China mulls high-speed train to US:

The technology is there to make this happen. Could make the rest of the world a little closer to us.

Unfortunately, high speed rail is something our politicians don't want to embrace. We are so far behind the rest of the world with such a highly industrialized society. All we have to show for high speed rail progress is the Acela, and at that, the speeds that it  runs at are semi high speed.

That's really cool. I wonder if even the Chinese can actually get a project as massive as this underway with all the political issues involved though. 

Still, they do have good track record (Ouch!) with building U.S. railways. 

Interesting!

Peter

Oh yeah!  Like the US did in the 19th century, China seems to have the big ideas now.

1,300 km from China to USA? I have a hard time believing that.

What of the expanding sea floor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, that passes thru the Bering Straight? Forgot what its called, but basically the earth's crust is created there and spreads out.

I, for one, get really tired of hearing how the rest of the world is leaving the US behind in hi speed railroads.  I was just in England and was appalled that it cost $57 US dollars (33 pounds) to travel from Winchester to London at off peak time just one way.  That is only about 60 miles.  When I asked my son-in-law (who is a native of GB) how average people is England were to afford such expensive prices, his response was - " they just don't go!"  I felt thought that response was a little odd but after seeing what I perceived as a much tighter class structure while in England, it began to make more sense.

If hi speed rail made economic sense in the US, someone would have done more of it by now.  I think we have and are continue to waste entirely too many tax dollars on the concept and most of it going to buddies of the politicians handling the purse strings.

When it comes wishing for hi speed rail, perhaps one should be careful what they wish for.  It might happen and you may not like the finished product.

Happy railroading,

Don

I'm having a hard time seeing how China is going to do this unless they get a lot of ROW from Russia, but I suppose business is business in these matters.   I'm not worried about the sea floor - pretty do-able in spite, but the distance seems to be 13,000 km, not 1,300.

It's simple economies of scale actually.  Those other European countries and Japan with high-speed rail are small countries with smaller distances to travel between cities and neighboring countries, meaning less money needing to be spent per mile and other countries contributing to the thoroughfare, therefore the subsidiaries they pay out is relatively small.

Keeping China out of the equation, the overall geographical size of the US is much larger by comparison to those European countries, and cities & metropolitan areas are also much more spread out, meaning it will take much more money to get high speed rail to all the key destinations and stops along the way in the United States compared to those other countries.  In other words, being smaller countries works to their advantage when building out high-speed rail from an investment standpoint alone.  Not so here, politics aside.

High speed rail is one of those things that context is everything, and there is always a cost/benefit ratio. High speed rail cross country probably makes no sense, economic or otherwise, but if you look at heavily traveled corridors like the northeast corridor (Boston to Washington), it might make sense. The fantasy of car travel is that the answer to everything is to expand the roadways, to widen them, or build new roads, but traffic outstrips them almost before they are built, then you spend a ton of money maintaining them, whereas with rail as an alternative to driving along that corridor, probably is cost effective. More importantly, it would probably take the load off of airline travel in that corridor, all the airports in the DC-NYC-Boston corridor are heavily used/overloaded, and for travelers would often be more convenient, since the train stations are in town, not out in the burbs and a trip to get into town, so there it might make sense.

The reason China wants to build high speed rail is the country is very different, car ownership is not like in America, so they are banking on the trains to get people where they need to go. My son is going to be visiting china soon, and will be going from Hong Kong to Wuhan, and the fare is about 150 bucks US for a 5 hour trip on the high speed rail, the regular train is about 11 hours....and the distance is roughly NY to Chicago if I calculated it right. A plane would be 2 1/2 hours or 3 hours, but a lot more expensive...

One of the biggest problems with transit in this country is the insistance that it be run 'like a business', but they only look at the transit in terms of what it costs to run and revenue, rather than the overall economic benefit. Cities without good transit systems suffer competitively because they face huge traffic snarls (Atlanta, where my company is headquartered, makes the Cross Bronx Expressway look good), it is a mess, and other of the sunbelt cities have massive problems with traffic jams and such that help choke them. NYC thrives because of the transit hubs, and despite the burbs making pushes to lure companies there, NYC has done well because they can draw from the whole region, and every study of the transit infrastructure shows that for every buck spent on transit, there is a huge multiplier in business activity and yes, taxes coming back. 

