Comment on Too bad we can't have good public transportation

• vga@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  A feature of rail is very high building costs. If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it’s not needed, this means there’s gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail.

  So it’s not about maintenance, but the up-front cost.

  source

  • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You could say the same about pretty much any infrastructure. It’s hideously expensive and will never get paid back by utilization.

    • highways
    • local roads
    • bridges
    • air traffic control
    • utilities of most kinds
    • canals
    • flood control
    • erosion mitigation

    All are hideously expensive and will never get paid back by utilization.

    Are they all bad investments?

    I claim they all are critical for their indirect benefits to an economy, a society, and rail is exactly the same.

    source

    • vga@sopuli.xyz ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I would say that there’s quite a lot of reason to believe that infrastructure investments can be one of the best ways to help poor people rise economically. Which has obvious paybacks.

      worldbank.org/…/infrastructure-and-poverty-reduct…

      This still requires creating infrastructure that is actually needed, otherwise it’s just wasting money.

      source

      • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

        infrastructure investments can be one of the best ways to help poor people rise economically

        And specifically consider how much we can help by not requiring all the expenses of owning a car. Transit and intercity rail could be among the best investments when you consider those indirect benefits. Such a shame that short sighted people want them to be profitable in utilization

        source
  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    you’re looking only at the return-on-investment of rail as if passengers would have to pay for it with tickets and such. that is not at all the case.

    the benefit of rail or any transport infrastructure in fact is the fact that it facilitates the rest of the economy. almost every economy depends a lot on transport, and by making transport possible, the rest of the economy becomes possible, and then that pays takes, and that’s the advantage in having streets.

    source
  • balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    If they wasted money on building HSR on a lot of places where it’s not needed

    There’s no such thing as “HSR where it’s not needed”, especially in a country that’s building housing at an insane pace. Each HSR station will just get a city built around it (hopefully not a car-dependent hellhole) and people will flock there.

    this means there’s gonna be a debt that never gets paid by the utilization of the rail. Bad investment.

    Chinese government can print an infinite amount of Yuan out of thin air. They don’t care about internal debts, what they do care about is popularity among their people, and “build more HSR” is a really popular policy in China because it obviously and immediately improves quality of life for loads of people.

    Thinking about everything in terms of “profit motive” is exactly why the US is the way it is.

    source

    • vga@sopuli.xyz ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Chinese government can print an infinite amount of Yuan out of thin air.

      That’s not how any of this works. Sure they can do that, but they cannot control the effects of having done so.

      source

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Ok, so infinite Yuan is a hyperbole, but for something so relatively cheap and so massively beneficial as rail, profitability really doesn’t matter. China has more than enough resources and influence to eat the cost now and reap the benefits for the next century.

        source
  • pyre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    why are you talking about building high speed rail where it’s not needed? don’t think anyone’s advocating for that.

    source