Hyperloop any day now!
Too bad we can't have good public transportation
Submitted 1 day ago by Mickey7@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/63a4df64-1b11-468b-9969-6cd64bf69584.png
Comments
Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Right now, the Chinese government has effective eminent domain powers which allows them to acquire property for which to build public infrastructure, both expressways and high-speed railways. That the Chinese people have no questions about the positives regarding HSTs, especially crunchtime during holidays where railway stations would be jampacked.
Why the US HST programs and passenger rail transport in general are at glacial pace is partly because of the usual car lobby, because of NIMBYs, because of cheap air transport, and some people now on online gambling instead of touching grass and tossing dice in Vegas.
TassieTosser@aussie.zone 12 minutes ago
Doesnt the us also have those powers and didn’t they use them liberally in the construction of both the railways and interstates?
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 hour ago
Right now, the Chinese government has effective eminent domain powers which allows them to acquire property for which to build public infrastructure, both expressways and high-speed railways
I’ve heard people claim as much, but at the same time, Stuck Nail Houses exist, I’m not sure how to reconcile the two. I think it’s that their eminent domain is limited to property that was purchased after a certain point, so if it’s property your parents owned since the 80s, it’s literally easier for developers to route the highway around your home than win that lawsuit, but if they bought in like 2010, they can just give you a similar or better property, or the cash to buy one, and that’s that.
rustydomino@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
stuck nail houses 釘子戶 may apply in limited situations but there is no such thing as land ownership in China. When you purchase real estate in China you are buying the right to use the land for a period of time (I think it’s 80 years but don’t quote me on that number, I’m going off memory here) but the state owns the land. When the party wants to build something they are going to build it.
SARGE@startrek.website 1 day ago
Hey now, that’s a misrepresentation of both the US and China.
China had way nicer locomotives in 96. It wasn’t 1896.
And in the US, that guy would have either been replaced by a machine, or replaced by someone younger who won’t be expecting the seniority and pay raises that being there for over 20 years usually gets you.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Replaced by machines like this youtu.be/YUpST_cQ1hM
pyre@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
now I want to watch an entire playlist of Adam Something videos about dumbass tech bros trying to invent the train over and over again
DmMacniel@feddit.org 1 day ago
What hypercapitalism lobbied by big oil does to your country.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 12 hours ago
it’s not even capitalism at this point. there’s various definitions of capitalism out there, which makes it blurry and difficult-to-talk-about, but most of them feature some element of wealth maximization. in the current trajectory, nobody’s wealth is increased.
trump’s policies hurt not only the common people, but also the economy. if the common people have less money, they spend less on consumerism and that cripples the economy. that is actually what’s already happening rn. and it’s only going to get worse. we need handouts, so people can spend money.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
In Capitalist nations, the further we are from the era of peak Unions and in general civil society movements (which was just after WWII) the slower infrastructure improves from one year to the next, something visible not just in trains but at all levels (even National Health Services for those countries which have them).
The same thing will happen in China now that they’re getting more Capitalist than Socialist.
It was never the Capitalist part doing the kind of improvements that benefit most people, it was the stuff outside Capitalism (that used it as a Trade Philosophy only) constraining it and guiding it for policy ends which were independent of Capitalism.
This of course accelerated with Neoliberalism, since that stuff is mainly about making Capitalism the sole definer of policy, or in other words make Capitalism unconstrained and unguided by interests other than those of Money.
Capitalism is reasonably decent at optimizing Trade in the short and mid-term, but is completelly shit for non-Trade interests such as Quality Of Life, as well as for anything which doesn’t have direct action-consequence links cycles such as situations whose negative effects are very delayed in time or emergent in nature (i.e. things that appear due to the accumulation of the actions of many actors, such as Global Warming).
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
The same thing will happen in China now that they’re getting more Capitalist than Socialist.
China: “We’re working on our next five year plan, as part of a grand fifty year plan for full national modernization. We haven’t had a recession in 40 years and we’ve functionally eliminated poverty within our borders. We’re currently working on a network of trans-continental railroads and global shipping lanes to bring our modern industrial capacity to the planetary scale. As we slough off the productive surge of capitalism and turn state owned enterprises into the foundation of our economic model, we are enjoying an era of wealth and social stability not enjoyed by any country on earth in human history. This is just as Karl Marx predicted, two-hundred years ago.”
American: “No, that’s just capitalism. You’re doing capitalism right now.”
Also American: “We invested another trillion dollars in VR that hosts an AI that makes bitcoins. Our GDP is up to 15 digits. No, we don’t care about our measles epidemic, it builds character.”
stickly@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
American: “We invested another trillion dollars in VR that hosts an AI that makes bitcoins.”
