Comment by danielspace23
16 days ago
Which is an ironic comment to make, considering the difference in high-speed rail development in China vs in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_... (TL;DR: China's high speed rail network is the longest and most used in the world, as well as cheaper than the US's)
Why build all that infrastructure when the same use case is already being met with airplanes? The USA serves it's tier 3 cities much more efficiently with a few plane routes than building an entire high speed rail would.
Again, China's high speed rail utilization is not even able to pay for it's initial build out, and is very under utilized as it goes to tier 3 locations that don't justify it. Will be interesting to see how it plays out once 'maintenance debt' (technical debt but for infrastructure) gets added to the 'build out debt'. If those tier 3 cities turn tier 1 it will look like genius investment, but I don't see it happening.