people spend more time on the road.
@@gamerfortynine : During the mid 20th century, General Motors and the like spent a LOT of money to ensure the demise of passenger rail. I suspect there was a lot of lobby money behind the Interstate Highway System. Ok. He got around to that. . .
Another advantage for a passenger is the "better value for money" from the chinese high speed railways. You get LOTS of arm and legroom, a quiet comfortable trip, reliable arrival/departure times, clean surroundings. When you compare that to being cramped in economy class in a (dirty) airplane the HSR wins every time. Also going and leaving a train station is extremely easy and cheap (lots of connections). When I can choose between flying/car or going by HSR in China I'll always take the train. I can compare the Chinese HSR to the trains here in the Netherlands which are often unreliable, very expensive, bad connections and slow.
The Chinese government has not fully considered economic benefits when developing infrastructure. It is difficult for high-speed rail to fully recover its cost or make money, not only in China, but in any country. China has also built high-speed rail in areas of the western region with extremely low population densities. This is not profitable at all and requires government subsidies to make ends meet. The government believes that the development of transportation can solve the uneven situation of regional development. Airplanes are point-to-point transportation. High-speed rail can solve the problem of travel difficulties for residents along the line. The Chinese government pays more attention to the future and social benefits. That's why 4G or 5G signals are available in the most remote rural areas of China. Don't forget, China has also built 140,000 kilometers of expressways with a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour, which is also far more than the second-placed United States.
HSR can be extremely profitable along high density corridors though. The issue is they built these corridors through low density areas so the successful routes subsidize the less successful ones. The fares are also kept artificially low.
Actually no, the US has many more kilometers of expressways than China. The Interstate Highway System is only about 78,000 km long, but it is just one part of the National Highway System, which is about 260,000 km long. America also has about 257,000 km of railways, which is more than the 146,000 km in China. Unfortunately for Americans, the highways are getting old and need to be rebuilt with money that politicians refuse to spend, the railways are mostly owned and operated by private companies who also hate investing in infrastructure, and the few high speed rail projects under construction are all managed separately by different entities with different standards. The Chinese way of heavy investment in public transportation infrastructure according to government policy is definitely working better. America had a big head start on infrastructure, but privatization and political infighting ruined everything.
Now most cities in China have bullet trains and I haven't been to the airport for a long time. If I needed to go to an airport, it would be to a very distant city or a foreign country. Bullet trains really make travel comfortable and portable and save a lot of time. You can choose a weekend getaway to a city hundreds of kilometers away. You may not understand this, but we hate capital as much as you hate communism. In our view, capital is scarier than communism, because when capital controls the government, the government is no longer working to improve people's lives. In fact, I never understood why campaign finance and lobbying money are not openly corrupt.
The CCP has done nothing to improve peoples' lives, it has merely impeded progress. Capitalism with liberty would have seen China become much wealthier. As it is, the controls from government are what is causing the mass issues China is facing starting roughly now, and that will be really felt in the 2030's onwards.
@@vassilistzaferis4277 Because they are shielded from the outside world, controlled by the credit system and brainwashed at school into indoctrinated nonsense. We would all be in the same position if that was us.
Why is public transportation a profit center? Government collects tax and provide public services to citizens. Very few countries like US collects federal and state tax, property tax, variety of local taxes and yet wants to make money in public transportation. I also pay more to government to buy a pair of Nike because government sanctions a foreign country. The huge tax money i pay seems only to buy weapons to invade foreign countries.
Building an infrastructure like HSR is a long term plan. The HSR connect to tourist attractions and help the area boost their economy. They build HSR is not for the profit. They build it so that the economy can move freely inside the country. This is a very good way to boost a country economy as a whole. Not only big city
One very important argument for HSR is imo climate change and the future of air travel. The EU wants to be carbon neutral by 2050, other countries follow similar plans. I don't think that, at least at the moment, there is really a plan for how air travel can be made carbon neutral without relatively big price increases, that would make HSR economically much more attractive.
The European Union is gonna have a difficult time to be carbon neutral by 2050 when countries like Poland and Germany are still reliant on fossil fuels.
I think people need to think about city’s economic benefit from HSR not just the face value… Also, how else would you transport 1.4b people effectively? As a pilot and aviation and car enthusiast, i still like HSR. There’s a place for all of them… not sure why many people think it’s one or the other.
When I lived in China I travel by HSR even for trips over 1500km because 1. comfort: cabin seats on the train have more legroom than business class on a plane, with no luggage restrictions; seats recline to almost flat, no turbulence or jet noise so you can sleep/work really well while gliding through beautiful scenery 2. convenience: super flexible, you can buy a ticket minutes from departure, free to cancel/reschedule whenever you like, with busy routes (Beijing to Shanghai) running trains every 20 mins; 3. stations right in city centers, subway connections usually less than 5 mins walk in the same station; 4. the network is so extensive that more towns are connected by HSR than air. Some cities will get 1-2 flights per week but 1-2 trains per hour.
I'm from India and in this regard i really appreciate China . HSR is something we really need in India but it should be something cost effective as majority of Indian population could not afford it if the prices were comparable with China and EU . Few days back , there was a train accident in India which killed almost 10 people due to "technical difficulties" . These things make me think again and again what our government is really doing for improving railway infrastructure. Coming to land , The bullet train project in India whose deadline was 2023 Dec, has not even started due to "Land acquisition problems ". This is what is the advantage of China, where the state controls everything. In India , even for a cm of land , peole will drag you to court.
I think the first priority should be getting reliable regular rail established before dumping too much money into fancy tech. India isn't quite as big either, and its flights are less restrictive, so there's less need for long distance HSR routes.
@@appa609 India's also building semi fast railway system which would be working on hydrogen fuel. It would be completed by 2025 could send you a link if u wnt
Don't generalize that Indian population can't afford HSR. There are many domestic air routes that are too busy that can be tapped by HSR. Many people thought same before Delhi Metro too.
for building 45000 kilometers high speed railways ,china government has paid quite large amount of money to those land owner, the land using is not free
I don't think the Chinese had a plan to dominate the HSR market like it is today. Their initial plans to import them from Japan and Germany were plagued by grossly expensive products from Germany and tech ban from Japan. The Chinese in the end had no alternative but to build their own. Their alternative was planes and automobile which they too didn't have any manufacturing capabilities at the time and China didn't have large oilfields. So railways was their only option in the early 2000s.
I am not sure if you know this but Chinese had every plan to dominate the HSR market , they intitially tried to develop their own HSR prototypes none of which were safe & sophisticated enough for commercial use & mass manufacturing so they set up an international tender that invited the best HSR rolling stock makers in the world to make & supply trains for chinese HSR network but with a caveat that their should be complete tech transfer of their latest tech, partnership with CNR & CSR affiliated locomotive makers & significant training of chinese engineers in Rail telecommunication, signalling , rolling stock manufacturing ,track making etc. The major rolling stock makers that included Kawasaki Heavy industries ,Siemens , Bombardier, Alstom all offered their best tech to local chinese partners due to FOMO of the huge chinese market. The chinese who had already set up a huge industrial base of railway universities , R&D labs , manufacturing companies etc readily absorbed all this tech & after running the initial set of trains manufactured in direct partnership with Foreign OEM's for some time they began designing & running a new partly indigenous set of trains called the "Hexie" series which was based on licensed foreign tech but with increased local content from local companies who had by then gained significant understanding from foreign OEM's tech transfer & had chucked out the Foreign partners by than.This reduced the cost of HSR tech due to scale at which chinese companies manufactured & the cost of labour in china. However the hexie series could still not be exported because they would constitute patent infringement because of liscensed tech so the chinese after gaining significant experience operating the HSR hexie series re-designed or significantly improved the liscensed tech they were based on to the point they did not infringe any patents & named them the "Fuxing " series began exporting them at significantly low prices & thats how chinese HSR became the behemoth that it is today. The very grossly expensive products from japan & germany that you bad mouthed were the ones who established the foundation for HSR in china through which china could learn & innovate so its not that chinese developed the HSR tech from scratch it received significant outside help in doing that.
@ian x The Japanese wouldn't export the newer trains the Chinese wanted so they got the E3 series. Not so much as a ban but wasn't selling their newer train sets.
You forgot to mention very important HSR logistical delivery under 2000 km. Mobile internet purchasing and sales services nationwide that enrich small town/village business using Alibaba ad. for example. Xinjiang is selling fresh fruits and vegetables to china eastern cities daily basis. The main problem in the western world picture investment only on fast profit return, not the benefit of the whole country (or continent with good HSR system). lf the people can enrich themselves then the country will automatically become happy, prosperous and powerful logical bottom line.
I agree that the western view of profit is wrong, but I also believe that the opposite is also wrong. There is no point in creating something, even in the long term it only generates losses, even if profit is not the main objective, it is important not to have so many losses because at some point, someone will have to pay for it, nothing is free.
There are other defense related items in other agencies. For instant, in 2020, the Department of Energy budget was $38.6 billion of which $19.7 billion was defense related. That funds were used to service the nuclear weapons and nuclear waste.
It's a matter of national resource prioritization. A 1998 report stated that the US spent $35 billion in operate and maintain nuclear forces, that was $96 million per day. Today, China is running RMB300 million (USD47 million) losses per day to operate and maintain HSR. That sounds like a good deal.
@@cheewailee5115 The subsidy is for remote areas, lines like Beijing to Shanghai or Beijing to Guanzhou are very profitable and offsets the costs to more remote locations
@@blackhole9961 Which is why no one is saying to build HSR in Montana. We're saying to build it on America's core high density route that is already a cash cow, the Northeast Corridor, and in lesser corridors like Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Tampa to Miami, and Chicago to Minneapolis.
The US car based society is not sustainable in the long run and it almost forces everybody to buy a car, which is a luxury item. US "suberbia" is the worst kind of city design. You live in the middle of nowhere, need a car for every trip but still have houses right next to you and in lot of cases even the yards are so small it kinda defets the purpose of having a house.
Funny how most of the population actively chooses to live in suburbia rather than a denser urban city hell hole like New York. Sunbelt cities like Dallas Houston Phoenix Atlanta and Orlando are growing fast for the very reason of suburbia is a great place to live.
@@bftjoe Anything that costs thousands of dollars is a luxury item, period, and especially so to someone living paycheck to paycheck because of this country's shit wages and absent safety net and abysmal housing situation. This even more important when considering repairs, which are unavoidable even with new cars and directly impact a person's ability to get to work. Something like half of all US adults are in a situation where a sudden $400 expense a serious struggle, and around one fifth of US adults would simply not be able to afford it.
You have missed one of the important point, we can continue our tasks that required high internet speed in the HSR without interrupted and airplane cant
The reason why China‘ HSR losing money is it keeps building more lines. Otherwise it can reach balance right away. CRRC as a whole group is profiting from infrastructure and cargo transferring and also real estate
@@samuelefesoa7317 The thing is, at first I found it crazy they kept wanting to expand, but actually many of the plans (the new 8 horizontals and 8 verticals) are feasible. Cities not many know about like Guizhou, Nanchang all have over 3 million people and if HSR works in Europe amongst cities that are less dense with less population, there is no saying that it isn't feasible. What isn't feasible is the lines to Urumqi and Lhasa, I agree with you in that those clearly are signals against separatism since at those distances, the demand is little and cost high. However, recently CRRC built a line in Zhejiang Province, and it is the first privately operated line by Foshan Group, China is slowly emulating Japan (which privatized its railways and made a profit in the 80s and 90s - Eg. JR Group.)
@@sw36jl There is a political factor in those provinces sure, but I think what China is doing there is better in the long run. Look at the case of the United States, railway raised migrant populations into the midwest, due to connectivity and infrastructure. Lhasa and Urumqi railways will create a population rise, as people see the logistical benefits in living in those outer cities and the areas in between and near. The railways have created a situation where internal migration is easier and feasible, while still being able to see relatives/friends in other provinces. Thus, China reduces brain drain, creates population growth, creates job opportunities/entrepreneurship, creates national unity, reduces the population of congested cities, and fosters tourism. You can't measure the benefits of railway systems on their net profits alone. I heavily doubt that China will privatize their railways, especially considering how much they're revamping their state owned enterprises to be competitive in the market.
@@sw36jl Most of those « private » ventures are the result of accounting tricksin China. Similarly oa significant amount of JR ended up being bought by Japanese pension funds. The thing is infrastructure in China is viewed as a utility first and business second contrary to the US.
