Most intriguing and yet curiously disappointing headline of the day
“China Offers High-Speed Rail to California.”
Just picture it: across the bridge to end all bridges or the tunnel to end all tunnels, the high-speed rail shoots off, flashing us straight from Shanghai to San Francisco in record time.
But alas. It’s only China “supplying the technology, equipment and engineers to build high-speed rail lines” within the state of California.
Sad and disapointing.
It would never get past the environmental report.
Same for all other projects of a similar ilk.
Good grief. I don’t know what’s more shocking; That we have to turn to China to build a frikin train or that China would actually loan Californians money.
God [nonexisting] help us if Chinese engineers are going to build a bridge in SF!
I remember the 2-part film about their erecting the stadium for Olympic games….
…or a train. Or a earthquake-proof building. Or anything else, for that matter.
Good thing California’s so flush, otherwise we couldn’t afford the $10 bn tab to reduce traffic congestion in the farming communities of the Central Valley.
And as I’ve wondered before, what is it with lefties and their sudden obsession with high-speed rail links?
Yeah, I know Europe and Japan have ’em, but have proponents ever looked at a map?
It’s only China “supplying the technology, equipment and engineers to build high-speed rail lines” within the state of California.
This is why Americans no longer study engineering. I certainly wish I hadn’t….
Gray, I hear ya. I’m discouraging our older son from going into science.
Science, medicine, and engineering all have the same strategic flaw: construction of an intellectual Maginot Line. Having invested so much time and energy into a field, one almost has to use it, and thereby be a sitting duck for the vagaries of the market.
Much better to go lighter on the education and remaining nimble.
In this context read Derek Lowe’s blog on drug discovery blog on Corante, on which every fourth post seems to be how many Ph.D. scientists have gotten the boot so that people with bachelor’s degrees in business could make their numbers that quarter.
“”Yeah, I know Europe and Japan have ‘em, but have proponents ever looked at a map?””
Yea. And they want us peasants all in a 3 state quadrant for transportation efficiency. And the rest of the country is for progressive elites to vacation in without having to see or smell us.
Yeah, and as we peasants labor in the fields we can tug our forelocks as our betters flit by in their high-speed trains as they travel in style and comfort between ACORN meetings.
This is one of multiple signs. Ray the Hood’s recently announced decision re bikes and walking and spending Highway Trust funds on them is another. Reduce the people’s individual mobility. Dominate. No more big DC demonstrations: just cancel the trains.
as another resident engineer here, i gotta agree with Tatyana about the untrustworthyness of chinese engineering. don’t take it wrong, i am not engaging in the blanket chinese bashing, this is for real. they are not all bad people, nor are they all bad engineers, however in the chinese culture, cheating is very acceptable. the end absolutely justifies the means. the personal integrity that we are used to (or were used to…) just isn’t part of their culture, unfortunately. their ideas of professional ethics are very different.
i had a friend in college who did some chinese exchange student-ing, and he came back from that very freaked out about the future if china were to become the dominant engineering work force in the world. think catastrophic loss of life.
so the common meme of “chinese stuff is cheaply made” holds true even in all sectors of engineering. but forewarned is forearmed, consider yourselves forewarned.
The good news is that CA’s credit rating is lower than Greece.
So…
Unless the Chinese will lower the price to $0………. ……….. ………… …..
as an addendum, i was very glad that Bush had cultivated a positive relationship with India, because at the time i was already fearing for the future of the usa in a world with a powerful china, and it would have been great to have india there as a foil for some of that. unfortunately, you know who has already squashed that.
China’s engineering aside, it’s the country that will be bailing the United States out—if only temporarily– in about five years as our debt and over-spending intensify completely out-of-control.
Scary- anyone here dealt with Chinese steel? Not saying its all bad, but it is gaining a reputation for not really being up to speck in my little neck of the woods….
They have a mag-lev train in Shanghai that runs from downtown out to the airport. Reaches a top speed of 431k/hr. (268mph) It’s 19 milles long, so not a long distance project. It is, however, the kind of thing that gets a green liberal all wee wee’d up. They just love mass transit because it forces people to move at the direction of government bureaucrats.