China: “Sounds great, we’ll gladly make and supply 90% of all bitcoin hardware to make a quick buck off of your global ecological crisis machine (100% not capitalism I promise)”
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
I don’t know if this analysis is true generally, Japan is pretty fucking capitalist.
I would argue it’s more a matter of what wing of the capitalist oligarchy has the upper hand. In the US and Canada, it’s the extractive fossil capital and that ultimately holds power. In Japan, or the Netherlands it’s more the manufacturing.
Don’t extrapolate from the US to capitalism in general. It’s more nuanced than that.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Whilst I can’t speak in an informed way about Japan, I can about The Netherlands and they have been degrading in terms of quality of public services during the Neoliberal era.
Certainly by the time I left (about 15 years ago) the trend was well establish in that country of having Scandinavian levels of tax (but only for people, not for companies) and ever more American-level of public services. For example, they don’t have a National Health Service (instead they have Health Insurance) even though taxes there for individuals are significantly higher than in countries which do have one such as Britain or Portugal.
They also use to have a high level of public housing but haven’t been building much of it in the last few decades and now have a giant realestate bubble.
The Netherlands is a great example of how even countries which started with a higher level of policies geared towards the good of the many, having those decay over time as we get further and further away from the post-War era, especially during the Neoliberal years.
AA5B@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
You might ask if capitalism is the sole definer of policy, what’s the purpose of our elected parasites? If they can’t define a reason for their existence, they too need to be replaced with ai.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Well, the point of Neoliberalism is to de facto destroy Democracy by making the powers controlled by voters (the State) be secondary to the power of Money.
I guess the end stage will be something similar to Feudalism, or maybe just Fascism (a number of very Neoliberal nations have of late become a lot more Fascist).
In the transition stage, the politicians are needed keep up the Theatre Of Democracy and distract the masses with ever louder shows of conflict around things which Money doesn’t really care about (hence the Identity Politics Wars).
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
That’s nature in general.
caboose2006@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
US Train travel has actually gotten worse since 1996.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Yeah, the only reason we still have tracks most places is for freight.
rumba@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
I wonder if the early proliferation of rural cars / mega expressways kinda fucked us. When your transportation network grows around trains, upgrading the trains/rails makes good economic sense. We just kind of spread out everywhere quickly and made the train locations somewhat irrelevant.
Pacattack57@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
No the auto industry has lobbied against trains and similar projects. It’s not about the science but more about how our politicians have been selling their souls for centuries.
PetteriSkaffari@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
People choose those politicians, too sensitive for fear of even slightly bigger government. Paired with racism, nowadays.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 2 hours ago
Pretty much part of the plot from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Ronno@feddit.nl 2 hours ago
If anything, shouldn’t that make it easier? The US has quite open and wide streets/roads. You have more space to build stations and rail tracks than for example Europe with much narrower streets/roads.
Mniot@programming.dev 11 hours ago
No, because cross-country trains and heavy use of them to move goods and people predates cars by quite a bit. Trains were a key component of the North winning the Civil War, for example.
Lots of existing train infrastructure needed to be torn out to make room for car infrastructure.
j_z@feddit.nu 14 hours ago
I definitely think this is the case. Something akin to tragedy of the commons (or maybe Braese’s paradox?) where small investments for short term gain trumps bigger investments for, comparatively, bigger gains.
Sweden, where I live, is in this situation too where the rail network is 50 years in reparation debt but it’s easier for politicians to budget for small road repairs and say that they make meaningful infrastructure work
xantonin@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
This is because public transportation is socialism and we can’t have tax dollars going to that pretext for communism. Capitalism is far superior which is why we are instead spending over $150 billion on deporting immigrants, which will help promote a free and open capitalist market.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
as much as I’d like to call this a win for socialism, I don’t think socialism is actually necessary for good transit. Japan is very capitalist and has private rail networks which are comparable in quality and extent to China’s.
eskimofry@lemmy.world 25 minutes ago
the “Socialism” is in quotes as were aren’t really talking about actual socialism. Its now a boogeyman dogwhistle used by rich people to steal public property and convert it into private capital.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
this is kind of an exaggeration, but crazy to think about. in a way similar to when we think of space exploration in the 60s today.
we can achieve so much so fast when we actually want to.
mriswith@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s exaggerated and massively undestated depending on location.
