Not so friendly reminder that musk specifically came up with, and pushed, for hyperloop knowing that it would never be made, as an effort to stop the development of highspeed rail in America and shift all political discussions of it because "something better is around the corner":
As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it. Several years ago, Musk said that public transit was “a pain in the ass” where you were surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his opposition.
Also: 2024 update, the total length of China's high-speed rail tracks has now reached well over 45,000 km, or 28,000 miles, by the end of 2023.
They are additionally five years ahead of schedule and expect to double the total number within ten years. And, before someone inevitably complains about "how expensive it is", they are turning over a net-profit of over $600M USD a year.
On the "good on China" side, they standardized their train sets and rails to very few models for efficient and consistent systems, have the largest manufacturing base in the world, and the constant building of rail is training generations of chinese engineers how to build and run it efficiently.
The US builds rail infrequently to random specifications, generally with outsourced labor and engineering. Every single project is different, with different voltages, trainsets, tracks, on and on. Hell, we toss in diesel trains still for fun, like the Florida HSR brightline.
It's a big part why we suck at it. As an example, the east coast Amtrak line that runs through NYC/Boston/etc has like 3 different voltages. The "single line" is actually 3 lines, with one of them nearly 100 years old with constant maintenance issues. They have been trying to replace it for decades, but we never fully fund it enough to do so.
We are just doing this the stupid way possible.
We suck at it because the auto lobby wants us to suck at it. We could do what China is doing if we told the auto makers to stuff it and started building
The problem with the buildout of Chinese high speed rail, that the US won't really have should it start investing into it, is that China already had a very robust passenger rail system
They WAY overbuilt their high speed system, and now tons of lines are hemorrhaging money because people are opting for the slower, but significantly cheaper, traditional rail system that the high speed one has to compete against
Well, you don't get better at it without doing it, so.
Still, about all these "China has built N M-units of P", remember those of them about China building whole new cities? They are now demolishing whole districts of many-story residential buildings nobody has ever lived in, cause nobody wants to live there and buildings without maintenance will be dangerous.
And I think it's not only that nobody will live there (China still has lots of poor rural population that would like some improvement), but also the fact that probably many things in those exist only on paper. Chinese corruption is enormous, despite what people here may want to believe, and it also involves oligarchy.
Your comment has literally nothing to do with how they build trains.
We aren't talking about their failing economy or corrupt residential building process. We are talking about what the world can learn from their effective train building process.
Your evaluation of how they build trains is as problematic as of how they build housing.
Because you haven't seen that. You are evaluating the mapping of that in some discourse popular among fans of "government doing stuff" in the USA.
You don't know how effective it is.
What we surely know is that China's a vastly different country, so their processes won't be applicable at all. Americans who want to do things the way they do in China forget how much a worker (or even an engineer) in China earns and what their labor rights are (none).
I mean, considering USA is already an immigrant country, it would be poetic to have an immigration program of the "half-slave work for 10 years on railroad-building projects, then citizenship" kind. But that wouldn't solve the problem of funds being embezzled.
I'll be fine without considering your opinion on that, to be honest.
I don't think it's unreasonable to look at what they're doing right, nor does it mean we have to condone the situation there in its entirety.
I for one am in awe they built enough high speed rail to circle the earth. The flip side of that coin is the shame I feel at our own progress in the meantime. The interstate system is so gross and inefficient. 90 out of a hundred trucks you see could have been on a train, should be.
And I'm sorry but if you find yourself driving on the interstate on a regular basis you're doing it wrong. I've heard all the best excuses. It's an insane way to live, and it's straight up ruining our planet.
I certainly don't advocate adopting China's way of being lock stock and barrel, but they're doing what we cannot. Too many apartments and trains. Sounds like awful problems to have.
I live in Russia, so don't really know anything about both USA and China.
But the part about China would be also true for you. We can't say what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong, that's the problem.
That said, yes, for logistics trains are just better.