China has officially opened the world's longest high-speed rail route

look at that smog! reminds me of L.A, only worse.

Yep looking at smog.  On the other hand they are using electricity if it came from hydro source and not king coal...

Bet the project wasn't stalled by numerous studies and hindered by snail darters and insects etc.  They just went ahead and built it.  Not saying that this was the right thing especially if they run people off the land, or impacts geology etc.  Just a comment on just getting something done.

Yup, that's the way they do things in China,,,,,,,,oh wait,,,,maybe that's why some part of their "high speed" rail line FELL DOWN!  Plus, the design engineer committed suicide?

The polution is very bad in the interior.  It wasn't that bad when I was in Shanghai last year, but still thicker than anything we see here nowadays.

 

Yes, the head design engineer committed suicide over the cost cutting that was going on with construction.  I don't know the exact circumstances of it, but corruption is big there, as bad or worse than anything we have ever had here in this country.  With a big "Hero" (to use the Soviet term, not sure what the Chinese would use) project, this was carefully watched to attempt to minimize such issues.  Don't think they had much success in that department.  If they can eliminate the corruption, China could really become even bigger than they already are.

Hope theres no bad castings on any of those, at 187mph wouldn't be pretty with a train full of passengers

It already hasn't been pretty! Some of their other big concrete structures have also "fallen down".

I guess China-bashing is popular these days, but the fact is that they have an expanding high-speed rail network that outshines anything in the USA. Not to mention their Mag-lev train which attains 268 mph in regular service.

 

To help maintain some perspective regarding accidents, consider that:

On average in 2009, 93 people were killed on the roadways of the U.S. each day.

And this is with numbers trending downwards for many years -

Traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 63 years (1949). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...aths_in_U.S._by_year

 

 

 

Too bad it will probably be plagued by severe, continual loss of life.  There was an article about the hurried pace of construction and all the short cuts taken, one involved mixing ash in with the concrete to strengthen the piers.  This would be fine but when the proper type of ash ran out, they substituted regular fly ash, which has the opposite effect, weakening the structure.  What doesn't fall down immediately will literally crumble to dust in five years.  Best case is unreliable service and frequent breakdowns.  Worst case is that all those faulty piers let go with a full train zipping over them....  The govt ain't all bad, oversight is there for a reason.  

You probably haven't been in Los Angeles recently; not much smog left.

 

 

 

 

 

Sour grapes?

 

 

"Forty people died last summer in a crash on a rapid train line in eastern Zhejiang province and the entire high-speed scheme has been dogged with reports of corruption."

The phrase sour grapes is an expression originating from "The Fox and the Grapes," one of Aesop's Fables. It refers to pretending not to care for something one wants, but does not or cannot have.

 

In this case, high speed rail with really fast trains and an expanding network. Of course China has not achieved the levels of harmony and perfection that we enjoy in the United States!

Ace

 

No envy here.  Even if there were no construction quality or safety issues I have absolutely no interest in turning a 2 1/4 hour airplane ride into a 7 or 8 hour train trip.

 

Given that an airliner can make about 3 round trips in the time it takes a train set to make one and the price of rail line vs. airport construction there is no way that this is a cost effective way to move people.

Bingo! Having said that, when someone finds a horse that can pull a buggy full of passengers at 40mph, I'll be the first to get one

Sour grapes?  Are you kidding me?  There are SERIOUS flaws throughout the entire line.  I would love to see more rail, but at what cost?  And if they ever propose something similar here, all we will hear about is all the deaths in China. 

Hello Ace...............

 

Seeing us riding in that chinese high speed train NO THANKS, after all the quality control problems in the model trains made in china we having and chinese junks at the wal-mart .

 

the woman who loves the S.F.#5011

Tiffany

 

In their 'absolute' value, they are beautiful...much the same as our model trains on model layouts. It does make me wonder if there can ever be a project where perfection is the goal...

 

If we had a similar network of trains here in the US - I would gladly give up the airports.

The way people talk here, you'd think these Chinese high-speed trains were crashing every day! I see a lot of frustration, masked envy and cultural prejudice that the Chinese are actually passing us in the development of high-speed rail, as have the Japanese, French,  English, Germans, Swedish ...

 

Guess you folks liked Chinese railways better when they were still running lots of big American-style steam locos, just 20 years ago.

