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, @11:33PM
On the first sentence, that is a No True Scotsman argument. Passenger rail exists in the US, it just doesn't have a prominent role like it does in other parts of the world.
Nor is American "attitude" towards rail somehow responsible for the variety of standard legal and environmental-based obstructions to any sort of big project in the developed world.
What is in large part responsible for the corruption of the project is its relative uselessness. There's already multiple transportation systems that service the region and do the job that the high speed rail would do. Thus, there is little reason for any of the participants to deliver on the project in a timely and cost effective manner. It's just a status signaling project from the start and much of the desired goals of the project were completed with the announcement of the project. Thus, there's little interest among any of the involved parties to avoid massive corruption and inefficiency.
They serve a need and don't cost 400 million pounds per mile [independent.co.uk] (which happens to be a snap shot on a cost escalation upwards).