I rode that train right after it was completed from Beijing back home to Hong Kong.
15 years later, knowing what I know about the way maintenance corners are cut and shoddy repair work over looked, I’d fly. The trains were great, when they were new!
This is like the ghost cities, commie central command decision making devoid of economic reality. But then again, since the CHICOMS copy everything, maybe they just stole the idea from our Amtrac...
Americans will buy enough cheap toys to keep CCP running.
The condition is actually, or nearly, the same with most “high speed” rail routes in the world. Few if any can be run on their own fare revenues.
Trains started to be used from passengers in the first decade of the 1800s.
Airplanes are about a century more modern than trains. Even the “motor vehicles”, including the large multi-passenger variety (buses) are more modern than trains, again by nearly a century. Yet the nostalgia for trains persist.
They - passenger trains - have their greatest and most efficient use in very large densely populated and connected urban areas (the northeast corridor from between Boston and Washington D.C., for instance). Outside of that nearly always financial black holes.
But, but, but... I thought China was offering to build a high speed rail all the way to the US - AND connect our cities...
A better plan for the US is to build an interconnected system that people WANT to use... and NO that is not going from Miami to Tallahassee in two hours and having ‘important’ people use it and the rest of us use cars... make it enjoyable to use, cost effective and comfortable.
Speed freaks can go to an airport and fly.
On the upside of a financial collapse in the Chicom HSR system they could end up with the world’s most advanced network of bike trails.
One reason for low ridership is the Social Credit system which forbids people with low scores from riding the trains.
The US has the ideal mix. Interstates, airlines, freight rail and river barge.
China builds entire cities where no one lives. They build subways and highways and they are not used. Youtube has videos of subway stations in the middle of no where. No town or city nearby.
We have the train to nowhere in California.
Graft is worldwide.