 

Chinese maglev achieves 268 MPH in regular service.

@Ace..thanks for this topic, who sadly turned into a China bashing one..seem some people forget that every high speed train had their share of issue at the beginning (even ongoing)..and sadly accident do happen on any of them.

 

Wonder what they gonna to say when the first ever African High speed line will open in Marrocco in about 2 years now..

 

Rendition video with French commentary (easier to understand than the Arab one)

 

 

All the best for a great new year...

 

I would love to see high speed rail here in the US. But taxpayers don't want to pay for it and private industry knows it won't make any money.

Nice!

 

You're a real piece of work, buddy.  Do some reading, and not just the PR articles. 

If you focus all your attention on the accidents, you're missing the big picture.

Supposedly the NY subway system sees, on average, a death per week.  This is due mostly to patrons falling off the platform.  It is not due to platforms collapsing or any mechanical error.  Injury and death are both, unfortunately, part of railroading.  I completely understand that.  I am not even calling into question the engineering of the Chinese rail line.  What I am telling you is that corner after corner has been cut during the construction and you will see major, and at times catastrophic, failure of this system over the course of operation.  Substandard materials have been used and concrete supports grow weaker by the day.  This is not a huge secret.  But don't believe me, how about the South China Morning Post?

 

The problem lies in the use of high-quality fly ash, a fine powder chemically identical to volcanic ash, collected from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants. When mixed with cement and gravel, it can give the tracks' concrete base a lifespan of 100 years.

According to a study by the First Survey and Design Institute of China Railways in 2008, coal-fired power plants on the mainland could produce enough high-quality fly ash for the construction of 100 kilometres of high-speed railway tracks a year.

But more than 1,500 kilometres of track have been laid annually for the past five years. This year 4,500 kilometres of track will be laid with the completion of the world's longest high-speed railway line, between Beijing and Shanghai. Fly ash required for that 1,318-kilometre line would be more than that produced by all the coal-fired power plants in the world...

...Professor Wang Lan , lead scientist at the Cement and New Building Materials Research Institute under the China Building Materials Academy, said that given poor quality control on the mainland, the use of low-quality fly ash, and other low-grade construction materials, was "almost inevitable" in high-speed railway construction.

 

The underlying concrete which is composed of water, cement, aggregate and fly ash i.e because of an excess (above 6%) of fine carbon particles, the concrete may not reach the compression strength that is specified in the design, or could disintegrate after a number of years in service. Or the excess carbon may interfere with the function of other additives. The strength is always an an issue, but even more so in critical applications like curved viaducts or other applications where some of the concrete may be subject to concentrated loads.

Given that an airliner can make about 3 round trips in the time it takes a train set to make one and the price of rail line vs. airport construction there is no way that this is a cost effective way to move people.

Maybe back in the last decade but.. there is a reason why Amtrak commands 60% of the Boston, NYC-Washington DC travel Market.

As long as we have Big business running America with their lobbyists and monopolistic policies, the US will hardly achieve where other couniires now surpass us.

I work in China and have ridden both Mag Lev in Shanghai and the high speed train from Tianjin to Beijing. the accident last year was from a power failure on the tracks.

sad to see but I will not hesitate to take the train again. its a sweet ride. Its too bad we don't have anything like it here. And yes the smog is bad, stated to take five years off your life if you live in Beijing.

During my recent trip to China we road this and many other trains all over China.   We loved it!  Very fast, smooth and great friendly service.   The US could learn a lot about the friendly service side :-)

 

Well China bashing aside, I think we are envious that other countries can do high speed and we can't seem to get something going, but keep pouring more money into highways (to no where).

 

To cite, probably a trite example, with model trains:

You have a Marx windup that goes around a circle of track past carboard figures and buildings etc (ie our US highway system).  You visit your friends house who has this marvelous Marx electric train that goes through large trackage with remote electric switches and operating acessories and Plasticville buildings (ie other countries high speed and meglev trains).  You return home and ask your parents (congress) why you can't have it and they say "because as your all knowing and wise parents we feel electric trains are dangerous,  too expensive, hard to set up, maintenance headaches, where would we put it etc etc.  So just enjoy your little windup train and be satisfied you even have that."

 

You get the picture.  I think that is what this discussion is really about not so much that China system may and can fall down or catastropic accidents.  Just rail envy (and don't be thinking of something else!!)