@@samuelefesoa7317 Proving to who? There's more to feasibility than profit. Some lines are not profitable now as they connect less developed regions but the idea is that these lines will help them develop and eventually yield returns indirectly
My life view was forever changed by my visits to Europe when I was in college and up to the pandemic, I wish we had at least some regular, reliable and fast rail here in the USA. I'm in New England/Mid-Atlantic, and. wanted to surprise my sister when she graduated from med school back in May 2021 because I had just gotten my second dose of the moderna vaccine at the end of April. I started looking at Amtrak for Hartford, CT to Philadelphia and it was more expensive than flying, but both options were $350+, if we had something like Germany's ICE or the TGV/Eurostar I know that trip would've been 80 euros and take maybe 3 hours with stops, but the Amtrak tickets were so high and still took five hours, so I drove instead
Amtrak is slow and unreliable at times due to freight interferences, rail infrastructure simply not designed for high speed, but freight, it's the case in North America, however in Europe because passenger trains are prioritized, and not lobbied against, and has true dedicated high speed tracks, your experience will always be better and faster
@@Racko. that is not entirely true. Passenger trains are not proritised, but things will depend on the slot you buy and whether you are in time. Also in Europe sometimes passenger trains will have to wait for freight trains, at least within mixed systems.
@@arnoldhau1 Thats true, for alot of corridors but overall its not really the case in most European countries, if you look at Finland and Germany they have a total mixture of the two on the rail lines, Frankfurt to Berlin routes have freight trains and high speed trains sharing the same corridor, busy routes like London-Paris-Belgium-Amsterdam hardly sees freight because of strong passenger demand so they're put on different lines, Paris-Lyon or Barcelona-Mardrid are fully fledged high speed at almost all times, but in the NEC from DC-NJ-NY-Boston route using Amtrak's own high speed services have a mixture of dedicated high speed Amtrak lines and a freight one so avoid interference
I live in Germany and unfortunately, we have less railways than 20 or even 50 years ago. The auto industry runs supreme here as well and Cities are crowded with and built for cars instead of people. However, we have an even bigger problem because Germany is not that big and we need good public transport, but unfortunately, too many people and politicians like cars.
Because in China, everything is controlled by a single party system, which is the Central government, and it's "No one is above the law" policy, so China can make as much as it wants, how it wants and when it wants, serving it's people, In most western nations, the autoindustry like you said usually lobby against rail so they can sell more cars, it's the same case in the US, back then it had such good transportation for people, unlike car and oil industries bought those transit companies all up, scrapped it away and bulldozed the walkable places all for roads, for cars, Germany's transportation is great, not the best but it's definitely reliable, considering high speed rail exists there
@@TheRailwayDrone Yes we do and it works, but cars work better. Our trains aren't on time 25% of the time and have a lot of technical issues. Also, the prices are too high. Air travel is cheaper than trains cars are faster because our infrastructure is being built for cars.
@@Racko. Yeah it's not bad, but comparing to what we could do if we'd wanted to. Other nations spend 2-5 times more money per person on public transport. It's not just money but also the way our cities were rebuild after WWII. We have so many cars it's kinda terrifying tbh
Maybe there is a correlation between high speed rail and housing prices. If a country has plentiful high speed rail, a worker should be able to live in a cheaper area and get to work within an hour in the morning. Perhaps this channel should do a crossover with B1M where you guys argue the case from a rail vs. construction/housing perspective.
That's not how high speed rail works. Bullet trains aren't just faster commuter trains. The ticket price is normally in the region of a cheap flight. There are some youths in China that live a double life, living in one city but working in another and commuting to work on the bullet train, but they're the exception not the rule. If you want to build commuter towns then regular commuter rail works better than high speed rail. The Greater Springfield project, for example, is one such town built to provide cheap housing for Brisbane workers. It only works though because the trains don't go too fast (~130kmph) and are therefore cheap to run.
A wonderful and comprehensive video covering High Speed Rail (Bullet Train). Unlike other videos on high speed rail that focus only on China, this video covers Europe and USA as well apart from China. It discusses feasibility of HSR vis a vis Air Travel too. Superb video.
Lol my experience on YT is that videos always attempt to talk less about the case of China. They very often portray China's success as a mere contingent consequence of, for instance, the US's failure. Videos as such are mere being alarmists for their own domestic politics. "If you wish to do something, make sure to use China as an excuse." So many videos on the internet would praise Japan to an extent that they just randomly feature an awesome video of Chinese HSR to stress how badass Japan is on this field. "There is no way China is doing well because genius engineering, or strong state support or China's political economy. It must be due to their authoritarian governance therefore completely dismissible."
Any type of public transportation in the US (bus, subway, rail) is set to fail, the only purpose it serves is for car makers, oil and gas to say "told you so, go buy more cars".
I can't believe you got through this whole video without even saying the word "Spain" or "Madrid-Barcelona" (600km, two major cities, previous served by the world's busiest air route, case study in the dynamics you discuss). I'm affrendered!
R u european? Outdated euro-centric mentality? He is right because compared with China's system, the systems in europe is nothing, even combined, no matter in length, magnitude, speed, comfort, punctuality, etc. If u have ever had a chance to take the chinese and european hs train, u will know what i am talking about. I know truth hurts, I know why china is envied and hated, but fact is fact...
NYC subway can't make a profit because the MTA unions suck up over half of their operating cost on excessive labor. If the system was fully automated, like most modern subway systems now, this entire issue would be skated. That doesn't even account for the fact that fares from the subway subsidize commuter rail services for suburbanites and bus services which all operate at heavier losses. If the system cut labor costs and split from other transport modes, it would be profitable. Many cities around the world have profitable metro systems (see Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.). On the contrary, car infrastructure isn't profitable, even with gas taxes and tolls. It never has been and never will. We even just passed a giant infrastructure project that focused primarily on highways to bail out states because they are that much of a burden on a states budget.
Why did you avoid talking about Spain? . It holds the Largest HSR network in the world outside of China and the busiest HSR link between two cities (Madrid-Barcelona) in the world. The video feels biased if you talk about "HSR in the world" and completely avoid talking about the biggest network in Europe.
With 3,100km of track the Spanish high-speed AVE trains operate on the longest high-speed network in Europe. Running at speeds of up to 310 km/h this extensive network allows for fast connections between cities in Spain. Travel from Madrid to Barcelona in less than 3 hours!. it is good, but only 3100km, but better than US 0km.
@@boknows8263 Those 3100km make it the 1st in Europe and 2nd in in the world ahead of Japan France and Germany which get a lot more attention in the anglo-sphere.
Lot of unnecessary dik measuring from China against Japan, South Korea and Europe. Glad that india is investing first in upgrading dedicated freight cargo railway and then only now working on high speed railway between their major cities Most provincial capitals in India are within 200 to 500 km to reach other, in fact Delhi the country's capital has several major cities within 500 km including 6 provincial capitals
I live in India and I can tell you that everyone here wants HSR, after all Indian railways is the backbone of India. As of now we just don't have enough resources and technology to build an extensive HSR system. But the first corridor of 500 KM is coming up with Japanese funding and tech, hope we will be able to expand it further.
You are dreaming. Japan itself doesn't have 500km trains and their technology is now one or two decades behind China. The one Japan is building in India is their dated model and wouldn't run faster than 250km/h while costing twice as Chinese's 350km/h trains. Fun fact: Chinese HSR is the only ones in the world running smooth enough for a coin to stand for minutes.
The Chinese high-speed rails are losing money just in accounting. With such heavy infrastructure investment, it is trivial for the CFO of China Railway to log a loss.
Infrastructure investments only work if the infrastructure is used, a several hundred kilometer hsr line going from nowhere to nowhere is unlikely to be used. Out of the many of the HSR lines in China very few are actually used properly.
On the contrary , China intention to create HSR connect to cities over 1 million inhabitants not base on fast profit return . They built as a liability in term of an asset , however , the connection plan in time will flourish businesses making a liability into an asset ! . To prosper small cities need good logistic rail and road connections. The West vision and strongly believe that is bad, bad investment because construction groups will lose money in these projects . Better use cars and planes to side line HSR . Save the patrol market?🤔
Building an infrastructure like HSR is a long term plan. The HSR connect to tourist attractions and help the area boost their economy. They build HSR is not for the profit. They build it so that the economy can move freely inside the country. This is a very good way to boost a country economy as a whole. Not only big city
@@kjxkk5yearsago241 this economic boost will serve to pay for the expensive infrastructure that, in theory, was made to do this boost. Some HSRs in China are not even used as they should.
Great content. All very well researched and presented. I just want to add another point. Building new high speed rail becomes exponentially more expensive as a country develops. Not only land prices rise, but you need to relocate more buildings, sewers, water pipes, even internet backbone cables (these things cost a lot). Price of labor also increases. So the 300 Million loss today is offset by saving a ton of money compared to building the railway at a future date. Forging a unified Chinese identity is also important. Railway is historically linked to forming the national German identity, and China needs a way to connect far provinces inhabited by minorities to the main culture and economy.
1:20 Eurostar is (for now at least) specifically for travelling between London and the capitals of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It doesn't go to Germany (despite past promises)
In China there’s a term “transfer Payment/finance”, which means though HSR operates on deficits everyday, but they are compensated/financed by the central government revenue to ensure an economic fare for all passengers.
You know you are good for an unbiased / informative video when the author of the video call the Chinese party CPC instead of CCP. An uninformed / biased author would certainly give his position away by saying CCP.
Low density really isn't a valid excuso for any large country though, since nearly every country has a cluster of big and economically important cities, be it the Northeast Corridor, western California, or Central Texas in the US, Toronto-Montreal in Canada, Sydney-Melbourne, Rio-São Paulo, Buenos Aires-Rosario, and so on. All quite large cities in relatively close proximity in countries with low overall population density. Hell, even the biggest country on Earth has its two largesr cities linked by high speed rail.
Cool video. You kind of touched on it with Australia; Canada is likely similar. I don't think we could support a HSR system. The distances are vast and our population density is low.
That's actually not true. For high speed rail overall density of a country is kind of irrelevant rather it's the distance between major cities. After all Russia has a high speed train between Moscow and St. Petersburg. In both Australia and Canada countless studies into the viability of high speed rail have been conducted and they always come back saying it's viable. For Australia the cities of Brisbane, Gold-Coast, Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide are all within that 200-1,000km range that makes bullet trains viable (though not from end-to-end). The same is true in Canada for the corridor including Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, London and if you wanted to continue across the border into America Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland (though it's around a bit of a bend so speed would be limited) as well as a second corridor in Cascadia. No, you're probably not going to run a bullet train from Vancouver to Toronto or Sydney to Perth but looking at Russia the fact they can't run a high speed service between Moscow and Vladivostok doesn't effect the viability of their Sapsan service.
I was definitely thinking of a HSR following the trans Canada highway. The east is all close together. When I said vast distances I was thinking of coast to coast
@ Yes, and as we know from the 2013 Infrastructure Australia report it still passes the cost-benifit analysis. The overall population density of your country is irrelevant. All that matters for the viability of high speed rail is that the local population density along whatever corridor you're clearing is high enough to support it. That is to say: cities over a certain size, close together and in roughly a straight line. Australia, Russia, Brazil, Canada, America and lots of other countries with low overall population densities have corridors like that.
The density of the country itself doesn't matter. All that matters is the size of the individual cities that are being connected. Toronto to Montreal for example is dense enough because they're both large cities with lots of travel between the two. They're also not too far apart from one another. The Eastern Canadian cities from Windsor to Quebec City also all line up well. No one is saying to build one from Vancouver to Halifax. Canada is so ridiculously concentrated in the 100 mile zone from the US border that it makes perfect sense. Also air/car travel is heavily subsidized by the government. If the line isn't profitable, neither are other modes (that's a big if as many HSR routes connecting even smaller cities turn profit). The government regularly pays to build airports for airlines, pay for their border control and security checkpoints, run air traffic control, etc. Considering air travel already hosts extremely tight profit margins, this would be made tighter, or even sink airlines if they had to pay for all of their shit. Highway systems also are entirely non-profit services, so they consistently lose money.
I think India is the best suited nation for HSR due to density and proximity of multiple equally sized or bigger cities. They have planned around 11 lines in total.
India will face the same obstacles the US face. Also considering the fact that India has a tighter budget and political opposition. Not just in building these mega infrastructure projects but the fact that the lines will run at a loss for a long time will put huge pressure on the government which is small compared to China. I dont think any country can achieve what China has done considering the scale at which they have done this...but India is on track hope things workout
India is also building what's called semi-high speed trains (max. 160 kmph). In the next few years, around 75 semi-HSR trains are expected to run between India's largest cities.
8:00 historical roots is important. But the land institutions changed after 1980s and it doesn’t provide that much convenience when it comes to land purchases.
8:06 The state doesn’t own all the lands in China. Collectivization/collective is not the same as nationalization/State ownership. Tired of talking to folks that are mind-fucked by the neoliberal idea of private ownership as if there’s nothing else, as if any alternative is inherently wrong/inferior. Even the institution of private ownership of land is considered as a form of institutional innovation of humanity. There’s no point of talking about property rights or ownership in China if you can’t even figure out those important concepts.
