Hyperloop was invented to try to kill light rail. It succeeded at killing Maryland’s new venture and Illinois’. Neither were built because Hyperloop promised bullshit. Elon hates public transport.
Elon’s main thing is selling cars, of course he actively opposes whatever would let people not buy a car.
He says the only public transit he would support is individual capsules running in a tunnel.
Essentially literal echo chambers where you never have to interact with anyone who might expand your horizons.
“Eww, peasants” ~Elon probably
He didn’t even invent it.
guy who sells cars spreads FUD about competition to cars
One would think that these Atlas Shrugged -cultist would love railways.
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Hyperloop is against high speed rail, which is for transport between cities.
Light rail is nicer trams so meant for transport within cities.
Wait, what did Hyperloop kill in MD? It looks like the proposed route was from DC to Baltimore underneath MD 295 – we already have Amtrak and MARC serving that corridor.
I think you’re giving the guy too much credit for being conniving. Is there actual evidence?
He admitted it to the person writing his memoirs iirc
The mistake is thinking Elon is a moron screwing everything up on accident. He isn’t. He’s an Afrikaner white supremacist Nazi who is causing all this damage on purpose.
Starlink and SpaceX should be nationalized before he gets a chance to weaponize those companies against the western world as well.
He literally came up with the hyperloop because he was afraid of a high speed rail hurting Tesla sales.
People who buy Teslas don’t want to take public transportation
People who buy Teslas don’t want to take public transportation
People also like to get places fast. High speed rail does that. Why drive 3-6 hours myself when I can relax and read a book and something for a fraction of that on a train and dodge the headache that is air travel?
Ye, Fuck that Guy! ( fuck Eelon Mux)
I have a feeling the boards will try to maneuver him out before he gets too stupid with Starlink and/or SpaceX, but maybe not…
Musk is great for bringing in that sweet venture capital, and and Starlink (and thus SpaceX) are running a pretty major defecit. They need venture capital to operate, so they won’t work him out publically. Internally, I’m pretty sure they’re happy he’s busy destroying Twitter.
I do believe he’s a moron screwing Twitter up by
accidentincompetence.Since when is he an Afrikaner? I doubt he can even speak a full sentence of Afrikaans. It’s slightly offensive that you just used an entire demographic group as an insult.
The Musks are of Anglo-Canadian, English, Swiss, and Afrikaner descent His family owned a sapphire mine in South Africa during apartheid. That’s where his money came from.
That’s where his money came from.
And PayPal I suspect
Since he was born in South Africa and got his education there.
They speak more Afrikaans in South Africa than English.
Chill bro , they’re not dissing Africans, they’re dissing Eelon Mux Yo!
Giant infrastructure projects are a weakness of democracies. It’s tough to get everyone to agree and pay for huge projects that take long term vision and planning.
Or you could call it a strength because it’s stable and can’t be changed too fast by one guy with a short term bad idea.
Mainly in the US, though. The automobile lobby successfully undermined many attempts at mass transit infrastructure. And the existing rail network is privatized into oblivion.
Roosevelt showed that there is a way of tackling infrastructure in the US. Only his approach has a minute slither of what can be framed to be socialist, so it’ll never happen again…
minute slither
snek president
see NEOM
It’s an unbelievably stupid idea that’s really going to happen. The prince of Saudi Arabia knows that their oil economy is going to wither away soon, so he’s trying to make SA appealing to people with money and have them move there. How? By building a city that’s a line 160 km (110 mi) long and 200 m (660 ft) wide…in the middle of fucking nowhere. The whole idea is based on technology that we don’t have and is just terrible city planning. Look into it to get a laugh.
Hahaha yes you’re right. This is an example of ill-advised big infrastructure.
No, you don’t get it.
It’s blessed by god so it’ll be good no matter what. God is good to his faithful. Lamborghini Akbar.
At least the rail line serving it can be a rail line
Pronounced “neeeeeee… yyoooommmm”
Ain’t that the truth. The UKs HS2 project has just collapsed. Was supposed to a big Y shaped “network” linking London (and Europe) to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and a laughably out the way part of the East Midlands, with a new high capacity rail link.
Now it’s been whittled away to just “I suppose we can link London to Birmingham then”, and only then because they’d already started work on it.
I always suspected the second part would be cancelled because we never do anything that might benefit the North.
