Comment on Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada
squaresinger@lemmy.world 15 hours agoIt’s almost as if infrastructure is there to facilitate growth and economy and not to turn a profit.
Do the same math for roads: How many percent of the roads in your country (or any other country) turn a profit?
Do the same with water works, sewage and so on. All these things have benefits far greater than immediate profit.
You need roads so that people can get to work and to places where they can spend money and so that goods can be shipped. And all of these things generate taxes and economic benefit, which in turn finance, among other things, road building.
It would be entirely stupid to think that every piece of infrastructure needs to finance itself and turn a profit, while completely forgetting the actual purpose and benefit of the infrastructure.
anachrohack@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
squaresinger@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Ok, let’s assume you read the article. Quiz question: who owns the China State Railway Group Co Ltd? (Hint: it’s in the name)
Also, I guess you didn’t just invent the “stated goal” of the China State Railway Group, so it should be quite easy for you to find said stated goal in their actual stated goals (wap.china-railway.com.cn/…/t20190408_92993.html), correct?
If you had bothered to actually read the article and if you had bothered to actually research anything at all about the topic at hand, we probably wouldn’t have the discussion.
TheFonz@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
The reality is the high speed rail it China is not solvent and is operating at a tremendous loss. That’s just reality. The question is if that loss serves a larger benefit to Chinese society. It’s a gamble either way.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Again, the same applies to e.g. the road network in the USA. Infrastructure is there to facilitate economic growth and freedom. Without roads it’s much harder to transport goods, get people to work, give people the mobility to move to jobs that are farther away while still being able to live closer to where they want and so on and so on.
And the same applies to public transport as well.
Only supreme idiots would argue that roads should turn a profit. And public transport is much cheaper at transporting people than roads.
It’s !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world that people don’t understand what infrastructure is and what it’s there for.