Actual land acquisition process isn’t exactly that different from what you would be expecting elsewhere. There are all kinds of big or small changes on land institutions throughout the years since the 1980s. I get a strong feeling that nobody actually cares about how things actually works in China. It is all about how outside observers believe what it may works judging by the “looks” of it. “Oh socialism, or collective ownerships! Then they must work like this and this, that and that, cuz it is totally communist, very much like the USSR.” “Lands must have been confiscated and property rights and private properties must be destroyed to build HSR, and that is why they can achieve something we cannot cuz they are fundamentally different from ‘us’.”
Most of the central and eastern parts of China are densely populated, just like West Europe and the HSR can make money in those areas. What makes China's HSR losing money are the lines built in the western, less populated, less industrialized area, pretty much for political reasons.
When one looks at the situation holistically, the profits lost in the high speed rails are more than recaptured many folds, by so many other sectors of the economy !
@@lpt2606 Most of the major routes reach the top speed of 350km/h. By the way, 250km/h ~ 350km/h ones are called HSR in China according to official standard, with a few exceptions though. Some of the earlier 200km/h lines are also considered as HSR.
As someone who lived in Japan in the Late 80's thru the 90's even then the Shinkansen for me was best option, I learned after my first trip from Osaka to Tokyo. As most meetings occurred in the downtown core of Tokyo first trip I took by instinct I took the plane, its what we do in the West usually. While the flight time was fine the whole check-in process, getting to your gate, praying you get taxi/take-off clearance is not delayed ETC you get the picture. I did that only once and after that never flew to Tokyo again and always took the train for multiple reasons, no check-in required if I need to take a bag it just goes overhead with me. The train is always on time and I mean ALWAYS baring some sort of natural disaster or power issue, and it drops me at Tokyo Station right downtown could walk to where I had to go too. Taking the plane it waiting to de-board the plane, look around for where you baggage will be on the conveyor belt, then walk across part of the terminal to get a local train, etc etc you get the picture. While train as far as ground speed is slower total travel time to getting to the door of my Hotel was less and by far more relaxing a trip on the whole.
Japan doesn't have more rail because of density but because post world war 2 they had no (natural) resources and rail was meticulously planned and invested in to counter the US with their new car-centric development.
Subsidising THE MOST USED (BY FAR) passenger and freight rail network in the world with just 17 billion a year (about 0.3% of their annual budget and about 0.1% of their GDP), then thats a GREAT use of public funds. US spends 3 TIMES that on "foreign aid"
China is making long term investments that benefit the nation. Some lines may always lose money on paper, but the return to society is worth the investment.
1:30 majority of Indians who watch RUclips know about HSR and their benefits because there is one route in India in which Japanese Skinkasen E-5 class will run at the speed of 320km/hr in india in the year 2026 between mumbai and ahmedabad. The first Shinkasen will run in the year 2024 in Gujarat at short distance
Very poorly informed video where China is concerned. HSR in China is not power politics. That sounds like US propaganda. The reason for HSR is economics as the Chinese understand a fundamental truth of developing a country. Communications! When you link areas economy follows. That's the purpose of all the rail links being built by the Chinese in Asia, Latin America, Africa. Already those places with see economic growth and development along the lines. The same happens in China. As for the Chinese government just taking land that is also true in the west. Eminent Domain give these governments the right to take private land for public use.. Chinese space program is motivated by personal power politics? Not science? Chinese scientists just recently recreated an artificial "sun" with their Tokamak fusion reactor. They also created an artificial "moon" in a magnetic filed in a vacuum. That's all power politics? Not science? You lost all credibility there, dude. Finally, with all the headaches that accompany air travel even under normal circumstances, you can expect to see people gradually shift to HSR. The time element wouldn't matter when you're faced with delays in traffic traveling to and from an airport...
The US has no national definition of high speed rail, but some federal agencies describe it as greater than 125mph (201 km/h), while others describe it as greater than 150mph (241 km/h). Yeah that's slower than 250km/h, but it's still a lot faster than 150. The Acela only does 150mph now, but is getting an upgrade to 160mph (257 km/h) when the new trainsets roll out, albeit in very limited areas, so the US will have HSR by the 250 km/h definition soon by the barest thread. To be fair, the Type 0 Shinkansen, the first HSR in the world, topped out at 210km/h in its initial form.
Good show. I know you can't cover every thing, so let me just add; After 1949, with the forming of the CPC, they gave all the rural farmers enough land to build a house. They also get this land tax free. So nearly all families in China own a house.
China is losing money to make fast transportation affordable; some countries are locking people in buying expensive cars so that the riches can travel to the space.
How much did the US lost in the US interstate highway?... Well it is a social obligation of the US govt to absorb those losses, and it outweighted by all the economic benefits it brought to the regions it serves. China's high speed rail is just the same intentions.
China's HSR which travels at a speed of up to 250 KM/H needs to be powered by 96,000W of juice, which means it costs China 96KWH of electricity to power a HSR of up to 8 cars to travel at 250 KM/H. When the HSR is sped up to 350 KM/H, it uses more juice. The power requirement jumps to 144KWH. A 8-car Chinese HSR can seat up to 500 passengers. It uses 144KWH (per hour) of power. Let's do the math : To move every single passenger on a Chinese HSR for a distance of 350 KM, it requires 288WH of electricity, or 1,036,800 Joules of energy. How much energy does it need for an airplane to fly one passenger, for a distance of up to 350 KM ?
We can do the max range of a A350-1000 which is 16100km with ~6%fuel reserve of its max 159 000 litres of jet fuel. We can take the avg energy density of 9.6kWh/litre so 1465344kWh of energy. Let's say it's fully booked with unhumanly max eco config to fly this extremly long haul with 480pax that yields 2989.2kWh/PAX with the absolute best case scenario. For HSR assuming your matrices are correct at 350kph gives 16100/350*144/500 = ~13.2kWh/PAX no way the number will match up. With energy consumption I found at bare average of 3.64kWh/100km perPAX with CRH380A@300kph from 2012 during its normal operation it gives 586kWh/PAX for the same trip ~19.3% cost of a A350. According to gov.cn the number is at ~1/12 = 8.3%. Even at 30% conversion efficiency and all the electricity are generated from fossil fuel the total fuel energy is still 1953kWh/PAX with my worst case number and 827kWh/PAX from the state media.
High-speed rail in China is like Highway in US, it's good to certain extent but some point they just build because they can after most of the important route is already finished. /but I agree that US need more HSR, for now at least they start small step with private HSR like Brightline (thought their speed didn't reach 250km/h until their extension lines finished) I hope they success. US only has handful of sutable regions for HSR anyway; Eastern Coast, Western Coast, Florida, Texas and maybe Chicago that it.
Yet none of their "handful of regions" are served by HSR. Even by the ridiculous US definition of HSR, which is equivalent to the European definition of "regional rail". :p
Those handful of regions are like half the country though, so it wouldn't be such a bad idea, but it is sadly probably unrealistic that the US government will agree to such projects in the future.
It is too expensive to build in USA. California tried spent 100 Billion for LA to San Francisco but couldn’t even finish it so plan to change the route to two small sized cities in agriculture region. It cost 5 times as much as similar length in China because of environmental, labor, eminent domain….
@@mikicerise6250 They have 40,000 km of hsr rail, more than all the hsr rail of the rest of the world combined. And they plan to almost double (70,000km) it by 2035. Their aim is to connect all their cities. And yes, their HSR is profitable, western media reporting them as losing money was a lie. It was nothing but to discredit China's accomplishment, sour grapes I'm sure.
Example compare to a A350-1000: We can do the max range of a A350-1000 which is 16100km with ~6%fuel reserve of its max 159 000 litres of jet fuel. We can take the avg energy density of 9.6kWh/litre so 1465344kWh of energy. Let's say it's fully booked with unhumanly max eco config to fly this extremly long haul with 480pax that yields 2989.2kWh/PAX with the absolute best case scenario. With energy consumption I found at bare average of 3.64kWh/100km perPAX with CRH380A@300kph from 2012 during its normal operation it gives 586kWh/PAX for the same trip ~19.3% cost of a A350. According to gov.cn the number is at ~1/12 = 8.3%. Even at 30% conversion efficiency and all the electricity are generated from fossil fuel the total fuel energy is still 1953kWh/PAX with my worst case number and 827kWh/PAX from the state media.
16000 km nonstop would be a world record route and is also the worst case for fuel efficiency. As you probably know, all fuel-carrying vehicles loosely obey Tsiolkovsy's rocket equation in that the required fuel increases exponentially with demanded range. Any given airliner will get ~30% better average efficiency flying around half its maximum range. I'm also not sure your maximum fuel maximum load configuration is even capable of takeoff. The OEW of an A350-1000 is 155t for a 369 seat config. A full fuel load is 124.65t, totalling 279.65t. MTOW is 316t. To fit 480 passengers+12 crew, the average weight of each human plus carryon onboard would have to be less than 73.8kg. The FAA reports an average of 85kg per pax. You'd be about 14 tonnes over. But yes the train is more efficient.
Would be nice if Lei would translate the renminbi value to US dollars in the videos so that I don't have to do that extra step.. I would believe most of Leis viewers are far more familiar with the value of a dollar than one renminbi. By the way, the daily loss of 300 million renminbi to dollars is about 47 million USD in loss per day. A little over 17 billion USD annually. That is quite a bit of money, but plenty of projects in the US that wastes billions every year too.
The chinese government doesn't build infrastructures to make money off its citizens, it build rails, roads , etc. because it is its duty to provide for infrastructures for them. Rails and road are built by them not for profit but for development and progress to all the cities along it. These are the unquantifiable benefit and reason why they build them. They have a saying, "If you want to be rich, build roads". That $17 billion a year cost to the chinese government, supposing it's true and not a westerm media invention, is nothing compared to the $8T the US spent in its War on terror with nothing to show for it. That $8T could have been spent to solve every internal problem in the US like homelessness, cheap education, cheap medical and still have enough left to build several parallel high speed railway s from west to east and north to south. Don't worry about China subsidizing its HSR, worry more about you country, it is in a lot worse troubles.
In that China spends about 1/2 of what the US spends on defense relative to the size of its economy, their annual subsidy of HSR is an incidental expense.
@@rap3208 You are right. The chinese government doesnt care about profits. They know they have a large populatuion hence they need an efficient public transport system. And thats where high speed rail comes in.
China's high speed rail system is built for their people. China's even got a high speed rail line running to Tibet even though they're losing millions a year on the service. Could you imagine a Private Enterprise doing such a good deed for the Citizens of their country? Look at USA's Corporatism ... 1% of USA Citizen's own 90% of USA's Wealth ... meanwhile they've got 35 Million citizens living in either Streets (e.g. Kensington Philadelphia), Tents (e.g. Venice Beach California), Caravans (e.g. Kentucky), or Cars (e.g. Miami).
It is too expensive to build in USA. California tried spent 100 Billion for LA to San Francisco but couldn’t even finish it so plan to change the route to two small sized cities in agriculture region. It cost 5 times as much as similar length in China because of environmental, labor, eminent domain….
All the highspeed raill Network costed 1.8 trillion $ to build, meanwhile US Afghanistan War alone costed 2.7 trillion $ during 20 yrs occupation with 700 billion plus defense budget annually 😂😂😂😂😂
@@_seola_ for sure. Intangible benefits are enormous. I just wanted to highlight the enormous amount that was invested in infrastructure, which would’ve been impossible in US, because they would rather build carriers
The 300 million RMB dollar lost per day are the expenditure on further expansion & debt interest. If we are just looking at the HSR financial sheet(without considering it’s debt and expansion) China HSR are profiting at around 40 billion USD in 2019, But in fact, since China HSR and the bank who loan money to the HSR are also state own, the debt interest are just really left hand to right hand, and in this process it actually boosted M2 in a good way by allowing more circulation.
In terms of the main indicators of comprehensive transport development, the operating length of railway will grow from 146,000 km in 2020 to 165,000 km in 2025. The total length of high-speed railways in operation will increase from 38,000 km in 2020 to 50,000 km in 2025.
At 0:13 you mentioned "loses 300 million RMB per day running ther HSR". One fundamental question: To whom is the money losing to? Peoples in China or Stockholders in NYSE?
1:00 that's an rer pulling into a station just down the road form me! That's cool to see. It's far from rundown, and has high quality services, except on the C, which is the line shown.
china has a big population but mainly focus from central to the coastal. it is feasible to build then. they don't overbuild to xinjiang. it still serve as a good use for China military to movr assets especially during the india trying to invade Xinjiang.