Got to be honest, after 3 years of working from home, I’d rather have faster internet than faster trains. Shame there’s no timetable for that either…
I think it has more to do with the lack of democracy, especially in the US. I guarantee you could get 100 regular Joes in a room to come up with a high speed rail project. You could never get that to happen with politicians at the mercy of the ruling class.
You can do it through democracies. Taiwan has two sets of high speed rail systems.
Are they expensive to maintain? Absolutely. In fact they bankrupted 2+ companies until the government decided to step in and foot part of the bill. But then again, if the government isn’t willing to pay for basic infrastructure, what are taxes for?
(Also as a tangent, the Taiwan high speed rail bentos are to die for. I had it 5+ years back and I still remember it. Super cheap meal in a disposable bamboo lunch box. Usually there are 1-2 choices per day. I had chicken thighs, pickled veggies, steamed pumpkin, and half a marinated tea egg. The bottom half of the lunch box was filled with rice. 10/10 would eat at a busy train station during rush hour again)
I go to China for business fairly often and there is this one area where the government decided a new subway line should be installed, so I watched it get built over several trips. The property owners in the way were, as far as I understand it, booted off the land but compensated. And boom. A year later the subway line was done and hooked up to the rest of the existing subway infrastructure with completed stations, entries/exits, and even retail shops in the stations. It blew my mind.
The city definitely needed the subway line, but I was amazed at the efficiency. In my American home town that idea’s been debated for decades and is yet to be finished because at first it was getting voted against and then finally after the public supported and approved it, the NIMBY experience began and it took a decade of land use planning to choose the route. If it actually runs efficiently before the 2020’s are finished I’ll be impressed.
iirc. in China property is not owned but leased from the state. That makes it easier legally to get people away.
On the other hand in the alledgly property protecting and valueing democracies in Europe it is no problem to kick people off their land to build highways and expand lignite mines.
Not quite. The way property is leased is such that you can indefinitely renew it for free until you are dead. The standard base lease is 70 years so you’ll probably never run into problems. Even if you do exceed it it’s simply showing up at an administrative location and talking to a clerk.
This came up about a decade ago since a bunch of people were panicking about their properties due to some older houses having only 20 years leases. The government then clarified that the difference is the management of the property (e.g. apartment complex) goes from the developer to the government at the end of the lease. Nothing else can force individual buyers out (except for “illegal” housing modifications).
In reality, when public works require demolishion, the government usually provides substitute housing instead of money. My understanding is that most people take the new house/apartment since they are actually new, in nice locations (most I’ve seen are near bus stops/subway stations with reasonable school districts and nearby supermarkets), and worth more than their old place. That being said Asian societal pressure definitely is a thing. So even if you don’t want the new property you’ll probably take it just to avoid the side eye.
Source: lived in Shanghai for 16 years. Still have my name on a deed somewhere.
I see this in Thailand too. Lived in the bay for a decade. There’s posters in every bart showing the future and expansion of it. Afaik, none ever happened.
In Bangkok I see a few new stations open every year basically.
No one is saying that you can’t do it, just that it’s a lot more difficult and contentious and time consuming.
Has no one on Lemmy ever taken an intro political science course? This is really basic stuff.
German train network? US Highways?
Lack of education is a weakness.
Id argue that people have no concept of how much money we waste arguing about what to do and how to do it.
In my city they wanted to cut down 10 huge and really old trees in a park in the center of town. They were constantly clogging the drains, tearing up footpaths with their roots, clogging the drains with their roots, dropped big fucking branches during storms and a few other minor issues. Sure they were pretty and allCutting down the trees, fixing the sidewalks and all was estimated at half a million. Well once they stalled on the project because of the protests and the money spent answering legal challenges from well meaning hippies, hiring security and fencing them off so nobody could climb up one and chain themselves there then finally got the trees cut down the city spent 3.1 million.
Couldn’t you guys have just… Trimmed the roots?
I know a guy who works for the council, I wasnt involved. I know the numbers because one of his projects got axed to help cover the costs.
But they did make a huge fucking mess. Point is that 2.6 million dollars is about the annual cost of 25 council employees and 1000 replacement trees.
Did you replace the trees with concrete?
I wasnt involved, I know a guy who works for the council. They actually did a great job, the park doesnt look any worse for it and has more usable space.
