<story><title>China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/china/21714383-and-theres-lot-more-come-it-waste-money-china-has-built-worlds-largest</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>xbeta</author><text>(Being a Chinese grew up in Canada, and now working&amp;#x2F;living in the Bay)&lt;p&gt;In my opinion,  most people in the valley or in North America still refuse to give up their lifestyle. They look for something like self-driving cars, all electric-powered &amp;quot;personal&amp;quot; vehicle to invest.  And those still drive on the same road&amp;#x2F;interstates&amp;#x2F;highway infrastructure and don&amp;#x27;t give you the benefits compare with high-speed rails.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t recognize the real priorities - how to transport millions people everyday efficiently, cost-effectively, and most environmentally friendlies.&lt;p&gt;They also don&amp;#x27;t recognize local economy, local businesses thrive with these connected network.  It is proven to be the case in China and Japan.&lt;p&gt;High-speed rail network is what people want - to get from point A to point B quickly. It&amp;#x27;s not something even the most efficient self-driving car with the best MPG electric-powered vehicle can scale for millions of people everyday.&lt;p&gt;Instead of investing into some new technologies, they seem like they refuse to take decades of proven technology and just use it in US (high-speed trains were first invented in Japan in the 60s)&lt;p&gt;But as I understand very well in the culture here, the politics, the corruption, and the oil&amp;#x2F;automative conglomerate will never make this happen for the actual good for the people.&lt;p&gt;I would without a doubt to say the US is in its downfall as it didn&amp;#x27;t pick the priorities to fix the root of the problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>China has built the world’s largest bullet-train network</title><url>http://www.economist.com/news/china/21714383-and-theres-lot-more-come-it-waste-money-china-has-built-worlds-largest</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nacc</author><text>As someone who grew in China, I just want to point out that besides the engineering, it is a political wonder as well.&lt;p&gt;Before the bullet train network was built, China already has an extensive railway network. The first step is to run the bullet train on traditional railways, with a peak speed of 180km&amp;#x2F;h. People think it&amp;#x27;s great. No objections.&lt;p&gt;But to raise the speed further, a new network has to be built, almost side-by-side to traditional railways. This idea horrored almost everybody: new railways for 10s of thousands kms, new train stations (yes for most of the place it needs a separate station), just to be a bit faster? Of course it got a constant concensual blaze from both the citizens and all the official and unofficial media. This state maintains from the beginning of the project all the way a couple years into it operates (which spans many years).&lt;p&gt;The head of the project, Liu Zhijun had to be in jail of course. Then everything changes, 180 degree. People took the trains and realize it&amp;#x27;s great. What I (and probably many people too) didn&amp;#x27;t know before was with the speed increase, the perception of distance changes. The trains run like buses: between major cities, the train runs across in every several minutes. You can just get a ticket, go to the station, an hour later you are on the subway of another city. Many times when we were holding a meeting, people from other cities actually took less time to arrive than someone driving from suburbs.&lt;p&gt;Then the new railway network gets praise from both national and overseas. The official media shut up about Liu. People start to think Liu as a fanatically great 
engineer.&lt;p&gt;I cannot imagine how this project can even get started, and what Liu had to do to get this to work. There must have been a great story, but we may never know.</text></comment>