Wendover Productions
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2018–2021
12:13 · 8.7M views · Nov 13, 2018
A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.
HN uses it as the go-to short video when threads compare Chinese and US rail and infrastructure.
6 comments from Hacker News
this video Please, I urge you to watch this. It explains thoroughly why the situation for railroads is very different between China and America. tl;dw: America is more spread out, has better airline control, and less of a political incentive to expand public transport, than China.
Wendover had a good video about China's rail network a while ago. [1] Major points are: 1. China is willing to build loves that aren't self sustainable - whereas the USA isn't (and the US doesn't factor in the social benefits) 2. China's airspace is mostly military - leading to only small flight corridors and therefore significant delays for flights - making trains more reliable 3. China is willing to make train lines that make no sense beyond connecting areas that are not as friendly to the government to areas that are in the hope of increasing government support in those areas [1] this video
This Wendover Productions video "Why China Is so Good at Building Railways" this video also explains a lot about how things have changed recently to make this migration even more possible in China. They've built so much high speed rail in the last decade that they now have more than the rest of the world, combined. Hong Kong to Beijing is under 9 hours, while comparable distances in other parts of the world are over 40 hours.
Here's a good video summarizing what China has done with high speed rail in a little over a decade: this video
You're assuming HSR is a "good" decision versus the alternatives, but who's to say it is? Further down this thread is a link to this video called, "Why is China so good at building railways?" this video The presenter and quite a few commenters seem to have a built-in bias towards rail. Don't get me wrong. I love a good train journey and prefer it to flying when it's competitive. But the video tries to be an optimistic take on what a cold eye could only describe as totally mad and dysfunctional government. The situation according to the video can be summed up like this: • China has built tons of high speed rail very fast, this is amazing! • But they do it because their internal airlines suck incredibly badly. • There are only three carriers, none of which are budget. Planes are on time only about 65% of the time, which is a staggeringly low figure. The cause is enormous congestion in the air leading to air traffic control frequently denying takeoff rights. • This bizarre situation occurs because the Chinese Army controls almost all the airspace above China and refuses to let civilian flights anywhere except a few corridors. • Rather than get the army under control and open up flying to competition, China decided to build tons of railways instead. • These railways are all heavily subsidised. Theoretically some in the east are profitable, but this is more than offset by railways built along totally unviable routes. For one route the ticket sales don't even cover the cost of electri