The fact is they could have planted thousands of replacement trees or built another park with the cost difference between just cutting them down and cutting them down with all the back and forth that you have to have in a democracy.
Giant infrastructure projects are a weakness of democracies.
What about the high-speed networks in France, Japan, Spain and Germany?
France is smaller than Texas. Every nation you mention was not a democracy during most of their rail construction. It is vastly easier to engage in large construction projects in authoritarian states because you don’t have to care about a voting populace.
Sorry to bust your bubble but first high speed line in Spain started in 1992. Democracy in Spain started in 1977. And in Germany or France I’m pretty sure high speed trains where made when they were also democracies.
Normal speed rail can handle high speed. They have to build new ones.
All of them were democracies when they built their high speed rail networks.
It’s not about the democracy it’s the fact that the “democratically elected” officials prefer to funnel taxpayer money towards fascists.
What exactly do you think the Interstate project was?
The Interstate system was sold as a means to allow rapid military deployment. This allowed tapping of infinite defense resources to make it happen.
That’s exactly it. That’s also why US interstates are so wide compared to major highways in most other countries. They were originally built so that they could also be used as makeshift runways durring any potential invasion scenario. Of course that hasn’t been a consideration since the cold war so newer or reworked sections don’t necissarily have as much open space around them.
This is misleadingly reductionist. California high speed rail has made consistant progess in that time. That progress has been slower than ourslowest expectations. It demonstrates the void of expertise the US has in rail megaprojects. However, that expertise is being built, slowly and painfully. Its still forward progress for a nation which tore up half its rail overthe last 50 years.
America invented rail megaprojects.
America still has the largest rail network by far. It’s well more than twice the size of China’s.
The only interesting note is that it’s almost all freight compared to other nations’ use of passenger rail.
Hehehehe
With 0.92% of electrified rail it’s a joke to say that NGL. Absolute numbers are meaningless.
You have to see it into perspective per area then you’ll get to feel how dense and therefore useful the rail network actually is. Because what good is a rail network if you can’t reach your desired location.
And then you’ll see that swiss, Germany and Luxembourg for example end up with less than 10 square km per km of rail while the usa has around 40.
Okay, but the comment implied America doesn’t have the expertise to build a passenger network when it actually doesn’t have the political willpower. It has the expertise to spare, but no one in power actually cares.
That still is not correct.
Planning a high speed high throughput flexible passenger rail network is a whole different beast than laying non-electrified single track lines in a straight line through the middle of nowhere that basically only serves the occasional 2miles long freight train.
The parameters are vastly different and almost incomparable. And America has decidedly no expertise left in the former.
Other than the fact that there are several American firms who have already done it, and even if there was a knowledge deficit it’s the easiest thing in the world for an American company to headhunt foreign talent. Too easy in most industries.
Opposition to new railways is political, be it from establishment organizations or private owners, like in California. That’s all there is to it.
Which ones? Which company actually has put out a consistent, significant, structurally sound high speed rail network including stations and the trains themselves that is based in the US?
And headhunting foreign talent tells me that you have not worked in the rail planning sector. These companies are extraordinarily protective of their high value who are the executive “talent” behind their stuff. And the biggest rail tech companies are multinational conglomerates (Alstombardier, Siemens, CRRC, Hitachi) who have no desire or need to outsource to America.
There is noone currently who has both intimate knowledge of American geodetic planning and high stress track planning. And building that knowledge takes a lot of trial and error.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States
While their current average speed isn’t great compared to the highest speed rails in Europe and Asia, it is comparable to the average high speed services, and Amtrak seems confident in their claims for Acela in 2024.
Absolute numbers are meaningless.
You have to see it into perspective per area then you’ll get to feel how dense and therefore useful the rail network actually is
Same goes for the meme tbqh
Thats true. And then America stopped. And then the people who had actual on-the-ground experiance died of old age. Its really another effect of the slow tragedy that is the auto industry
Yeah, but who BUILT our rail system?
Like many other things, we don’t like to talk about it…
According to the documentary Hell on Wheels it was mostly built by a man named Cullen Bohannon with his own hands. When he got tired, he used some Chinamen and I think maybe a woman dressed as a man for a stretch.
Also, Dude, Chinamen is not the preferred nomenclature.
It was when Cullen Bohannon single handedly constructed the Union Pacific Railroad in 1865.