  

 

I don't know what all the fuss is about!? 

 

We, the American taxpayers and consumers, have already built lots and lots of high speed railways.

 

They're currently in China, of course.

 

As taxpayers, we provide financial "aid" to these countries so that they'll be nice to us and respect us.  We finance educational institutions of higher learning...and invite the peoples of these aided countries to come and learn what...supposedly...gives us a competitive advantage in social, technological, medical, and business sciences.  In fact, we are being challenged to give do even more to bolster these institutions as their enrollment grows...from foreign students...who have no shortage of tuition monies...thank you, USA!

 

As consumers, we've paid for their infrastructure improvements, such as high speed railways, every time we buy something with the "Made in China" label emblazoned on the shipping container, product packaging, products themselves, instructions  (in 12 languages...coming to a diversity-tolerant society near you.)  So, if your society is fundamentally an entitled one, rather than a value-added manufacturing one...the government spending money on YOU, personally, to ensure your every need is met...then why would you expect that society to also have enough government-provided money to turn around and give BACK to the government to now build infrastructure??

 

No thanks...as a US consumer and taxpayer, I have already built enough of the world's high-speed railways.  Too bad I'll never get to ride on one. 

 

KD

We all know why other countries are surpassing us in math and science which includes the development of high speed rail.

 

one word  "CONGRESS"

Intresting.  We finally got the Amtrak Downeaster here in NH 10 years ago, an enormously popular train and always full to capacity. It can get me to Boston in 1 hour  about the same as my car, not high speed per says but it's a start. I really enjoy this train and ride as much as possible.

I tend to agree, but that assumes in this case government is a check and balance, and in China it is complex, and yes, corruption is rampant, nothing gets done there without payoffs and bribes, and because there is no accountability within the government, there is little reason to try and end the corruption, especially since it is quite lucrative (if you look at the wealth that has flowed into China, not surprisingly you will find that a lot of it has fallen into the hands of people in the government or to families associated with people in the government). What you have in China in effect is a weird fusion of government and private enterprise, and it is messy (not defending it, just explaining), you have an autocratic government, that answers to no one and that through family ties and a web of corruption is strongly tied to businesses there.  Authoritarian states often are more efficient (really ruthless) then messy representative governments, always have been.

 

I think, too, you need to look at history before thinking this is something unique. Read up about what went on during the industrial revolution and with the growth of railroads.Railroads used link and pin couplers and manual brakes until 1890, when federal law mandated the Janey coupler and the air brake (among other things, it wasn't mandated because the rail industry had congress in their pockets, talk about corruption). The land grants to railroads were a give away, that often ended up with rail lines being built, not because they were needed, but because the backers could make a killing selling off or renting the land grant on either side of the tracks and also made a ton of money selling bonds that they never intended to pay off (Andrew Carnegie made a lot of money this way, selling rail bonds to JP Morgan and others over in Europe). 

 

Basically, when there is incentive to cheat you do so. Whether private or public, cutting corners is all too tempting, to save money and get things done sooner. There was a scandal (not a shock, as someone with construction background in NYC) recently where they put the head of a lab firm whose job is testing concrete mixes to make sure they are proper for the job at hand, for falsifying reports, that covered a lot of major construction projects, including roads, and the new Yankee Stadium project. In past years, they would bribe inspectors to certify that the concrete on a particular floor had cured long enough to start building the next level, so they could get the next floor up and save time.

 

In China it is much worse because the common culture is that bribery is used, at every level, you want to get your kid into a good public school, you bribe the principal; want to get your son a job at a local company, bribe to the hiring manager, kid wants to go to music conservatory, you bribe the administrators and you bribe the prospective teacher (and keep doing so, otherwise they will drop the student)....so yeah, it is a mess.

Still, the fact that they recognize the need to have high speed rail means something, that they realize there are places where it makes sense. Shanghai-Beijing is roughly analogous to the NE corridor or other densely packed routes, or maybe NY/Chicago, where high speed train might be a good alternative to flying (On the other hand, some of the other routes are just plain silly), at least someone is thinking there it seems to me, trying to plan for the future, which is kind of refreshing versus the ad hoc stuff that seems more common these days. Will it work out? Don't know, but I think sometimes we tend to beat things to death with potential negatives and then give up trying, for a country that proclaims itself entrepeneurial that is a bad attitude to have.