Although lands is indeed owned by the state in China, what is on it belongs to the owner, from the house to a blade of grass. As of 2008 forced eviction is illegal and owners must be PROPERLY compensated (it's now seen as a goldmine if anyone wants your land) -check out the phenomenon of 'nail houses' if you want to see those who refuse every offer. This is why the world's longest bridges -hundreds of miles long -are sections of the HSR network as it passes through the more expensive provinces, as they worked out it's more cost-effective to build on stilts -literally on 8:18
Very rare westerners know the truth. Millions of millions Chinese get rich just because the government paid them millions dollars for their move, some of them even got 2-3 more houses relocated from China government
In China, there is no financial loss to operate high-speed trains. The "loss" is attributed to construction costs which is amortized for financial reporting. It is not a private business as the state owns all the infrastructure and it can generate wealth by several means to fund the construction and operations without borrowing foreign money and does not have to pay anyone back.
High speed rail has been a disaster for China. Many trains travel near empty. The trains can't carry freight. The system looses huge amounts of money every year. It has sent local governments into extreme debt. China needed a heavy rain network that can carry freight and passengers, not a ridiculous HSR network. Commuting to HSR in China was a typically poor decision by the CCP.
Long live the people's republic of china The world works scientifically in the history of humanity As a quality modern technique I wish you the world-leading success I love you on behalf of the people of Kurdistan ✌️✌️✌️✌️❤️❤️❤️🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇳
High speed rail, will be the preferred mode of transportation in the future. As technologies improve, it will be more convenient and economical. Furthermore it will open more economic opportunities for people along the routes.
China Railway total tracks (high speed)built: 4,200 km (2,100km )2021, 4,900 km (2,500km) 2020, 8,400km (5,400km) 2019, 👈 4,600km (4,100km) 2018, China Railway uses EU standard to define “high speed”.
When the HSR between Madrid and Barcelona in Spain was opened, the parent air route went from being the busiest national air route in the world to almost nothing. And this even without liberalisation of the HSR that is happening now (more than one company operating trains in the same tracks to create competiton and lower prices even more).
The fact that the headlines about HSR unprofitability being specific to 2021 is suspicious to me. People are travelling a lot less all around the world due to a (hopefully) temporary external factor. Pretty much every airline was bleeding out through 2020 and 2021 as well. I suspect the Chinese HSR is just suffering from the same thing.
Or you mean the distance, while the total disrance for commercial distance in China is over 30000 km and will be 40000 km in 2025. So what comparison can be referred with 600 km in Spain?
Aerospace engineer here. Point 2. at 5:25 isn't that accurate. When looking at emissions alone, the speed makes aircraft far more efficient than most modes of transport; a A220 per passenger is significantly more efficient than a Prius. The engines don't produce "more pollutants'; even the NOx emissions are far below those of diesel. Versus a highspeed train on a nuclear network, that's when HST's beat out the aircraft, but only up to a point like you said.
@@montiro8999 These have been shown to make no effect to reflection; it would be like holding up a needle on a sunny day and saying it’s giving you shade that you can feel. At cruise turbofans are optimized and combust fuel at very high efficiency; most of what you see is water vapour (which is also another display of efficient combustion).
@@Shankovich Many other chemical byproducts of incomplete hydrocarbon fuel combustion, including volatile organic compounds, inorganic gases, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, oxygenated organics, alcohols, ozone and particles of soot have been observed at lower concentrations. The exact quality is a function of engine type and basic combustion engine function, with up to 30% of aircraft exhaust being unburned fuel. Contrails, by affecting the Earth's radiation balance, act as a radiative forcing: they trap outgoing longwave radiation emitted by the Earth and atmosphere more than they reflect incoming solar radiation. In 1992, the warming effect was estimated between 3.5 mW/m2 and 17 mW/m2.[15] Global radiative forcing has been calculated from the reanalysis data, climate models, and radiative transfer codes; estimated at 12 mW/m2 for 2005, with an uncertainty range of 5 to 26 mW/m2, and with a low level of scientific understanding.[16] The effect varies daily and annually: night flights contribute 60 to 80% of contrail radiative forcing while accounting for 25% of daily air traffic, while winter flights contribute half of the annual mean radiative forcing while accounting for 22% of annual air traffic.[17] Contrail cirrus may be air traffic's largest radiative forcing component, larger than all CO2 accumulated from aviation, and could triple from a 2006 baseline to 160-180 mW/m2 by 2050 Without interventions. All from Wikipedia,you can check it yourself
I live in China and a big thing you are missing is that because the HSR is state owned and many airlines are not, the state "encourages" people to take the train - by subsidising it and artificially inflating the price of flights. Taking the train in China can be a hassle too as you also need to pass through security and many train stations are outside city centers e.g. Wuhan railway station. The HSR system is very good though, it's just artificially better as the tickets are subsidised and flying is a massive hassle due to rampant delays I would be like if the British government made all Eurostar tickets half price, and then charged all airlines a massive tax and delayed every flight from Heathrow
The US still has an extensive rail infrastructure. It's just used for freight. Not as glamorous, but in fact a better use of resource than transporting people
Heheh.. majority US is parking lot and public transportations is the main topic of energy efficiency and HSR is the king in public transportation, come to any nation in East Asia either Japan or SK ask foreigners who live there about HSR or rail transit system overall
@@sciencecw oh, sorry to misunderstand but their freight rail infrastructures are legacy from WW2 and Russia have that extensive freight rail infrastructure too and compare to China that have almost the same land masses with US they use railways for both freight and passengers, not so the most efficient or better use of recourse.
@@gamh03 Trains, like ships, are great for cargo because they are energy efficient but not as fast and versatile as road and air. People like to ride trains, but they do not understand the true cost of it
Eurostar spans around the whole of europe? ehm no... Eurostar is just the service that connects the UK with the EU under the channel. Also the video footage is a train of the Swiss Federal Railway that may have one of the best rail networks but doesn't really have any highspeed services at all.
Most public transport in China is not for profit, like some old trains in mountain areas, their price has not changed for decades that a 9 hour/ 400km ride only cost you 5 dollars, these trains are running for poor people there and they even provide special cargo cars to let people carry goods for no extra cost, so people can sell goods in cites in order to make money and get rich
I witnessed the farmers sell their goods inside the train
Yes, the green trains are still running all over China. Mostly slow sleeper service which are popular.
中国的公共交通考虑的是全中国的经济增速。交通促进经济交流
The same over here in Australia. Public transport is subsidized by the govt from tax payers money. I see many ride the tram and bus for free.
carry also cattle.
I live in China. A few years ago, I chose planes for long-distance travel, but now I will choose high-speed rail(even if the plane is cheaper).
China's hsr is too punctual, and there are basically direct subways. Compared with many remote and untimely airports, hsr is more stable and comfortable, and can bring people a sense of security
I heard that last year China succeed to have every train leaving on time. Is that true?
@@wiiistful7499 China's high-speed trains are very punctual and very comfortable
@@user-li1ks6bz1b I took it when I was living in China, but i never though HSR was that good.
it would've helped if those fucking stations were in city centers rather than the middle of nowhere
HSR no delay because of weather and no air turbulence. HSR is much safer than plane.
i don't even care if HSR takes longer over 1000km, its just so much more comfortable than air travel
HSR is basically a feeder for air travel on steroids
Yes, you aren't held hostage by airline
best pat of HSR is that an economy ticket costs the same as business class on a HRS on the same route (in China Business class is the best class, above first class unlike in other parts of the world)
Air travel used to be convenient. Security checks were brief and you could expect to arrive at the airport within an hour of takeoff. Your family members could accompany you to the plane and you could bring food and drink with you.
Then some gits decided to fly into the twin towers and it's been shit ever since.
Maybe a little bit over 1000Km is fine, but I once stupidly took a 2000km HSR trip from West to East in China, that 8 hours was not very comfortable lol, especially the last 3 hours. However, I've also experienced an 8 hour flight delay, which was of course even worse.
the HSR's advantage is that it leaves the station exactly on time. Also the stations are normally close to city center. The hours saved are not those on the trip, but those before and after the trip.
Its faster before and after compared to flight, faster during the trip compared to cars and slow trains
Meanwhile _Singapore's_ long-distance train station (Woodlands Train Checkpoint) is ~10km further from downtown than our _Changi_ Airport though (because the trains are operated by neighbouring _Malaysia's_ rail operator KTM & _Singapore_ felt it was losing its sovereignty when KTM operated services further into _Singapore_ & closer to its downtown. You now need a ~50min subway/metro/MRT ride to get to/from downtown plus a bus transfer that I heard sometimes skips the long-distance train station due to congestion from the nearby Woodlands Checkpoint border crossing
any train can and should leave the station on time
I'm from Switzerland and I'm currently staying at Brownsville TX for 3 months.
Buildings are stupidly far from each other, the population density is super low, but despite of that traffic is insane. I'm now convinced that lower population density leads to more traffic and not the opposite because people spend more time on the road.
@@gamerfortynine : During the mid 20th century, General Motors and the like spent a LOT of money to ensure the demise of passenger rail. I suspect there was a lot of lobby money behind the Interstate Highway System. Ok. He got around to that. . .
Working at Starbase?
@@kylecramer8489 No, just visiting. 3 months is the maximum I can stay with an ESTA. If I want to stay longer I have to apply for a VISA.
Exactly
@@gamerfortynine a terrible one
Another advantage for a passenger is the "better value for money" from the chinese high speed railways.
You get LOTS of arm and legroom, a quiet comfortable trip, reliable arrival/departure times, clean surroundings.
When you compare that to being cramped in economy class in a (dirty) airplane the HSR wins every time.
Also going and leaving a train station is extremely easy and cheap (lots of connections).
When I can choose between flying/car or going by HSR in China I'll always take the train.
I can compare the Chinese HSR to the trains here in the Netherlands which are often unreliable, very expensive, bad connections and slow.
I think you meant airplanes in your last sentence.
The Chinese government has not fully considered economic benefits when developing infrastructure. It is difficult for high-speed rail to fully recover its cost or make money, not only in China, but in any country. China has also built high-speed rail in areas of the western region with extremely low population densities. This is not profitable at all and requires government subsidies to make ends meet. The government believes that the development of transportation can solve the uneven situation of regional development. Airplanes are point-to-point transportation. High-speed rail can solve the problem of travel difficulties for residents along the line. The Chinese government pays more attention to the future and social benefits. That's why 4G or 5G signals are available in the most remote rural areas of China. Don't forget, China has also built 140,000 kilometers of expressways with a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour, which is also far more than the second-placed United States.
HSR can be extremely profitable along high density corridors though. The issue is they built these corridors through low density areas so the successful routes subsidize the less successful ones. The fares are also kept artificially low.
Well the Chinese play chess, they are patient and far sighted kind of people.
Actually no, the US has many more kilometers of expressways than China. The Interstate Highway System is only about 78,000 km long, but it is just one part of the National Highway System, which is about 260,000 km long. America also has about 257,000 km of railways, which is more than the 146,000 km in China.
Unfortunately for Americans, the highways are getting old and need to be rebuilt with money that politicians refuse to spend, the railways are mostly owned and operated by private companies who also hate investing in infrastructure, and the few high speed rail projects under construction are all managed separately by different entities with different standards.
The Chinese way of heavy investment in public transportation infrastructure according to government policy is definitely working better. America had a big head start on infrastructure, but privatization and political infighting ruined everything.
Now most cities in China have bullet trains and I haven't been to the airport for a long time. If I needed to go to an airport, it would be to a very distant city or a foreign country. Bullet trains really make travel comfortable and portable and save a lot of time. You can choose a weekend getaway to a city hundreds of kilometers away.
You may not understand this, but we hate capital as much as you hate communism. In our view, capital is scarier than communism, because when capital controls the government, the government is no longer working to improve people's lives.
In fact, I never understood why campaign finance and lobbying money are not openly corrupt.
The CCP has done nothing to improve peoples' lives, it has merely impeded progress. Capitalism with liberty would have seen China become much wealthier. As it is, the controls from government are what is causing the mass issues China is facing starting roughly now, and that will be really felt in the 2030's onwards.
@@richardwills-woodward5340 Yes, so no need to sanction then.
@@richardwills-woodward5340 If it did nothing to improve people’s lives then why does the people support the party ?
@@vassilistzaferis4277 Because they are shielded from the outside world, controlled by the credit system and brainwashed at school into indoctrinated nonsense. We would all be in the same position if that was us.
@@richardwills-woodward5340 Haha... good joke. Go tell the ordinary Chinese people that and see if they laugh at your face.
Why is public transportation a profit center? Government collects tax and provide public services to citizens. Very few countries like US collects federal and state tax, property tax, variety of local taxes and yet wants to make money in public transportation. I also pay more to government to buy a pair of Nike because government sanctions a foreign country. The huge tax money i pay seems only to buy weapons to invade foreign countries.
