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China on Thursday rolled off the production line a prototype magnetic-levitation train with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour in the eastern city of Qingdao.
The debut of China's first high-speed maglev train testing prototype marks a major breakthrough for the country in the high-speed maglev transit system.
The testing prototype, which has one car only, can check and optimize the key technologies and core system components of the high-speed maglev system and lay a technological basis for the forthcoming engineering prototype, said Ding Sansan, head of the train's research and development team and deputy chief engineer of CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., the train builder.
China is the third-largest country in the world by area. If they successfully implement a high-speed rail network, will American objections to scale finally be overcome?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:41PM (4 children)
Plenty of stuff is constrained by property rights multiplied by geometry. Most businesses have a physical footprint after all.
It's just as much a problem with government-based approaches.
It doesn't take a monopoly to figure how to do that.
Roads do more than that.
Sure, but it doesn't start at one.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:39PM (3 children)
Not at the same level though.
Like I say, just imagine trying to complete a transcontinental railroad without using monopoly (state) power.
Forget about completing it, try to just purchase the land necessary. Remember, no government handouts, no eminent domain, you have to come to a deal with each and every landowner on the path. If one says no, then you have to backtrack and reroute to avoid him. Each time you reroute you have to go to a less desirable route. If you have to do it often, you wind up with a snake track instead of a nice straight line.
Just getting the land lined up, before you can even start laying track, that would be extraordinarily difficult. And to the best of my knowledge it never happened on this scale in any country in the world.
It certainly didn't happen in the US. Railroads were built on state power, from the very beginning.
"It's just as much a problem with government-based approaches."
Eh, no.
Well, "just as much" is pretty imprecise, perhaps I don't know what you mean.
Government power neatly solves the main problems that would otherwise apply. Of course, it brings it's own set of different problems to the situation, but it does have the tools to do the original job. Eminent domain means you can plan a reasonable route and then build it, and all the little people in your way just have to get out and let you do it. Grants and subsidies guarantee an attractive profit from the beginning, which allows you to draw private investment capital that would otherwise have better places to go.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:57PM (2 children)
At the time, most of the land wasn't owned by anyone. It wasn't a case of eminent domain, but rather that ownership of the land wouldn't have been recognized otherwise without some sort of government approval. Else, for example, a government (at a state or national level) could just seize the land later.
The problem is that any such use of eminent domain has the same problems and conflicts of interest no matter how it is employed. Might as well use it to obtain rights of way for multiple competitors as for one inefficient state monopoly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @01:48AM
You'd need to create a huge wide multi lane corridor that could handle a dozen competitors to do it properly. Open up a bunch of corridors and giving out sections to competitors is equivalent of the Bell monopoly break up where they broke it up by region. So as far as anyone was concerned there was still a monopoly, it was just named differently in their area versus another area.
Regional monopolies are just a regulatory capture of local space that benefits a single entity. Infrastructure and utilities should either directly compete with others in a given area, or be controlled/owned by the community. Another option is to have the government own and build the infrastructure and have multiple operators leasing it out for use. As long as there is no collusion that can work quite well as its much easier for the big players to keep pressure on the government to keep their part working.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday May 27 2019, @09:47PM
At the time, most of the land wasn't owned by anyone.
:-) Of European ancestry...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..