I don't know if all of China's dreams are going to happen, but I think there is a comparison to be made, and that is they are willing to dream, willing to be outrageous, whatever you want to call it, and it kind of comes with the territory when you are in effect building from scratch. The US was like that from the late 19th century until roughly 20 years after WWII, but after a while it no longer is that important to be bold or whatever. One of the worlds tallest buildings, the Petronas tower, is in a third world country where a lot of people barely eke out existance living, so what does that prove? I am more concerned that things like basic infrastructure have gone to ****, our bridges are falling apart, our electric system is held together by bailing wire and chewing gum and cannot get power easily from where it is generated to where it is needed, access to high speed internet is a joke compared to many countries, and so forth, there I wish we would look at China and take some lessons from it. 

not much chance of a Chinese railway crossing Russian territory. it would take a significant political shift in Sino-Russian relations for that to happen.

Sorry not going to happen. Who is kidding who.

  Sorry ,not a good idea ,don't support the thought .

A Bering Strait route would not have to deal with the tectonic boundary since it lies south of the Aleutian islands.

Actually bridging the Strait would be within todays engineering--jumping from Russia to the Diomede islands is a smaller feat than the longest bridges built by China so far, and the Strait itself isn't exceptionally deep. The only really expensive part is getting a rail line up there, and then from the Alaskan landing to the North American rail network (particularly the Alaska+Canada+CONUS link). The Chinese do seem to think they've licked the problem of building rail lines over permafrost.

It's believed that the amount of freight that would flow over such a link would pay for it--But if anybody could afford to foot the bill for such a humongous infrastructure project, it would be China (along with Russia). I'd think both of 'em would love to be able to rub our noses in it for...basically forever (which would likely be within the top ten reasons for doing it).

---PCJ

Wow, that's a mind-blowing idea. Technically possible. The distance is 13,000 km, not 1,300 km.

China already has the world's longest high-speed rail lines, but the skeptics say it will fall apart:

https://ogrforum.com/t...igh-speed-rail-route

Have YOU actually witnessed some of the concrete work in Chine during the last 10 years? I must admit that I have never been over there, due to my asthma, but I have a LOT of friends and business associates, some of whom deal with the Chinese Railway officials, and the "off the record reports" are quite disturbing. 

I wouldn't go buying a ticket just yet.

Rusty

Can you spell undocumented immigrants.

Wait, is this the same China that makes stuff broken right out of the box? The locomotives will be laid up for weeks before the first trip because the chips fried during test runs.

Ooooooo!  Let's see!  I believe it has a nice 'ring' to it....

Pacific Activity Link

Ay-yah!  That's just where I'd like to be about the time this 'ring' decides to 'yawn'....in the middle of a deep sea high speed train tunnel between Siberia and Alaska.

Apparently the quake/tsunami in Japan a couple of years ago and the (estimated) 9.4 magnitude quake in Alaska in 1964 is just, well, a nuisance to politicians of any persuasion who want to display technological prowess by fiat.  I'm sure there are 'solutions' to nuisance problems like that.  Just ask them.  Hey, I know....maybe it could link up with and provide new justification for the Alaskan pork barrel project, the Gravina Island Bridge...."The Bridge to Nowhere"!!!  After all, once thought dead from derision and lack of intelligent forethought, it apparently is getting its second wind....another phenomenon of government 'pork'.....you can't kill it, you can only build it.....because 'it's a good thing!'  just ask its sponsor. 

Yep, as one responder above said: "... I wish we would look at China and take some lessons from it."  Now there's a bit of sage projection if there ever was some! 

Government 'Pork'...it's the same everywhere.  No wonder SCRAPple is a pork product.

KD

Hmmm....as a former geology major, with a slight education in tectonic plates,

time spent tiptoeing around fresh "warm" lava from volcanos on islands, and a rudimentary conception of what the Ring of Fire is, with its history of earthquakes and eruptions, which sounds like might be the route of this railroad, I think I will continue to fly.  The Chunnel works, but the earth there is a lot more stable.  Not interested in

participating in an earthquake halfway between Point A and Point B on that trip.

Two words explain why this will never happen: American environmentalists.

Have no fear: they will find a snail darter, spotted owl, desert tortoise, polar bear, etc.

Sooooo, if this goes under the Bering Sea would it be called the Berunnel?????