No one pays taxes. And public transportation is important source for govt to get revenues
因为美国需要在各个可能的地方筹钱养军队
Yes everyone should be like Japan and have DECADES of economic stagnation to pay for high speed rail! Brilliant!
@@bftjoe you could say the exact same thing with the interstate highway system, which was a venture that has costed the US trillions.
Building an infrastructure like HSR is a long term plan. The HSR connect to tourist attractions and help the area boost their economy. They build HSR is not for the profit. They build it so that the economy can move freely inside the country. This is a very good way to boost a country economy as a whole. Not only big city
One very important argument for HSR is imo climate change and the future of air travel. The EU wants to be carbon neutral by 2050, other countries follow similar plans. I don't think that, at least at the moment, there is really a plan for how air travel can be made carbon neutral without relatively big price increases, that would make HSR economically much more attractive.
New argument I never heard before...
The European Union is gonna have a difficult time to be carbon neutral by 2050 when countries like Poland and Germany are still reliant on fossil fuels.
@@martiddy Gas ist not fossil fuel, es ist green und renewable energie. 🇩🇪🥸
@@mikicerise6250 with what is going on with Russia right now I wouldn't be so confident. Germany always puts the EU aka Nato above it's own interests
@@martiddy And considering they're phasing out their nuclear reactors... They're in trouble to say the least
I think people need to think about city’s economic benefit from HSR not just the face value…
Also, how else would you transport 1.4b people effectively?
As a pilot and aviation and car enthusiast, i still like HSR. There’s a place for all of them… not sure why many people think it’s one or the other.
When I lived in China I travel by HSR even for trips over 1500km because 1. comfort: cabin seats on the train have more legroom than business class on a plane, with no luggage restrictions; seats recline to almost flat, no turbulence or jet noise so you can sleep/work really well while gliding through beautiful scenery 2. convenience: super flexible, you can buy a ticket minutes from departure, free to cancel/reschedule whenever you like, with busy routes (Beijing to Shanghai) running trains every 20 mins; 3. stations right in city centers, subway connections usually less than 5 mins walk in the same station; 4. the network is so extensive that more towns are connected by HSR than air. Some cities will get 1-2 flights per week but 1-2 trains per hour.
I'm from India and in this regard i really appreciate China .
HSR is something we really need in India but it should be something cost effective as majority of Indian population could not afford it if the prices were comparable with China and EU .
Few days back , there was a train accident in India which killed almost 10 people due to "technical difficulties" . These things make me think again and again what our government is really doing for improving railway infrastructure.
Coming to land , The bullet train project in India whose deadline was 2023 Dec, has not even started due to "Land acquisition problems ". This is what is the advantage of China, where the state controls everything. In India , even for a cm of land , peole will drag you to court.
I think the first priority should be getting reliable regular rail established before dumping too much money into fancy tech. India isn't quite as big either, and its flights are less restrictive, so there's less need for long distance HSR routes.
@@appa609 India's also building semi fast railway system which would be working on hydrogen fuel. It would be completed by 2025 could send you a link if u wnt
Don't generalize that Indian population can't afford HSR. There are many domestic air routes that are too busy that can be tapped by HSR. Many people thought same before Delhi Metro too.
for building 45000 kilometers high speed railways ,china government has paid quite large amount of money to those land owner, the land using is not free
The real difference between plane and HSR is that HSR provide free Wi-Fi!!
1:42 Just reached 40,000 km in Jan., 2022.
I don't think the Chinese had a plan to dominate the HSR market like it is today. Their initial plans to import them from Japan and Germany were plagued by grossly expensive products from Germany and tech ban from Japan. The Chinese in the end had no alternative but to build their own.
Their alternative was planes and automobile which they too didn't have any manufacturing capabilities at the time and China didn't have large oilfields. So railways was their only option in the early 2000s.
I am not sure if you know this but Chinese had every plan to dominate the HSR market , they intitially tried to develop their own HSR prototypes none of which were safe & sophisticated enough for commercial use & mass manufacturing so they set up an international tender that invited the best HSR rolling stock makers in the world to make & supply trains for chinese HSR network but with a caveat that their should be complete tech transfer of their latest tech, partnership with CNR & CSR affiliated locomotive makers & significant training of chinese engineers in Rail telecommunication, signalling , rolling stock manufacturing ,track making etc.
The major rolling stock makers that included Kawasaki Heavy industries ,Siemens , Bombardier, Alstom all offered their best tech to local chinese partners due to FOMO of the huge chinese market. The chinese who had already set up a huge industrial base of railway universities , R&D labs , manufacturing companies etc readily absorbed all this tech & after running the initial set of trains manufactured in direct partnership with Foreign OEM's for some time they began designing & running a new partly indigenous set of trains called the "Hexie" series which was based on licensed foreign tech but with increased local content from local companies who had by then gained significant understanding from foreign OEM's tech transfer & had chucked out the Foreign partners by than.This reduced the cost of HSR tech due to scale at which chinese companies manufactured & the cost of labour in china. However the hexie series could still not be exported because they would constitute patent infringement because of liscensed tech so the chinese after gaining significant experience operating the HSR hexie series re-designed or significantly improved the liscensed tech they were based on to the point they did not infringe any patents & named them the "Fuxing " series began exporting them at significantly low prices & thats how chinese HSR became the behemoth that it is today.
The very grossly expensive products from japan & germany that you bad mouthed were the ones who established the foundation for HSR in china through which china could learn & innovate so its not that chinese developed the HSR tech from scratch it received significant outside help in doing that.
@ian x The Japanese wouldn't export the newer trains the Chinese wanted so they got the E3 series. Not so much as a ban but wasn't selling their newer train sets.
China's oil production reached 150 million tons in 1995 and 180 million tons in 2005, making it the fifth largest oil producer in the world.
我能回答你的问题。 我上大学一年纪从家乡安徽去湖南上大学，中间中转站是湖北的武汉。武汉是一个交通枢纽的地方。我记得刚去的时候，一个人乘坐绿皮火车。总行程花费了16个小时。由于绿皮火车的效率低下，我只能买到站票。那年放假回家乡，我遇到武汉火车站改建。再去学校的时候，我就有了新的选择，当然那时候价格比绿皮火车贵了一点，时间缩短成7个小时。一夜之间，我再也找不到那种时速160的老式火车了。火车旅行的效率变得更高，车次也变得更多，极大缓解了交通状况，不会有人没有座位了。
中国的高铁技术脱胎于德国，政府致力于改变国家的交通压力，开始的高铁出过一次很大的事故，当时的铁路部长已经下台。之后的状况开始变得越来越好。
另外我想回答有些人关于征地的疑问。
1 土地不属于农民私有，属于国家。农民有某块地的永久使用权和继承权，如果是住房用地，那么只能建房子，如果是农业用地，那么只能用于种植。
2 如果国家想要修建铁路，线路上遇到住房用地，或者农业用地。那么政府必须出钱购买土地的使用权。通常的情况是：住房价值，种植价值小于土地的商业价值。重庆那种山地城市是个例外。 所以 绝大部分土地的 主人非常愿意，将土地使用权转让给政府用作建设公共设施。 如果房子 拆掉了，那么政府负责重新选一块地建房，并负责搬迁费用。你可以看中国关于三峡大坝工程的 征地情况。如果遇到农业土地被征用，使得农民没有工作，那么政府需要为他们找到工作。大型的公共建设征地必须有公示，和法律文件。这就发生一个很有趣的现象，通常2个相近的地方为争抢修建铁路而吵架，因为我们都知道铁路经过的地方经济会极快的增长。我的老家就发生这种现象，两个地区的人在网络上为谁是最适合修铁路，疯狂的提建议和争吵。当然最后还是国家政府来确定。
至于是否主导高铁市场计划，这个我不知道。用能力有技术支持高铁的国家通常就那些国家。中国和东南亚老挝的高铁 是因为双方都有贸易需求。东南亚是温带气候，农业发达，农作物像水稻通常一年种2到3季，而中国是个超级进口市场。
至于大型油田的问题，中国当然有油田，只是另外个情况中国现在是工业制造业规模最大的地方，所以还得进口石油。
总结一下：不了解实际情况评论是不负责的。实际上高铁的费用已经和便宜。除去少数线路，基本不怎么盈利。中国的新疆（平均海拔4000米的地方）都有高铁。政府最初的目的是加速人口流动，加速货物贸易，提升区域的整体经济。至于出口高速铁路，应该是政府没想到的情况。因为那时候世界上都认为西班牙，德国，日本的高铁才是最好的。
You forgot to mention very important HSR logistical delivery under 2000 km. Mobile internet purchasing and sales services nationwide that enrich small town/village business using Alibaba ad. for example.
Xinjiang is selling fresh fruits and vegetables to china eastern cities daily basis.
The main problem in the western world picture investment only on fast profit return, not the benefit of the whole country (or continent with good HSR system). lf the people can enrich themselves then the country will automatically become happy, prosperous and powerful logical bottom line.
True...!
@Surrender Modi Yep! High IQ with high speed...!
I agree that the western view of profit is wrong, but I also believe that the opposite is also wrong. There is no point in creating something, even in the long term it only generates losses, even if profit is not the main objective, it is important not to have so many losses because at some point, someone will have to pay for it, nothing is free.
￥300 mln/day = $47 mln/day =$17 bln/year. $17 bln can support US military 2 weeks.
Crazy how much is devoted into bringing destruction and despair to fellow human beings. Priorities.
@@isoboy2125 democracy baby 🤞✌ nothing can beat the taste of freedom missile
There are other defense related items in other agencies. For instant, in 2020, the Department of Energy budget was $38.6 billion of which $19.7 billion was defense related. That funds were used to service the nuclear weapons and nuclear waste.
@@Mayangone Are you saying that other than the defense budget, funds from other departments are also defense related?
It's a matter of national resource prioritization. A 1998 report stated that the US spent $35 billion in operate and maintain nuclear forces, that was $96 million per day. Today, China is running RMB300 million (USD47 million) losses per day to operate and maintain HSR. That sounds like a good deal.
Ok he mentioned 3.3 billion riders - that works out to usd0.01 per ride.
My bad - that’s usd47m x 365 days divided by 3.3b = usd0.005 per ride - doesn’t sound like much of a subsidy!
@@cheewailee5115 The subsidy is for remote areas, lines like Beijing to Shanghai or Beijing to Guanzhou are very profitable and offsets the costs to more remote locations
@@melvinmathew4171 The problem is America is even more sparsely populated than China, and has a way lower density.
@@blackhole9961 Which is why no one is saying to build HSR in Montana. We're saying to build it on America's core high density route that is already a cash cow, the Northeast Corridor, and in lesser corridors like Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Tampa to Miami, and Chicago to Minneapolis.
The US car based society is not sustainable in the long run and it almost forces everybody to buy a car, which is a luxury item. US "suberbia" is the worst kind of city design. You live in the middle of nowhere, need a car for every trip but still have houses right next to you and in lot of cases even the yards are so small it kinda defets the purpose of having a house.
Not to mention suburbs are just terrible places to live anyway, endless soulless wastelands of ticky tacky boxes
Greedy oil and car industries lobbied against transportation and walkable areas and enabled this madness of a "Suberbia" design
Funny how most of the population actively chooses to live in suburbia rather than a denser urban city hell hole like New York.
Sunbelt cities like Dallas Houston Phoenix Atlanta and Orlando are growing fast for the very reason of suburbia is a great place to live.
Used cars are not a luxury item. What are you smoking.
@@bftjoe Anything that costs thousands of dollars is a luxury item, period, and especially so to someone living paycheck to paycheck because of this country's shit wages and absent safety net and abysmal housing situation. This even more important when considering repairs, which are unavoidable even with new cars and directly impact a person's ability to get to work. Something like half of all US adults are in a situation where a sudden $400 expense a serious struggle, and around one fifth of US adults would simply not be able to afford it.
You have missed one of the important point, we can continue our tasks that required high internet speed in the HSR without interrupted and airplane cant
The reason why China‘ HSR losing money is it keeps building more lines. Otherwise it can reach balance right away. CRRC as a whole group is profiting from infrastructure and cargo transferring and also real estate
They're just building those lines because they're trying to prove they can do it, irrespective of whether its feasible.
@@samuelefesoa7317 The thing is, at first I found it crazy they kept wanting to expand, but actually many of the plans (the new 8 horizontals and 8 verticals) are feasible. Cities not many know about like Guizhou, Nanchang all have over 3 million people and if HSR works in Europe amongst cities that are less dense with less population, there is no saying that it isn't feasible.
