i mean from what i read there is only one country with more ppl die in traffic which is india de.wikipedia.org/…/Liste_der_Länder_nach_Verkehrs… but good they have a few trains for 1 billion ppl. sure thats going to help. LOL.
Too bad we can't have good public transportation
Submitted 8 months ago by Mickey7@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/63a4df64-1b11-468b-9969-6cd64bf69584.png
Comments
KarlLimbo@lemmy.world 7 months ago
squaresinger@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Congratulations, you figured out that China is a large country! It would be ridiculous to think that a country with 1.4 billion people would have less people dieing in traffic than a country with a smaller population.
If you just go by absolute numbers, a large country will have more of absolutely everything than a small country.
Now go back to your link and sort by “Je 100.000 Einwohner” and see how that changes the list.
KarlLimbo@lemmy.world 7 months ago
But you understand that “je Einwohner” means shit with that density of cars? cant have a car crash when you ride a donkey. per car would make much more sense but that’s the least the regime would care about.
nexguy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Weird to compare a brutal dictatorship which violates human rights on the regular vs a democracy which violates human rights a little less.
newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
a brutal dictatorship which violates human rights on the regular
Don’t you think you’re a little harsh on the US?
teamevil@lemmy.world 7 months ago
So far…give Trump time and he’ll catch right up.
Agent641@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Now do aircraft carriers!
bilb@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Aircraft carriers don’t let me travel to my destinations
squaresinger@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Your fault that you weren’t born as an aircraft!
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Setting that cash on fire would be more practical use of tax payer money
Honytawk@feddit.nl 7 months 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.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Well, the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, which nobody want except the dictator.
I mean… some people do, but they’re weird.
RedFrank24@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You say that, but… Iraq was a dictatorship, and they weren’t all that efficient at anything other than killing Kurds.
newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
That’s because they’re politically illiterate. The important difference is the economic model and its end goal. Is it to make a small elite super rich? Is it to meet the peoples’ needs? The US is extremely efficient in creating a small class of super rich people (and by that I mean corporations too) while China is extremely efficient in switching to renewable energy and expanding high speed rail.
Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hyperloop any day now!
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 7 months 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 7 months ago
Doesnt the us also have those powers and didn’t they use them liberally in the construction of both the railways and interstates?
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That just changed completely, far cry when there was this Robert Moses had whole neighborhoods demolished for highways and rearranging whole cities. Now any sort of public infrastructure in the US does have to undergo scrutiny, whether it’s going to affect people or their mortgages or both.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 7 months 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.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
There do exist stubborn nail houses but those are very rare occurrences in China where they do indeed fight to hold onto the land they consider their birthright property or believing to be much more valuable than their government tries to buy from them, the only few outbursts of dissent in a country that quashes dissent.
rustydomino@lemmy.world 7 months 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.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 months 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
Taldan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Plenty of people got fucked over for America’s interstate system. You just don’t care about them because they’re poor minorities
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 7 months ago
One of the reasons it was built was to demolish black neighborhoods.
Mniot@programming.dev 7 months 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?
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
…
Wut
You read that and were like “who cares about human lives and rights, why doesn’t he want trains?”
Yeah, love trains, and as far as I’m concerned the US can replace all its highways with trains
But not at the expense of a couple of humans per kilometers because the government doesn’t give a shit, or worse, you’re an Uyghur
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 7 months 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
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
I AM European.
Having said that, the US is a shit show and the Empire pretty much needs to be rebuilt from scrap at this point but it’s still better than China.
If you disagree I would suggest you go to China and start posting lots of tiananmen square videos from the 90’s and then tell me which place is better.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 7 months ago
Hate to say it, but unironically, they would be better off under communist China.
rumba@lemmy.zip 7 months 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.
newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
We just kind of spread out everywhere quickly and made the train locations somewhat irrelevant.
Do you know any US history
rumba@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
I know enough that it wasn’t so much lobbying as it was advertising to the to the US citizens that made cars more popular. Ford figured out how to make it affordable then a bunch of companies that stood to make money on cars bought up streetcars and shut them down in favor of busses, but that doesn’t actually answer the demise of long distance rail.
MellowYellow13@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Its so naive to think that this was the cause lmao
Ronno@feddit.nl 7 months 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.
Pacattack57@lemmy.world 7 months 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 7 months ago
People choose those politicians, too sensitive for fear of even slightly bigger government. Paired with racism, nowadays.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 7 months ago
Pretty much part of the plot from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Mniot@programming.dev 7 months 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 7 months 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
WanderWisley@lemmy.world 7 months 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!
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
yeah it’s so funny when people think the US has good car infrastructure, the truth is that the US just generally fucking sucks
yeah sure there’s a lot of interstate highways which i guess you can consider good, but most people aren’t using them for very large distances, most people are driving to and from work every day and that part is so hilariously miserable that i don’t think people in the rest of the world truly believe it’s a real thing that happens…
WanderWisley@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Agreed! I live in a very rural part of the country and the conditions of the roads and highways are laughable.
carrylex@lemmy.world 7 months ago
we
Is this some sort of US problem that I’m too not-US to understand?
kunaltyagi@programming.dev 7 months 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 7 months 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.
dan69@lemmy.world 7 months ago
America: if ain’t broke don’t fix it Every other country: yah it’s time, what are our new requirements?
darthelmet@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Then there’s “if it ain’t broke… how can we break it to extract a few extra bucks from it?”
bountygiver@lemmy.ml 7 months 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 7 months 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 7 months ago
actually, they do get to complain
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And now wait for five years and see if the Chinese one is still there.
Soleos@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s been 16 years and counting.
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This one is from 2024 Let that sink in Home not alone, just unfinished
One swallow does not make it summer. Shall we continue this path to see which one runs out first of resources?
jsomae@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
It seems pretty improbable to me that this infrastructure will be replaced in China in just five years.
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Didn’t mean replaced. I meant collapse. Rotted away. Tofu dreg.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Americans: “Nice infrastructure. Would be a shame if we had to come over there and liberate it.”
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I am as American as Pancetta. It is just the glorification of China that is rubbing me the wrong way.
Their buildings are collapsing. Yes, it is built fast, cheap and looks nice. And then it fails.
And the Chinese peope themselves. They suffer.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months 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).
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 7 months ago
That’s nature in general.
theacharnian@lemmy.ca 7 months 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 7 months 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 7 months 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 7 months 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).
caboose2006@lemmy.world 8 months ago
US Train travel has actually gotten worse since 1996.
vga@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
xantonin@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
Etterra@discuss.online 8 months ago
Plot twist, the bullet train only goes to an enormous city in which nobody lives or works.
rayyy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What’s the problem? The rich have private planes.
SARGE@startrek.website 8 months 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.
IWW4@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Every three years China pours more concrete than the us has since WWII.
ConHoliousDonFrankle@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
Snowclone@lemmy.world 8 months 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.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 8 months ago
Yabbut somebody think of the car companies!!!
DmMacniel@feddit.org 8 months ago
What hypercapitalism lobbied by big oil does to your country.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
China 2060: … a space elevator
USA 2060: … still the same rail service
Heavybell@lemmy.world 7 months ago
This isn’t even about government styles. This is just investing in infrastructure vs not doing that.