China’s high speed rail loses enormous amounts of money. Even when you consider the secondary and tertiary economic effects. Even the Chinese government has more or less given up on it.
It loses huge amounts of money because they’re connecting the entire country, even remote rural areas. There are benefits to that but profit is not one of them.
Compare it to the interstate highway network in the US. We have good highway access to every state, every region, no matter how remote. I live near interstate I-90 and it serves a huge amount of traffic, well worth the cost. The same is probably true at the other end 3,000 miles away, but can you say that about most of the distance? Very few people would drive the full distance , and Montana for example, can’t have much traffic. This road loses an enormous amount of money, for most of it.
The entire interstate highway system in the US loses an enormous amount of money and is just not worth it financially. However I would argue it was well worth doing, has been a huge benefit to the country, and is exactly analogous to the same question about a nationwide passenger rail network
All public transit doesn’t make money. Even the United States interstate system hasn’t made a single penny in profit.
Public transit shouldn’t need to make a profit. It’s cool if it does, but it inherently shouldn’t need to.
The benefits of making people travel for jobs and places to spend money generates more tax revenue and more money for businesses than if they were stuck at home otherwise.
Precisely this. “Hey you need to make money” is what’s effectively killed Amtrak, and it killed passenger rail in much of the US (what wasn’t torn up by highway building).
What do you mean given up? They’re still laying more rails and running more trains than ever. Even running dozens of trains a day, like 95% of the time the trains are fully booked, or it’s just soft sleepers and maybe standing available if you try to book the day of, or even a few days in advance for longer routes.
China’s high speed rail loses enormous amounts of money. Even when you consider the secondary and tertiary economic effects. Even the Chinese government has more or less given up on it.
It loses huge amounts of money because they’re connecting the entire country, even remote rural areas. There are benefits to that but profit is not one of them.
Compare it to the interstate highway network in the US. We have good highway access to every state, every region, no matter how remote. I live near interstate I-90 and it serves a huge amount of traffic, well worth the cost. The same is probably true at the other end 3,000 miles away, but can you say that about most of the distance? Very few people would drive the full distance , and Montana for example, can’t have much traffic. This road loses an enormous amount of money, for most of it.
The entire interstate highway system in the US loses an enormous amount of money and is just not worth it financially. However I would argue it was well worth doing, has been a huge benefit to the country, and is exactly analogous to the same question about a nationwide passenger rail network
All public transit doesn’t make money. Even the United States interstate system hasn’t made a single penny in profit.
Public transit shouldn’t need to make a profit. It’s cool if it does, but it inherently shouldn’t need to.
The benefits of making people travel for jobs and places to spend money generates more tax revenue and more money for businesses than if they were stuck at home otherwise.
Precisely this. “Hey you need to make money” is what’s effectively killed Amtrak, and it killed passenger rail in much of the US (what wasn’t torn up by highway building).
What do you mean given up? They’re still laying more rails and running more trains than ever. Even running dozens of trains a day, like 95% of the time the trains are fully booked, or it’s just soft sleepers and maybe standing available if you try to book the day of, or even a few days in advance for longer routes.