What isn't feasible is the lines to Urumqi and Lhasa, I agree with you in that those clearly are signals against separatism since at those distances, the demand is little and cost high. However, recently CRRC built a line in Zhejiang Province, and it is the first privately operated line by Foshan Group, China is slowly emulating Japan (which privatized its railways and made a profit in the 80s and 90s - Eg. JR Group.)
@@sw36jl There is a political factor in those provinces sure, but I think what China is doing there is better in the long run. Look at the case of the United States, railway raised migrant populations into the midwest, due to connectivity and infrastructure. Lhasa and Urumqi railways will create a population rise, as people see the logistical benefits in living in those outer cities and the areas in between and near. The railways have created a situation where internal migration is easier and feasible, while still being able to see relatives/friends in other provinces. Thus, China reduces brain drain, creates population growth, creates job opportunities/entrepreneurship, creates national unity, reduces the population of congested cities, and fosters tourism. You can't measure the benefits of railway systems on their net profits alone.
I heavily doubt that China will privatize their railways, especially considering how much they're revamping their state owned enterprises to be competitive in the market.
@@sw36jl Most of those « private » ventures are the result of accounting tricksin China. Similarly oa significant amount of JR ended up being bought by Japanese pension funds. The thing is infrastructure in China is viewed as a utility first and business second contrary to the US.
@@samuelefesoa7317 Proving to who? There's more to feasibility than profit. Some lines are not profitable now as they connect less developed regions but the idea is that these lines will help them develop and eventually yield returns indirectly
My life view was forever changed by my visits to Europe when I was in college and up to the pandemic, I wish we had at least some regular, reliable and fast rail here in the USA. I'm in New England/Mid-Atlantic, and. wanted to surprise my sister when she graduated from med school back in May 2021 because I had just gotten my second dose of the moderna vaccine at the end of April.
I started looking at Amtrak for Hartford, CT to Philadelphia and it was more expensive than flying, but both options were $350+, if we had something like Germany's ICE or the TGV/Eurostar I know that trip would've been 80 euros and take maybe 3 hours with stops, but the Amtrak tickets were so high and still took five hours, so I drove instead
Nobody should use Amtrak for that unless a true HSR line is built
Amtrak is slow and unreliable at times due to freight interferences, rail infrastructure simply not designed for high speed, but freight, it's the case in North America, however in Europe because passenger trains are prioritized, and not lobbied against, and has true dedicated high speed tracks, your experience will always be better and faster
@@Racko. that is not entirely true. Passenger trains are not proritised, but things will depend on the slot you buy and whether you are in time. Also in Europe sometimes passenger trains will have to wait for freight trains, at least within mixed systems.
@@arnoldhau1 Thats true, for alot of corridors but overall its not really the case in most European countries, if you look at Finland and Germany they have a total mixture of the two on the rail lines, Frankfurt to Berlin routes have freight trains and high speed trains sharing the same corridor, busy routes like London-Paris-Belgium-Amsterdam hardly sees freight because of strong passenger demand so they're put on different lines, Paris-Lyon or Barcelona-Mardrid are fully fledged high speed at almost all times, but in the NEC from DC-NJ-NY-Boston route using Amtrak's own high speed services have a mixture of dedicated high speed Amtrak lines and a freight one so avoid interference
Amtrak is obsolete. Heavily subsidized and inefficient.
I live in Germany and unfortunately, we have less railways than 20 or even 50 years ago. The auto industry runs supreme here as well and Cities are crowded with and built for cars instead of people. However, we have an even bigger problem because Germany is not that big and we need good public transport, but unfortunately, too many people and politicians like cars.
REALLY??? I really need to visit Germany because you all have more high speed railways than we could ever dream of here in the United States.
True, the car industry has kidnapped the public policy
Because in China, everything is controlled by a single party system, which is the Central government, and it's "No one is above the law" policy, so China can make as much as it wants, how it wants and when it wants, serving it's people, In most western nations, the autoindustry like you said usually lobby against rail so they can sell more cars, it's the same case in the US, back then it had such good transportation for people, unlike car and oil industries bought those transit companies all up, scrapped it away and bulldozed the walkable places all for roads, for cars, Germany's transportation is great, not the best but it's definitely reliable, considering high speed rail exists there
@@TheRailwayDrone Yes we do and it works, but cars work better. Our trains aren't on time 25% of the time and have a lot of technical issues. Also, the prices are too high. Air travel is cheaper than trains cars are faster because our infrastructure is being built for cars.
@@Racko. Yeah it's not bad, but comparing to what we could do if we'd wanted to. Other nations spend 2-5 times more money per person on public transport. It's not just money but also the way our cities were rebuild after WWII. We have so many cars it's kinda terrifying tbh
Maybe there is a correlation between high speed rail and housing prices. If a country has plentiful high speed rail, a worker should be able to live in a cheaper area and get to work within an hour in the morning. Perhaps this channel should do a crossover with B1M where you guys argue the case from a rail vs. construction/housing perspective.
That's not how high speed rail works.
Bullet trains aren't just faster commuter trains. The ticket price is normally in the region of a cheap flight. There are some youths in China that live a double life, living in one city but working in another and commuting to work on the bullet train, but they're the exception not the rule.
If you want to build commuter towns then regular commuter rail works better than high speed rail. The Greater Springfield project, for example, is one such town built to provide cheap housing for Brisbane workers. It only works though because the trains don't go too fast (~130kmph) and are therefore cheap to run.
A wonderful and comprehensive video covering High Speed Rail (Bullet Train). Unlike other videos on high speed rail that focus only on China, this video covers Europe and USA as well apart from China. It discusses feasibility of HSR vis a vis Air Travel too. Superb video.
Lol my experience on YT is that videos always attempt to talk less about the case of China. They very often portray China's success as a mere contingent consequence of, for instance, the US's failure. Videos as such are mere being alarmists for their own domestic politics. "If you wish to do something, make sure to use China as an excuse." So many videos on the internet would praise Japan to an extent that they just randomly feature an awesome video of Chinese HSR to stress how badass Japan is on this field.
"There is no way China is doing well because genius engineering, or strong state support or China's political economy. It must be due to their authoritarian governance therefore completely dismissible."
@@nehcooahnait7827
Any type of public transportation in the US (bus, subway, rail) is set to fail, the only purpose it serves is for car makers, oil and gas to say "told you so, go buy more cars".
I can't believe you got through this whole video without even saying the word "Spain" or "Madrid-Barcelona" (600km, two major cities, previous served by the world's busiest air route, case study in the dynamics you discuss). I'm affrendered!
Or Sweden. And mentioning Germany? It's so slow relative to France or Spain... Even though it's much more widespread
He completely avoided the 2nd largest HSR network in the world and 1st in Europe. Weird.
R u european? Outdated euro-centric mentality?
He is right because compared with China's system, the systems in europe is nothing, even combined, no matter in length, magnitude, speed, comfort, punctuality, etc. If u have ever had a chance to take the chinese and european hs train, u will know what i am talking about. I know truth hurts, I know why china is envied and hated, but fact is fact...
HSR in China is 70% of the world. World combined only 30%.
600km is a citywide Transportation length standard in China. Not worth mentioning
The NYC subway has 8 million people around it and they can't make a profit in a city where a car is a burden.
NYC subway can't make a profit because the MTA unions suck up over half of their operating cost on excessive labor. If the system was fully automated, like most modern subway systems now, this entire issue would be skated.
That doesn't even account for the fact that fares from the subway subsidize commuter rail services for suburbanites and bus services which all operate at heavier losses. If the system cut labor costs and split from other transport modes, it would be profitable. Many cities around the world have profitable metro systems (see Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.).
On the contrary, car infrastructure isn't profitable, even with gas taxes and tolls. It never has been and never will. We even just passed a giant infrastructure project that focused primarily on highways to bail out states because they are that much of a burden on a states budget.
Perhaps instead of calling them people, why not consider using passengers as a better noun for describing rail users?
Why did you avoid talking about Spain? . It holds the Largest HSR network in the world outside of China and the busiest HSR link between two cities (Madrid-Barcelona) in the world. The video feels biased if you talk about "HSR in the world" and completely avoid talking about the biggest network in Europe.
because as the title says, the video is about high speed rail in china, not spain
With 3,100km of track the Spanish high-speed AVE trains operate on the longest high-speed network in Europe. Running at speeds of up to 310 km/h this extensive network allows for fast connections between cities in Spain. Travel from Madrid to Barcelona in less than 3 hours!. it is good, but only 3100km, but better than US 0km.
@@boknows8263 Those 3100km make it the 1st in Europe and 2nd in
in the world ahead of Japan France and Germany which get a lot more attention in the anglo-sphere.
@@williamlin2076 The video talks about Germany, France and Japan which are all smaller than Spain's network.
@@alfrredd agreed. i think the author did not do enough research.
Lot of unnecessary dik measuring from China against Japan, South Korea and Europe.
Glad that india is investing first in upgrading dedicated freight cargo railway and then only now working on high speed railway between their major cities
Most provincial capitals in India are within 200 to 500 km to reach other, in fact Delhi the country's capital has several major cities within 500 km including 6 provincial capitals
I live in India and I can tell you that everyone here wants HSR, after all Indian railways is the backbone of India. As of now we just don't have enough resources and technology to build an extensive HSR system. But the first corridor of 500 KM is coming up with Japanese funding and tech, hope we will be able to expand it further.
You are dreaming. Japan itself doesn't have 500km trains and their technology is now one or two decades behind China. The one Japan is building in India is their dated model and wouldn't run faster than 250km/h while costing twice as Chinese's 350km/h trains.
Fun fact: Chinese HSR is the only ones in the world running smooth enough for a coin to stand for minutes.
The Chinese high-speed rails are losing money just in accounting. With such heavy infrastructure investment, it is trivial for the CFO of China Railway to log a loss.
Infrastructure investments only work if the infrastructure is used, a several hundred kilometer hsr line going from nowhere to nowhere is unlikely to be used. Out of the many of the HSR lines in China very few are actually used properly.
On the contrary , China intention to create HSR connect to cities over 1 million inhabitants not base on fast profit return . They built as a liability in term of an asset , however , the connection plan in time will flourish businesses making a liability into an asset ! . To prosper small cities need good logistic rail and road connections. The West vision and strongly believe that is bad, bad investment because construction groups will lose money in these projects . Better use cars and planes to side line HSR . Save the patrol market?🤔
Building an infrastructure like HSR is a long term plan. The HSR connect to tourist attractions and help the area boost their economy. They build HSR is not for the profit. They build it so that the economy can move freely inside the country. This is a very good way to boost a country economy as a whole. Not only big city
@@kjxkk5yearsago241 this economic boost will serve to pay for the expensive infrastructure that, in theory, was made to do this boost. Some HSRs in China are not even used as they should.
Great content. All very well researched and presented.
I just want to add another point. Building new high speed rail becomes exponentially more expensive as a country develops. Not only land prices rise, but you need to relocate more buildings, sewers, water pipes, even internet backbone cables (these things cost a lot). Price of labor also increases.
So the 300 Million loss today is offset by saving a ton of money compared to building the railway at a future date.
Forging a unified Chinese identity is also important. Railway is historically linked to forming the national German identity, and China needs a way to connect far provinces inhabited by minorities to the main culture and economy.
1:20 Eurostar is (for now at least) specifically for travelling between London and the capitals of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It doesn't go to Germany (despite past promises)
In China there’s a term “transfer Payment/finance”, which means though HSR operates on deficits everyday, but they are compensated/financed by the central government revenue to ensure an economic fare for all passengers.
Yes, in china you can even fly from southern to northern china for just over $ 30 to 200 rmb.
You know you are good for an unbiased / informative video when the author of the video call the Chinese party CPC instead of CCP. An uninformed / biased author would certainly give his position away by saying CCP.
what is the source of data that "China loses 300 million rmb per day in high speed rail?"
What is source of Chinese economy?
Low density really isn't a valid excuso for any large country though, since nearly every country has a cluster of big and economically important cities, be it the Northeast Corridor, western California, or Central Texas in the US, Toronto-Montreal in Canada, Sydney-Melbourne, Rio-São Paulo, Buenos Aires-Rosario, and so on. All quite large cities in relatively close proximity in countries with low overall population density. Hell, even the biggest country on Earth has its two largesr cities linked by high speed rail.
It's quite lame to just say that the reason HSR is subsidized is because its head is appointed by the party.
Yeah, public companies in China don't work like that lol
Cool video. You kind of touched on it with Australia; Canada is likely similar. I don't think we could support a HSR system. The distances are vast and our population density is low.
That's actually not true.
For high speed rail overall density of a country is kind of irrelevant rather it's the distance between major cities. After all Russia has a high speed train between Moscow and St. Petersburg. In both Australia and Canada countless studies into the viability of high speed rail have been conducted and they always come back saying it's viable.