There are several metro areas in the US with over 1 million people that has zero metro/subway or light rail, some of them don’t even have a passenger train connections or stations, or at most it stops by once or twice a day. Places like Columbus Ohio that has literally zero rail passenger rail for over 2m people in the metro area. If you want to take the train from there to NYC you’ll have to spend a couple of hours on a bus to a different city first. And it’s not like they never had it, they razed the train station in the 70s.
Other places that lack light rail or metro and have 1m+ people in the metro area: Tampa, San Antonia, Indianapolis, Oklahoma, Memphis, Richmond, Louisville, Rochester, etc. with many of them having a very bad outside passenger train connections. There are also a bunch of others that almost slipped by or did stay off the list over technicalities like having a single tram line going up and down main street or similar. Places like Orlando, Cincinatti, etc.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I recently planned out a trip to Chicago using trains. The fastest and most cost efficient route was to drive 3 hrs to Indianapolis and then take a 3 hr train to Chicago from there. Literally, the passenger rail network in the US is so bad that the fastest and cheapest way to travel by train is to do it as little as possible.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
when we care
Yeah but who would get to skim off the top of that?
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 22 hours ago
Oh, you dont think Lockheed skimmed off the top of the Apollo program?
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
That requires political will to achieve and objective other than wealth maximization, or in other words a political philosophy other than Capitalism which, at least sometimes, is dominant over Capitalism.
The whole point of Neoliberalism from the beginning was eliminate those and make Capitalism the dominat political* philosophy rather than just a trade philosophy, so almost 50 years into it the effects are all around us and painful to see.
xorollo@leminal.space 9 hours ago
That conductor is a total hottie tho
dan69@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
America: if ain’t broke don’t fix it Every other country: yah it’s time, what are our new requirements?
bountygiver@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
And then turn a blind eye to all the broken stuff because “we have been living with it so it’s not broken”
tempest@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
I mean this is sorta one of the things an autocracy does well. You might get substandard work and a lot of graft but when the order comes down no one gets to complain when they run a train line through your house.
AppleTea@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
actually, they do get to complain
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
China 2060: … a space elevator
USA 2060: … still the same rail service
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 12 hours ago
i agree with your sentiment completely, just to point out a small technicality:
space elevators aren’t technically feasible. i’ve done the calculations a while ago and practically, the weight of the space elevator itself would be so much that it wouldn’t be able to carry its own weight. remember that it would essentially be a tower several hundred kilometers high. the highest buildings on earth today aren’t even a single kilometer high.
0x0@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
a space elevator
You’d have to harness carbon nanotubes first… then deal with all the debris in LEO, then come up with an elevator that doesn’t take days to reach GEO (granted the counterweight can rest there and the cab can stop sooner).
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
This is a joke meme that doesn’t mean anything … just like the American public transport system.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Easy, just attach a huge rocket to the bottom of the elevator, problem solved. Oh, use AI to design the rocket, make the ticketing system use block chain, and when you get to orbit, a robot remotely operated by a human on the ground (but prentends to be fully autonomous) take a picture of you and generates an NFT of it that you can purchase for 35000 USD in the gift shop.
I’ll be over here swimming in my money pool.
Snowclone@lemmy.world 1 day ago
yeah, anti public transit has several motivations, the most American is racism. if we have robust public transit, they can’t be “whites only” and you can’t force the not-whites to sit in the back. so right there. Then you have white land owning hegemony. Why do the busses only go downtown and not to the shopping center half way to the suburbs? because they don’t want the filthy poors mucking up their white fort, if you let busses go up to the suburbs then THEY can get there and do all the things they get blamed for!! Lastly, profit motive. mass transit means people can choose to have a car or not. the powers that be are making a lot of money off cars and mass transit will upset the apple cart.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And your comment reminds me of it. The aesthetics of evil. Racist segregation is an obvious evil. So if you tell black people to stand at the back of the bus because they’re not allowed to mix with the whites, that’s rather obvious and a horrific picture to have. But, if you handicap them, make sure they can only live in the cheapest communities and then limit the mobility of them. Same result. But because you didn’t see it, and the enforced segregation is rather subtle… Well, looks better, doesn’t it? So people are more likely to accept it. And if you say things like “The city has marked this black community unfit for investment.” then it sounds already like a conspiracy theory. Making you the weirdo for speaking out. Horrid, but an elegant and efficient system for censorship, isn’t it?
And to be absolutely clear: I reject racial segregation and censorship, obviously.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 12 hours ago
i think it’s not only racism though. surely, there’s also a lot of kicking-downwards on the poor. the poor shouldn’t get a nice life, so they’re motivated to work harder and be successful, so since public transport helps everyone, including the poors, we don’t want that.