Rick

13000 km / 350 km/h = 37.1 hours ... EPIC FAIL!!! Take the plane.

Anyone put a price tag on this pig? Wild guess 3 trillion.

You sure this wasn't a leftover April fools joke?

Originally Posted by illinoiscentral:

1,300 km from China to USA? I have a hard time believing that.

What of the expanding sea floor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, that passes thru the Bering Straight? Forgot what its called, but basically the earth's crust is created there and spreads out.

Ooooooo!  Let's see!  I believe it has a nice 'ring' to it....

Pacific Activity Link

Ay-yah!  That's just where I'd like to be about the time this 'ring' decides to 'yawn'....in the middle of a deep sea high speed train tunnel between Siberia and Alaska.

Now, I don't have anything resembling a formal education in geology...or seismology...or volcanology... But, a perverse fascination with natural disasters and their origins presents me with a body of knowledge that at very least caused a raised eyebrow at the above statements, sooo...

I re-read the article, and it distinctly says China wants to build a surface line up through Russia to Siberia, then cross the Bering Strait, which last time I checked, was several hundred miles north of the Aleutian Trench, and the volcanoes spawned by its subduction zone. This link will be firmly on the North American Plate long before it reaches water. By the way, Russia was looking to bankroll such a link a few years ago (2008-ish) as well.

---PCJ

Perhaps they will 'build to order?"

Now, if you could make it 37.5 hours for freight, now you've got something

-How long does it take for a container ship to get here from China?

-How many US-sized double-stack trains would it take to equal one (China does use doublestack cars btw)

-And, could you get them up through Russia, across the Strait and Alaska, then down to the Lower 48 in the time it takes the ship to get here (bear in mind that the shipping companies have been slowing their ships in order to save fuel)?

(And as long as China+Russia are footing the bill, why would we care how much it costs?)

---PCJ

I kinda like having an ocean between the US and China. 

I think they can successfully traverse the earthquake zone using a beefed up version of the BART tubes.

Here's another killer...   SNOW

It would be more useful to create a moon base and shuttle. It would probably be cheaper too.

I can just see it now. If the Chinese set-up a moonbase, and start manufacturing there, how long will it be before we hear in the forum 'I'm not buying anything not made on Earth' ? 

The project has been around for some time. I discovered it while doing some Alaska research. There is a section about dealing with the tectonic issues.

Interbering, L.L.C.

here's the cost from one page:

Alaska-Canada railroad -  up to $150 billion                    .
Russian railroad -  up to $115 billion                    .
Bering Tunnel -  up to $35 billion                    .
Total:   up to $300 billion                    .         

It provides some interesting reading.

Nicole, you have the greatest talent for finding humor in any situation!

Thanks.   I always try to look on the bright side of everything. Life is serious enough on its own, without looking for more ways to add stress. 

high speed rail is not the same as a piping tar. Environmentalists will not be the issue that prevents this and as long a Gorbachov gets his cut why would he complain.    

Gorbachov? I think you are about 30 years behind the times *smile*..Putin will get his cut, believe me, one of the reasons it probably won't happen is between corruption in China where everyone has their hand out, and bribing the oligarchs who run Russia to allow it, would end up being more expensive then it would be here, even using cheap labor and cheap materials from China to build it. 

There was a program on Discovery Channel in their "Extreme Engineering" show about building a rail bridge across the Bering sea, talking about the various things it would have to deal with, the biggest fear they actually had was Ice Flow destroying the underpinnings of the bridge, which would be built on a combination of pilings/span bridges and stayed suspension segments, they I seem to recall didn't make a big deal about earthquakes. To deal with the weather, I believe the bridge was enclosed, kind of like a modern day New England covered bridge. 

Well played Nicole! You crack me up.

Yeah, but you've seen the American people as a whole prove time and again that they are totally oblivious to trains. People walk on rails, park on rails, drive through crossings despite flashing red lights and clanging bells...

People will go to great lengths to defeat whatever security measures are put in place to go somewhere they don't belong out of some misguided notion of "freedom."

You couldn't make the fences high enough to keep people from being reduced to a fine red mist by a passing high-speed train. Even if you put it all up on a raised platform, people would figure out a way to park their car across the track!

Here's a quick read in the Washington Post about it - they seem just a wee bit skeptical as well:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...-to-america/?hpid=z4