For Australia the cities of Brisbane, Gold-Coast, Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide are all within that 200-1,000km range that makes bullet trains viable (though not from end-to-end). The same is true in Canada for the corridor including Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, London and if you wanted to continue across the border into America Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland (though it's around a bit of a bend so speed would be limited) as well as a second corridor in Cascadia. No, you're probably not going to run a bullet train from Vancouver to Toronto or Sydney to Perth but looking at Russia the fact they can't run a high speed service between Moscow and Vladivostok doesn't effect the viability of their Sapsan service.
I was definitely thinking of a HSR following the trans Canada highway. The east is all close together. When I said vast distances I was thinking of coast to coast
@ Yes, and as we know from the 2013 Infrastructure Australia report it still passes the cost-benifit analysis.
The overall population density of your country is irrelevant. All that matters for the viability of high speed rail is that the local population density along whatever corridor you're clearing is high enough to support it. That is to say: cities over a certain size, close together and in roughly a straight line. Australia, Russia, Brazil, Canada, America and lots of other countries with low overall population densities have corridors like that.
we can only support it in the VIA corridor (southern ontario > quebec)
The density of the country itself doesn't matter. All that matters is the size of the individual cities that are being connected. Toronto to Montreal for example is dense enough because they're both large cities with lots of travel between the two. They're also not too far apart from one another. The Eastern Canadian cities from Windsor to Quebec City also all line up well.
No one is saying to build one from Vancouver to Halifax. Canada is so ridiculously concentrated in the 100 mile zone from the US border that it makes perfect sense.
Also air/car travel is heavily subsidized by the government. If the line isn't profitable, neither are other modes (that's a big if as many HSR routes connecting even smaller cities turn profit). The government regularly pays to build airports for airlines, pay for their border control and security checkpoints, run air traffic control, etc. Considering air travel already hosts extremely tight profit margins, this would be made tighter, or even sink airlines if they had to pay for all of their shit. Highway systems also are entirely non-profit services, so they consistently lose money.
I think India is the best suited nation for HSR due to density and proximity of multiple equally sized or bigger cities. They have planned around 11 lines in total.
India will face the same obstacles the US face. Also considering the fact that India has a tighter budget and political opposition.
Not just in building these mega infrastructure projects but the fact that the lines will run at a loss for a long time will put huge pressure on the government which is small compared to China. I dont think any country can achieve what China has done considering the scale at which they have done this...but India is on track hope things workout
India is also building what's called semi-high speed trains (max. 160 kmph). In the next few years, around 75 semi-HSR trains are expected to run between India's largest cities.
They should connect only tier 1 cities.
Indian dream，It will take 200yrs
No, it is Vietnam who best suited the situation, similar to Japan which already has hsr. And it needs it most.
8:00 historical roots is important. But the land institutions changed after 1980s and it doesn’t provide that much convenience when it comes to land purchases.
8:06 The state doesn’t own all the lands in China.
Collectivization/collective is not the same as nationalization/State ownership.
Tired of talking to folks that are mind-fucked by the neoliberal idea of private ownership as if there’s nothing else, as if any alternative is inherently wrong/inferior.
Even the institution of private ownership of land is considered as a form of institutional innovation of humanity.
There’s no point of talking about property rights or ownership in China if you can’t even figure out those important concepts.
Actual land acquisition process isn’t exactly that different from what you would be expecting elsewhere. There are all kinds of big or small changes on land institutions throughout the years since the 1980s.
I get a strong feeling that nobody actually cares about how things actually works in China. It is all about how outside observers believe what it may works judging by the “looks” of it. “Oh socialism, or collective ownerships! Then they must work like this and this, that and that, cuz it is totally communist, very much like the USSR.” “Lands must have been confiscated and property rights and private properties must be destroyed to build HSR, and that is why they can achieve something we cannot cuz they are fundamentally different from ‘us’.”
Nice video, but you forgot that railways are a public service, not a business. They don't "lose" money, they cost money.
When you can't pay the cost, you have the loss
Most of the central and eastern parts of China are densely populated, just like West Europe and the HSR can make money in those areas. What makes China's HSR losing money are the lines built in the western, less populated, less industrialized area, pretty much for political reasons.
I Guess it's socially and economically viable.
When one looks at the situation holistically, the profits lost in the high speed rails are more than recaptured many folds, by so many other sectors of the economy !
Really well made video!
For Chinese standards, HSR is considered to go 350km/h
source?
@@lpt2606 watch more HSR line graph vids and read their comments, u'll see what I mean
@@lpt2606 是的，在中国，时速不能超过300公里每小时，好意思叫高铁？
@@lpt2606 Most of the major routes reach the top speed of 350km/h. By the way, 250km/h ~ 350km/h ones are called HSR in China according to official standard, with a few exceptions though. Some of the earlier 200km/h lines are also considered as HSR.
As someone who lived in Japan in the Late 80's thru the 90's even then the Shinkansen for me was best option, I learned after my first trip from Osaka to Tokyo. As most meetings occurred in the downtown core of Tokyo first trip I took by instinct I took the plane, its what we do in the West usually. While the flight time was fine the whole check-in process, getting to your gate, praying you get taxi/take-off clearance is not delayed ETC you get the picture. I did that only once and after that never flew to Tokyo again and always took the train for multiple reasons, no check-in required if I need to take a bag it just goes overhead with me.
The train is always on time and I mean ALWAYS baring some sort of natural disaster or power issue, and it drops me at Tokyo Station right downtown could walk to where I had to go too. Taking the plane it waiting to de-board the plane, look around for where you baggage will be on the conveyor belt, then walk across part of the terminal to get a local train, etc etc you get the picture. While train as far as ground speed is slower total travel time to getting to the door of my Hotel was less and by far more relaxing a trip on the whole.
Japan doesn't have more rail because of density but because post world war 2 they had no (natural) resources and rail was meticulously planned and invested in to counter the US with their new car-centric development.
我在中国经常坐高铁到处出差，一般而言高铁在5个小时以内能到达的地方我都会选择坐高铁，无论从舒适性、便捷性和准时性，高铁都好过飞机太多。但如果要在高铁上坐5个小时以上，那仍然是很难受的，因此超出这个时间的话，哪怕没那么舒服、要花更多时间到机场提前等候、飞机经常延误、机场比较偏远，我还是会优先选择坐飞机。
HSR in China is extremely convenient
Subsidising THE MOST USED (BY FAR) passenger and freight rail network in the world with just 17 billion a year (about 0.3% of their annual budget and about 0.1% of their GDP), then thats a GREAT use of public funds.
US spends 3 TIMES that on "foreign aid"
China is making long term investments that benefit the nation. Some lines may always lose money on paper, but the return to society is worth the investment.
1:30 majority of Indians who watch RUclips know about HSR and their benefits because there is one route in India in which Japanese Skinkasen E-5 class will run at the speed of 320km/hr in india in the year 2026 between mumbai and ahmedabad. The first Shinkasen will run in the year 2024 in Gujarat at short distance
In other words, a much delayed Shinkansen project that won't be fully completed before 2026 is all Indians know about HSR. Cool.
Very poorly informed video where China is concerned. HSR in China is not power politics. That sounds like US propaganda. The reason for HSR is economics as the Chinese understand a fundamental truth of developing a country. Communications! When you link areas economy follows. That's the purpose of all the rail links being built by the Chinese in Asia, Latin America, Africa. Already those places with see economic growth and development along the lines. The same happens in China.
As for the Chinese government just taking land that is also true in the west. Eminent Domain give these governments the right to take private land for public use..
Chinese space program is motivated by personal power politics? Not science? Chinese scientists just recently recreated an artificial "sun" with their Tokamak fusion reactor. They also created an artificial "moon" in a magnetic filed in a vacuum. That's all power politics? Not science? You lost all credibility there, dude.
Finally, with all the headaches that accompany air travel even under normal circumstances, you can expect to see people gradually shift to HSR. The time element wouldn't matter when you're faced with delays in traffic traveling to and from an airport...
The US has no national definition of high speed rail, but some federal agencies describe it as greater than 125mph (201 km/h), while others describe it as greater than 150mph (241 km/h). Yeah that's slower than 250km/h, but it's still a lot faster than 150.
The Acela only does 150mph now, but is getting an upgrade to 160mph (257 km/h) when the new trainsets roll out, albeit in very limited areas, so the US will have HSR by the 250 km/h definition soon by the barest thread.
To be fair, the Type 0 Shinkansen, the first HSR in the world, topped out at 210km/h in its initial form.
Technically by design the bombardier Acela can do 160mph it’s just limited to 150.
Good show. I know you can't cover every thing, so let me just add; After 1949, with the forming of the CPC, they gave all the rural farmers enough land to build a house. They also get this land tax free. So nearly all families in China own a house.
China is losing money to make fast transportation affordable; some countries are locking people in buying expensive cars so that the riches can travel to the space.
How much did the US lost in the US interstate highway?... Well it is a social obligation of the US govt to absorb those losses, and it outweighted by all the economic benefits it brought to the regions it serves. China's high speed rail is just the same intentions.
China's HSR which travels at a speed of up to 250 KM/H needs to be powered by 96,000W of juice, which means it costs China 96KWH of electricity to power a HSR of up to 8 cars to travel at 250 KM/H.
When the HSR is sped up to 350 KM/H, it uses more juice. The power requirement jumps to 144KWH.
A 8-car Chinese HSR can seat up to 500 passengers. It uses 144KWH (per hour) of power.
Let's do the math :
To move every single passenger on a Chinese HSR for a distance of 350 KM, it requires 288WH of electricity, or 1,036,800 Joules of energy.
How much energy does it need for an airplane to fly one passenger, for a distance of up to 350 KM ?
This comparison is not fair. How many people can one airplane carry in one trip ?
We can do the max range of a A350-1000 which is 16100km with ~6%fuel reserve of its max 159 000 litres of jet fuel. We can take the avg energy density of 9.6kWh/litre so 1465344kWh of energy. Let's say it's fully booked with unhumanly max eco config to fly this extremly long haul with 480pax that yields 2989.2kWh/PAX with the absolute best case scenario.
For HSR assuming your matrices are correct at 350kph gives 16100/350*144/500 = ~13.2kWh/PAX no way the number will match up.
With energy consumption I found at bare average of 3.64kWh/100km perPAX with CRH380A@300kph from 2012 during its normal operation it gives 586kWh/PAX for the same trip ~19.3% cost of a A350. According to gov.cn the number is at ~1/12 = 8.3%.
Even at 30% conversion efficiency and all the electricity are generated from fossil fuel the total fuel energy is still 1953kWh/PAX with my worst case number and 827kWh/PAX from the state media.
Your numbers are completely wrong. Max energy consumption for 8 cars is a little over 9 Mw, with 96 mw you could power a hole city
High-speed rail in China is like Highway in US, it's good to certain extent but some point they just build because they can after most of the important route is already finished. /but I agree that US need more HSR, for now at least they start small step with private HSR like Brightline (thought their speed didn't reach 250km/h until their extension lines finished) I hope they success.
US only has handful of sutable regions for HSR anyway; Eastern Coast, Western Coast, Florida, Texas and maybe Chicago that it.
Yet none of their "handful of regions" are served by HSR. Even by the ridiculous US definition of HSR, which is equivalent to the European definition of "regional rail". :p
@@mikicerise6250 yes, hopefully US will see the importance of HSR in the future, many start to turn away from car so at least that the start.
Those handful of regions are like half the country though, so it wouldn't be such a bad idea, but it is sadly probably unrealistic that the US government will agree to such projects in the future.
It is too expensive to build in USA. California tried spent 100 Billion for LA to San Francisco but couldn’t even finish it so plan to change the route to two small sized cities in agriculture region. It cost 5 times as much as similar length in China because of environmental, labor, eminent domain….
@@mikicerise6250 They have 40,000 km of hsr rail, more than all the hsr rail of the rest of the world combined. And they plan to almost double (70,000km) it by 2035. Their aim is to connect all their cities. And yes, their HSR is profitable, western media reporting them as losing money was a lie. It was nothing but to discredit China's accomplishment, sour grapes I'm sure.
Example compare to a A350-1000:
We can do the max range of a A350-1000 which is 16100km with ~6%fuel reserve of its max 159 000 litres of jet fuel. We can take the avg energy density of 9.6kWh/litre so 1465344kWh of energy. Let's say it's fully booked with unhumanly max eco config to fly this extremly long haul with 480pax that yields 2989.2kWh/PAX with the absolute best case scenario.
With energy consumption I found at bare average of 3.64kWh/100km perPAX with CRH380A@300kph from 2012 during its normal operation it gives 586kWh/PAX for the same trip ~19.3% cost of a A350. According to gov.cn the number is at ~1/12 = 8.3%.
Even at 30% conversion efficiency and all the electricity are generated from fossil fuel the total fuel energy is still 1953kWh/PAX with my worst case number and 827kWh/PAX from the state media.