(not my words, just a common sentiment i’ve heard)
WanderWisley@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Not just trains but all transportation services and systems is severely lacking in this country. Along with crumbling infrastructure and terrible build quality of cars and trucks and you got a recipe for disaster. But no one will care cuz Merica!
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Yes, but.
It’s China. I guarantee you that loads of people got fucked over one way or the other for this improvement. The Chinese government usually doesn’t care much for the rights and lives of the individuals
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
You say that, but medical debt? Homelessness? Ice concentration camps for brown people? Highest incarceration rates, social credit (credit score), pedophile leaders…
Europeans, feel free to complain about China. Americans have no right to complain about China.
Not to be a tankie, but China taking over the US government would be an improvement
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
Hate to say it, but unironically, they would be better off under communist China.
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
And the West does? Hmm, you learn something new every day.
ThatKomputerKat@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Yeah. Absolutely nothing bad happened to anyone in the rollout of the interstate Highway system. /s
Taldan@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Plenty of people got fucked over for America’s interstate system. You just don’t care about them because they’re poor minorities
Mniot@programming.dev 11 hours ago
Are you suggesting that’s why the US hasn’t improved trains? Is there something about train improvements specifically that you think is harmful?
carrylex@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
we
Is this some sort of US problem that I’m too not-US to understand?
kunaltyagi@programming.dev 14 hours ago
Public transportation in USA sucks, and people from USA often use we on social media platforms, assuming they are the majority :P
buttnugget@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It’s because US companies dominate the internet, plus English is the de facto language of discussion. I’m not sure how to deal with this since we probably are the majority.
vga@sopuli.xyz 21 hours ago
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 13 hours ago
I read half the article and i strongly disagree with a lot of its points.
First, it lists corruption as a reason to halt the HSR (high speed rail) program. Corruption is however not specific to rail and exists in every branch of the economy, including car and road construction. So that’s not a reason to target HSR.
Secondly, it says that HSR is not “economical”, which completely ignoring that HSR does not have to be economical, at least not in the classical sense. To a political party, the cost of a project is the popularity or unpopularity of the project; i.e. to the party, the actual cost is the cost of voters who dislike projects. However, the Chinese people are overwhelmingly looking at HSR as a positive thing and an excellent idea. So it has a very positive benefit for the state. Also, note that good transportation facility is valuable for all the other branches of economy, and therefore has positive economic by-products.
These considerations make me wonder whether actually the article is paid for by the oil lobby, trying to perpetuate outdated and expensive airlines and car transport methods.
pyre@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
so? even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean high speed rail is bad. it means you should be more careful with the planning, not “don’t try new shit for the next forever years”
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
Realistically what the United States really needs isn’t high speed rail but just passenger rail service. Standard speed mainline passenger service to more places and with more frequency than three times a week at 3am (which I wish was an exaggeration)
If I were totalitarian dictator of the US I’d first have the federal government sieze control of the entire rail network, including all dispatching and all of the private rail maintaince companies and lease trackage rights back to the railroads, keeping rail construction, dispatching and maintenance in house. Next I would create a true national passenger rail network, restoring service to every city possible that still has active right of way. Then, I would use my ownership of the rail network to force the class 1 railroads to construct and operate their trains in a manner condusive to actually moving freight and not blocking other trains (it’s incredible how railroad company executives seem to hate railroads and do everything they can to avoid operating a functioning railroad) plus open up the rail network to new private freight and passenger companies, and finally I’d build new rail coordidors first following the existing interstate network and as those new rail coordidors bed in I’d start reducing lanes on the interstate and introducing tolls to further discourage the use of private vehicles. Maybe some would be converted into bikeways, maybe some would be re-greened. It would be a decision made on a case by case basis what to do with all of the space reclaimed by the highway network
We used to dream big and our governments used to undertake projects like this to improve our countries. And despite our governments being richer than ever they choose to stagnate and not take risks on big public projects like this
ConHoliousDonFrankle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh trains! Now do pollution, or infrastructure, or empty cities…
A year ago I would have said Concentration Camps, but we both have those now.
You should try to find better criticism.
rayyy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What’s the problem? The rich have private planes.
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
And now wait for five years and see if the Chinese one is still there.
IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Every three years China pours more concrete than the us has since WWII.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Yabbut somebody think of the car companies!!!
Etterra@discuss.online 22 hours ago
Plot twist, the bullet train only goes to an enormous city in which nobody lives or works.
Honytawk@feddit.nl 11 minutes ago
Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.
An inefficient government has groups investigating other groups to see if what they are doing is correct. This process takes time, so things move much slower. But is generally a much better protection against corruption.