Misleadingly reductionist is what /c/memes should be renamed to.
California HSR expansion is going to get cancelled the moment the minimum viable route finishes, they’re going to lose the ROW and the expertise, then 10 years later the next leg will get approved.
This is what happens to transit projects in America, so there’s no reason to expect anything different for rail.
Indeed. We’re fixing the great car mistake at a glacialy slow pace
What evidence is there for you to assert that expertise is being built?
Yep. All while getting resistance the entire way in spite of the fact that the US regularly funds without question the expansion of highways and building of interstates. Slowly but surely there does seem to be a growing appetite for rail transit throughout the nation and it is possible for more upgraded corridors to be built and if the US can keep momentum up the lessons learned in california can be applied in building rail elswherre
It’s much easier to build rail in places that weren’t designed around cars. Even in rural China people live in condos and apartments with parks between. This helps with NIMBYism and combined with the already large amount of green space left in Chinese cities such systems can be built with the only real concern being the engineering itself. But China is also in a good position for that, as their workforce is incredibly well educated with more engineering talent than they can even fully employ domestically. All that PLUS the political will of a single party state meant it was a very different situation than California.
And that’s before you even consider ridership, where even the best possible SF to LA route would still pretty much require you to get a car or taxi once you get to LA (because LA was basically torn down and redesigned for cars).
In LA it is supposed to end at Union Station, which amazing access to commuter rail, a metro system, which admitly is small, but still can take you to a lot of places, bus rapid transit and it is right next to downtown. Obviously it is not comparable to NY, London or Paris, which are of a similar size, but you should be able to go to a lot of intressting places, without needing a car once you arrive in LA.
LA is slowly working on good rail transit. You can already get to Union station (where CA HSR will stop) from just about everywhere served by the rail and busway network
Another good practice china makes is building transit before/at the same time as expanding urban areas, making sure that even new developments are transit oriented
I finally found one in the wild!
If you’re gonna call someone a name, go ahead and say it
Urbanist?
One what?
A delusional fetishist. I wonder how much time they’ve spent in China.
Are you saying China didn’t build that rail?
I don’t see where I typed that.
So, what’s the delusion? Are you saying California has built comparable levels of HSR?
Thinking “even in rural China people live in condos and apartments with parks between” is hilarious. Tons of rural Chinese still use outhouses and only have communal water sources, no indoor plumbing. They live in simple wooden shacks and cook over an open fire.
I have absolutely no idea where they 're getting the ideas they have but they’re laughable.
edit: though to be clear, their high-speed rail system between cities is great and an example the US should look.
How much time have you spent in China?
About six months, prior to covid. Enough to know the commenter is full of shit.
China is a wonderful country but basically the entire first paragraph is wrong.
He’s not entirely accurate with his definition of “apartment and condo,” but if you’ve actually lived in a rural village you’d know that they have remarkable density compared to even Western suburban development.
China has the advantage of not having to care about the citizens’ desires in regards to be relocated to make the rail possible.
I don’t think America gives any shits either. They let the world’s most useless CEO dictate their future
They also provide apartments to live in permanently for those displaced in the development.
Meanwhile, the US has not built high speed rail and has tent cities.
In the case of national infrastructure, China wins hands down.
Honestly not that ridiculous of a comparison considering California’s size and GDP, we could be doing a lot better
That’s a fair assessment.
Except it is considered “unamerican” for government to help people, and tue generosity of billionaires is hoped for instead
Kelo v. City of New London. That’s all you need to know about the US’ “care” for citizens’ desires as far as eminent domain is concerned.
The US still has things like reelection to consider with these things. China doesnt. And if someone speaks up against the government they just get arrested
Oh is reelection a threat here? Which gerrymandered district are you from?
Spain wants to have a little chat with you
Ya all looking at this like it’s a conspiracy. It’s just a guy looking to sell more cars. Shame on anyone who thought it’s a real thing.
I’m looking at China like this-
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China wants unity, even in places where it doesn’t make economic sense.
edit: 100% downvotes are coming from people that don’t know the situation. The CCP wants fast travel to major population centers even when the rail line isn’t profitable.
Isn’t that a good thing? sounds like the rail is being run as a public utility rather than a business. And its still likely profitable if you average the cost over all the lines.