16000 km nonstop would be a world record route and is also the worst case for fuel efficiency. As you probably know, all fuel-carrying vehicles loosely obey Tsiolkovsy's rocket equation in that the required fuel increases exponentially with demanded range. Any given airliner will get ~30% better average efficiency flying around half its maximum range.
I'm also not sure your maximum fuel maximum load configuration is even capable of takeoff. The OEW of an A350-1000 is 155t for a 369 seat config. A full fuel load is 124.65t, totalling 279.65t. MTOW is 316t. To fit 480 passengers+12 crew, the average weight of each human plus carryon onboard would have to be less than 73.8kg. The FAA reports an average of 85kg per pax. You'd be about 14 tonnes over.
But yes the train is more efficient.
Would be nice if Lei would translate the renminbi value to US dollars in the videos so that I don't have to do that extra step.. I would believe most of Leis viewers are far more familiar with the value of a dollar than one renminbi.
By the way, the daily loss of 300 million renminbi to dollars is about 47 million USD in loss per day. A little over 17 billion USD annually. That is quite a bit of money, but plenty of projects in the US that wastes billions every year too.
Ok. So roughly 6-1/2 to 1. . Thanks.
The chinese government doesn't build infrastructures to make money off its citizens, it build rails, roads , etc. because it is its duty to provide for infrastructures for them. Rails and road are built by them not for profit but for development and progress to all the cities along it. These are the unquantifiable benefit and reason why they build them. They have a saying, "If you want to be rich, build roads".
That $17 billion a year cost to the chinese government, supposing it's true and not a westerm media invention, is nothing compared to the $8T the US spent in its War on terror with nothing to show for it. That $8T could have been spent to solve every internal problem in the US like homelessness, cheap education, cheap medical and still have enough left to build several parallel high speed railway s from west to east and north to south. Don't worry about China subsidizing its HSR, worry more about you country, it is in a lot worse troubles.
In that China spends about 1/2 of what the US spends on defense relative to the size of its economy, their annual subsidy of HSR is an incidental expense.
@@rap3208 You are right. The chinese government doesnt care about profits. They know they have a large populatuion hence they need an efficient public transport system. And thats where high speed rail comes in.
China's high speed rail system is built for their people. China's even got a high speed rail line running to Tibet even though they're losing millions a year on the service. Could you imagine a Private Enterprise doing such a good deed for the Citizens of their country? Look at USA's Corporatism ... 1% of USA Citizen's own 90% of USA's Wealth ... meanwhile they've got 35 Million citizens living in either Streets (e.g. Kensington Philadelphia), Tents (e.g. Venice Beach California), Caravans (e.g. Kentucky), or Cars (e.g. Miami).
It is too expensive to build in USA. California tried spent 100 Billion for LA to San Francisco but couldn’t even finish it so plan to change the route to two small sized cities in agriculture region. It cost 5 times as much as similar length in China because of environmental, labor, eminent domain….
China has a superior government structure
@@qjtvaddict dictatorship government can get things done easily, either good or bad. apparently good thing in this case.
Another problem with the California high speed rail project was that planes would still outclass it in speed and frequency.
All the highspeed raill Network costed 1.8 trillion $ to build, meanwhile US Afghanistan War alone costed 2.7 trillion $ during 20 yrs occupation with 700 billion plus defense budget annually 😂😂😂😂😂
@@directxxxx71 An American high speed rail network would likely cost the equivalent GDP of Japan or even more considering how California went
300 million RMB is roughly 50 mil USD, which translates to roughly 18 billion USD a year, which would’ve been enough to build a couple carriers
But, this video failed to mention the gain of HSR in China, it booms the economy.
@@_seola_ for sure. Intangible benefits are enormous. I just wanted to highlight the enormous amount that was invested in infrastructure, which would’ve been impossible in US, because they would rather build carriers
The 300 million RMB dollar lost per day are the expenditure on further expansion & debt interest. If we are just looking at the HSR financial sheet(without considering it’s debt and expansion) China HSR are profiting at around 40 billion USD in 2019, But in fact, since China HSR and the bank who loan money to the HSR are also state own, the debt interest are just really left hand to right hand, and in this process it actually boosted M2 in a good way by allowing more circulation.
peak american brain. "why spend money on economic development and public services when we could murder some foreigners with it"
@@afgor1088 tru, but ngl nuclear bomb background pictures look slapin hot
(joke btw)
HSR in China is fully owned and fully manufactured by government, in fact, one side lost will benefit the others locally and not the foreigners.
In terms of the main indicators of comprehensive transport development, the operating length of railway will grow from 146,000 km in 2020 to 165,000 km in 2025. The total length of high-speed railways in operation will increase from 38,000 km in 2020 to 50,000 km in 2025.
At 0:13 you mentioned "loses 300 million RMB per day running ther HSR". One fundamental question: To whom is the money losing to? Peoples in China or Stockholders in NYSE?
China Railway or CR, is a state-owned sole proprietorship enterprise，has nothing to do with NYSE
Although the Chinese government has been running at a loss. At the same time, it is also providing jobs.
China high speed rail network 40.000 thousand not 35 thousand
You missed alot of other good points as to why HSR is better, including the political and macro-economic factors. But otherwise, interesting video.
1:00 that's an rer pulling into a station just down the road form me! That's cool to see. It's far from rundown, and has high quality services, except on the C, which is the line shown.
china has a big population but mainly focus from central to the coastal. it is feasible to build then. they don't overbuild to xinjiang. it still serve as a good use for China military to movr assets especially during the india trying to invade Xinjiang.
Although lands is indeed owned by the state in China, what is on it belongs to the owner, from the house to a blade of grass. As of 2008 forced eviction is illegal and owners must be PROPERLY compensated (it's now seen as a goldmine if anyone wants your land) -check out the phenomenon of 'nail houses' if you want to see those who refuse every offer. This is why the world's longest bridges -hundreds of miles long -are sections of the HSR network as it passes through the more expensive provinces, as they worked out it's more cost-effective to build on stilts -literally on 8:18
Very rare westerners know the truth. Millions of millions Chinese get rich just because the government paid them millions dollars for their move, some of them even got 2-3 more houses relocated from China government
Do they factor in the carbon emitted in constructing the required bridges and pylons for HSR? afaik Concrete in itself is a big CO2 emitter
In China, there is no financial loss to operate high-speed trains. The "loss" is attributed to construction costs which is amortized for financial reporting. It is not a private business as the state owns all the infrastructure and it can generate wealth by several means to fund the construction and operations without borrowing foreign money and does not have to pay anyone back.
Something belonging to the state does not make it immune from being in debt. nothing is free
We need more HSR
High speed rail has been a disaster for China. Many trains travel near empty. The trains can't carry freight. The system looses huge amounts of money every year. It has sent local governments into extreme debt. China needed a heavy rain network that can carry freight and passengers, not a ridiculous HSR network. Commuting to HSR in China was a typically poor decision by the CCP.
Hey…I think that first red train was The Trolley in San Diego!😁🙌🏼🇺🇸looks like its in the downtown area.
India is building both semi high-speed and high speed railway lines.
Long live the people's republic of china The world works scientifically in the history of humanity As a quality modern technique I wish you the world-leading success I love you on behalf of the people of Kurdistan ✌️✌️✌️✌️❤️❤️❤️🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇳
Meanwhile the US lost 2tr dollars in 20yrs whith no thing to show for it, I rather make loses running hsr than military intervention in other nations
Shit! High-speed rail is the most annoying means of transportation in my life! So is the subway! He doesn't allow you to smoke up there! Fuck it!
High speed rail, will be the preferred mode of transportation in the future. As technologies improve, it will be more convenient and economical. Furthermore it will open more economic opportunities for people along the routes.
Saudi has Haramain High speed train that travels 300km/hr.
China Railway total tracks (high speed)built:
4,200 km (2,100km )2021,
4,900 km (2,500km) 2020,
8,400km (5,400km) 2019, 👈
4,600km (4,100km) 2018,
China Railway uses EU standard to define “high speed”.
Every Public Transportation loss money in the US, and much less people ride on it.
During 2008 crisis, when US gave free money to private banks to stimulate economy, china decided to build HSR all over the country.
When the HSR between Madrid and Barcelona in Spain was opened, the parent air route went from being the busiest national air route in the world to almost nothing. And this even without liberalisation of the HSR that is happening now (more than one company operating trains in the same tracks to create competiton and lower prices even more).
The fact that the headlines about HSR unprofitability being specific to 2021 is suspicious to me. People are travelling a lot less all around the world due to a (hopefully) temporary external factor. Pretty much every airline was bleeding out through 2020 and 2021 as well. I suspect the Chinese HSR is just suffering from the same thing.
Or you mean the distance, while the total disrance for commercial distance in China is over 30000 km and will be 40000 km in 2025. So what comparison can be referred with 600 km in Spain?
It is already 40000 km at the end of 2021.
Aerospace engineer here. Point 2. at 5:25 isn't that accurate. When looking at emissions alone, the speed makes aircraft far more efficient than most modes of transport; a A220 per passenger is significantly more efficient than a Prius. The engines don't produce "more pollutants'; even the NOx emissions are far below those of diesel. Versus a highspeed train on a nuclear network, that's when HST's beat out the aircraft, but only up to a point like you said.
Airplanes emit their emissions higher up which is more damaging plus the trails increase heat reflection.
@@montiro8999 These have been shown to make no effect to reflection; it would be like holding up a needle on a sunny day and saying it’s giving you shade that you can feel. At cruise turbofans are optimized and combust fuel at very high efficiency; most of what you see is water vapour (which is also another display of efficient combustion).
@@Shankovich Many other chemical byproducts of incomplete hydrocarbon fuel combustion, including volatile organic compounds, inorganic gases, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, oxygenated organics, alcohols, ozone and particles of soot have been observed at lower concentrations. The exact quality is a function of engine type and basic combustion engine function, with up to 30% of aircraft exhaust being unburned fuel.
Contrails, by affecting the Earth's radiation balance, act as a radiative forcing: they trap outgoing longwave radiation emitted by the Earth and atmosphere more than they reflect incoming solar radiation. In 1992, the warming effect was estimated between 3.5 mW/m2 and 17 mW/m2.[15] Global radiative forcing has been calculated from the reanalysis data, climate models, and radiative transfer codes; estimated at 12 mW/m2 for 2005, with an uncertainty range of 5 to 26 mW/m2, and with a low level of scientific understanding.[16]
The effect varies daily and annually: night flights contribute 60 to 80% of contrail radiative forcing while accounting for 25% of daily air traffic, while winter flights contribute half of the annual mean radiative forcing while accounting for 22% of annual air traffic.[17] Contrail cirrus may be air traffic's largest radiative forcing component, larger than all CO2 accumulated from aviation, and could triple from a 2006 baseline to 160-180 mW/m2 by 2050 Without interventions.
All from Wikipedia,you can check it yourself
I live in China and a big thing you are missing is that because the HSR is state owned and many airlines are not, the state "encourages" people to take the train - by subsidising it and artificially inflating the price of flights. Taking the train in China can be a hassle too as you also need to pass through security and many train stations are outside city centers e.g. Wuhan railway station. The HSR system is very good though, it's just artificially better as the tickets are subsidised and flying is a massive hassle due to rampant delays
I would be like if the British government made all Eurostar tickets half price, and then charged all airlines a massive tax and delayed every flight from Heathrow
You're very wrong. All major airliners are state owned in China.
all airlines are owned by the state. I am from China
Eurostar just runs between uk and france.
The US still has an extensive rail infrastructure. It's just used for freight. Not as glamorous, but in fact a better use of resource than transporting people
Heheh.. majority US is parking lot and public transportations is the main topic of energy efficiency and HSR is the king in public transportation, come to any nation in East Asia either Japan or SK ask foreigners who live there about HSR or rail transit system overall
@@gamh03 I'm from East Asia. All I'm saying is that America is making use of its rail infrastructure in the most efficient way possible
@@sciencecw oh, sorry to misunderstand but their freight rail infrastructures are legacy from WW2 and Russia have that extensive freight rail infrastructure too and compare to China that have almost the same land masses with US they use railways for both freight and passengers, not so the most efficient or better use of recourse.
@@gamh03 Trains, like ships, are great for cargo because they are energy efficient but not as fast and versatile as road and air. People like to ride trains, but they do not understand the true cost of it
@@sciencecw cars are less efficient
Australia has no business buying HSR. All of Australia is only 25m people, spread across a continent.
Eurostar spans around the whole of europe? ehm no... Eurostar is just the service that connects the UK with the EU under the channel. Also the video footage is a train of the Swiss Federal Railway that may have one of the best rail networks but doesn't really have any highspeed services at all.