this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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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.