I never said it was a good/bad thing. I’m saying the Chinese gov. isn’t as concerned with profit. Which explains the difference between California and China
It makes economic sense but not financial sense. Railways are almost always profitable once considering second and third order effects.
It’s the same story with Amtrak, so I’m not sure why people are so confused. Amtrak loses money on every train that’s not the NEC.
Are they siding with the hunter or the emissary this time?
That’s a good thing. It’s a service that the population uses, not something to make a profit.
did you mean to say utility instead of unity?
Musk has the weirdest relationship with trains.
Maybe too close to Trans, he don’t like them either.
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You’re allowed to swear on the internet. You won’t get in trouble for it.
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Cussing? Not on my Christian Minecraft server!
This isn’t Minecraft
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Excuse me sir this is a Christian TF2 server
And not allowed to not swear?
Its a lot easier when you have slave labor and don’t care about the enviroment or human lives
I understand what this comment is trying to say, but I doubt US is very big on caring about environment. Remind me, how many fracking projects?
It unquestionably is but it sounds like you’re implying that high speed rail is some sort of utopian megaproject and not a solved problem of basic, reliable and effective infrastructure that is a great bang for your buck in every country that builds it.
I mean we actually own land in the US where it’s not owned by a person in the same sense in China. So it’s easier for the government to cease it and do whatever it wants with it
Spain has the lowest cost per kilometer in the world when it comes to building High Speed train (14.5 million €/km) and they care for the environment and don’t have slave labour. Rather, they have very strong unions.
Like in Spain with much smaller economy and almost 4 thousand km - admittedly they started back in the 1990s I think.
It’s also a lot easier when you cut costs and all the rails will be unused in a few years due to poor construction materials.
Tofu Dreg construction and corruption is very real in China.
So… like the Musk-man does anyway?
If that’s all it takes why doesn’t California have it?
Because they don’t have slave labor and they care about the enviroment and human lives. Were you paying attention at all?
Because they don’t have slave labor
There’s literally a bill on the floor called the “End Slavery in California Act” a bill that failed last year.
They can name a bill whatever the fuck they want. They usually get authoritarian bullshit passed by calling it something like the PATRIOT Act. Who wouldn’t vote for something so patriotic. If you don’t vote for it you’re anti-american!
Here’s the full text of the bill.
Literally all it does is replace the line in the California State Constitution that says “Involuntary servitude is prohibited except to punish crime” with a line that says “Slavery of any form is prohibited” and then defines slavery as “forced labor compelled by the use or threat of physical or legal coercion”
Nobody needed it. They don’t force people to work in prison, but if you do it shows your willingness to go with the program and better yourself instead of joining gangs. There’s a good reason for people getting reductions in sentences or good boy points for working and it’s not slavery.
The original proposal was written by a former inmate who was forced to sanatize cells during the height of the pandemic.
California law requires all able bodied prisoners to work:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=2700&lawCode=PEN
If everyone is required to work, it’s not really a “work and you leave sooner” situation it’s a “don’t work and you stay longer” situation. Besides if the work is already not cohersed, why would there be any opposition to banning cohersed labor?
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/a-whopping-900b-debt-chinas-once-profitable-high-speed-railways/?amp
It’d be good to have high speed rail but not at any cost.
Queue tankies going crazy to defend the absurd cost…
Less than 9x the cost of California HSR or the UK’s HS2. With that money, California HSR aims to build 840km and HS2 aims to build 230km. China, with 42000km, built 50x the rail of California HSR and 180x the rail of HS2 and is delivering economic and social mobility benefits today.
Either way, infrastructure doesn’t need to be profitable at a first-order level to be profitable to the country as a whole. The increase in economic mobility, social mobility, consumer spending, travel, and logistical efficiencies typically have returns that far exceed that of fares: in typical North American transit systems, although they operate at a loss on paper, it’s estimated that each dollar put into transit returns $4-$5 in economic returns.
Going to guess the workers in CA are paid slightly better…
yeah but how does their cost of living stack up against that paycheck?
It is higher but they are still doing better even with the higher COL.
Then let’s talk about Spanish HVT (AVE), shall we?
No. Lets not do whataboutism.
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Hyperloop was invented to try to kill light rail. It succeeded at killing Maryland’s new venture and Illinois’. Neither were built because Hyperloop promised bullshit. Elon hates public transport.