Seattle Transit has just completed an elevated train line from downtown Seattle to the airport. It has been an underwhelming success so far. They forgot that people might want to park near the boarding terminals. To get there you first have to ride a bus, then wait for the train. Most people can drive to the airport much quicker and for less money. Guess what they chose to do? But, but that elevated train is so…………green? Why do they keep doing these things?
Now Calif. wants to build a high speed train from LA to San Fran. According to Wiki, “With generous funding from the Chinese government’s economic stimulus program, 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) of high-speed lines are now under construction, with plans for a total network of 50,000 kilometres (31,000 mi) by 2020. China’s high speed trains use a wide range of domestic and imported technologies from Germany, Canada, France, Japan and Sweden.” So, why are we using their expertise? Or are they willing to put up the money? Or? Oh well, I guess it doesn’t have to make sense. As Nike says, “Just Do It!!”
Another brilliant-and fiendishly expensive–solution to a non-existent problem. It’s a good thing California has such an enormous budget surplus. These high-speed train projects tend to get kind of pricey, and let’s not mention the inevitable price overruns, and always end up losing billions of taxpayer dollars a year so that a tiny fraction of the public can ride on them and pat themselves on the back for their heightened environmental morality.
J.J. formerly Jimmy J. Says:
April 8th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Exactly so. Mass transit = transit for the “masses”.
The leftist government elites despise the very notion of privately-owned transportation, i.e., cars. Except for themselves, of course.
It should be blindingly obvious by now that the socialist/green utopia is a modern-day feudalism, with the ruling families permanently cemented in place. No more middle class; just the hereditary ruling class and the peasantry.
When the $10 bn bond issue for the “high-speed rail link” appeared on the CA ballot I went on a ten minute rant to my long-suffering wife as I read the voter’s handbook.
The link was touted as “reducing traffic congestion,” but as anyone with an opposable thumb appreciated, there is no traffic congestion betweenLA and SF – it’s within those cities, and the link would do nothing about that. And seriously, how much congestion in one city is due to people traveling from the other?
Moreover, LA and SF are 350 miles apart, so even at a high speed the round-trip train journey would clobber most of a day.
Wannsinn. But $10 bn (the down payment) well-spent. Good thing we’re flush, or is this would be stupid. Kinda like someone looking at foreclosure buying a Lamborghini.
As I understand it, the high-speed train will cut through Fresno, probably not too far from my house, some 60 feet above street level. It will be astonishingly ugly, and it will be loud. God help us.
i had a friend in college who did some chinese exchange student-ing, and he came back from that very freaked out about the future if china were to become the dominant engineering work force in the world. think catastrophic loss of life.
We gave all our money to “the less fortunate”:
We can’t afford better engineering anymore.
Tarragon rose said, “It will be astonishingly ugly, and it will be loud. God help us.”
Yep! The lead story on the news two nights ago was how loud the Seattle train is. They are installing a $2.5 million track lubrication system to try to cope with the problem. A lot of people are all wee wee’d up over this…….and its not the greens.
So let me get this straight. You stand in line or sit in a terminal for ? minutes to get on a train that will whisk you 19 miles to the airport in 4 minutes so you can stand in line or grow moss sitting in a departure lounge until Mudskipper Airlines finally gets organized to blow this pop stand?
Thanks anyway. I’ll drive.
> as another resident engineer here, i gotta agree with Tatyana about the untrustworthyness of chinese engineering.
Anna, I believe it is reasonable to assert that China is where Japan was ca. 1950, in terms of their industrial talents and attitudes. I think in time they are likely to do a spectacular job just as Japan has in terms of improving Q.C. To cite justification for that, I would point to Taiwan, which is pretty much “ex-Chinese” and is practically a nation of engineers. I don’t hear many bad things about stuff made in Taiwan. I think Korea, while not “the same” as China, is clearly from similar cloth, and they seem to be midway between Japan and China.
Now, of course, to counter that (lest anyone mistake me for a drooling Sinophile), there’s THIS amazingly and amusingly bad example of a truly utter and completely egregious FAIL on the part of Chinese engineering in Shanghai. (Trust me, folks, you want to see these pix!)