How in the fuck are they pulling this shit off? These commies are making us look like clowns! What is the reason for this?!
so for decades chinese people were restricted from moving which built up pressure as other industrializing countries always urbanize and the forces existed in china too they were just held back. when these restrictions were lifted and mass urbanization took place, the chinese government was in a good position to dictate the terms on which cities would densify and build out because no matter what they chose, there would be strong demand for it coupled with minimal local resistance.the story on why we look like clowns when it comes to rail is complicated but the short version is rail was the absolute undisputed king of transport in the late 19th and early 20th century, so when automobiles came out, the backlash against rail tycoons and railroad power was like pouring rocket fuel on the already exploding demand for personal transport, it was decades before popular consensus came to see auto interests as the establishment and by then there was a huge inertia to overcome if anyone wanted to go back to trains, not to mention the unspoken cultural baggage where people instinctively felt that trains are unfree (similar to the weird unstated cultural baggage around gold and silver and fiat money which is actually a manufactured narrative dating from the 19th c. that most americans think is natural)
>>2031666>Source
>>2031662People are not disciplined enough to follow the arrows and let people off.>These commies are making us look like clowns!Case in point
>>2031662I hate these doors. They make me feel claustrophobic in and outside the train because any random stop won't have the space as shown in OP.inb4 """self-driving""" trainsDumbest idea ever. The overall productivity gain from not having a person drive the train is negligible considering the average ridership of a metro train is well over a hundred and having transportation is well worth 1% of that.Also they often don't work leading to unnecessary delays.Finally idgaf about low trust societies where people are afraid of being shoved onto the tracks.
>>2031722Yeah I like breathing in brake dust too
Because they build trains for political reasons, and extend tremendous wealth while they have it for political purposes. Japan tried this over the past few decades which bankrupt and broke up their state railways, china's reckoning is coming (eventually)>>2031666Chinese people are STILL restricted from internal movement by The Party. There are also domestic checkpoints, exit visas (yes they need permission to leave), all the same shit commie police states pull.What's more, the "family registration" system forever ties you to some "home region" and you can only leave to work as a laborer, hence the massive amount of travel during their holidays.
They don't have the bureaucracy of land acquisition and tender bidding that you get in the West. They can just drop the lines and stations down where they want, rather than spending decades wrangling landowners and NIMBYs until they come to a solution that's obviously sub-optimal but keeps them all happy.
>>2031731that's all well and good but the restrictions HAVE been loosened and urban areas have exploded in population and density, aren't you saying everything in china is controlled by the government? so how does this happen?maybe you can explain pic related if you think 1960s china is the same country as 2020s china. perhaps they are just running empty trains in circles in order to make westerners convert to communism as part of a game of 4-D mahjong
>>2031662Debt. Lots of debt. They built a lot of stupidly big and expensive infrastructure with excessive debt on the basis that if their growth continued at the pace it was going, the debt would never be a problem. Of course, the slight problem with that plan is that there was no guarantee of continued high growth.Going to be interesting over the next few decades watching how China copes with the burden of all the shit they've built over the last 20 years. There's going to be some difficult decisions being made about where to allocate continued funding, what to shut down and demolish, and what to continue running on an inadequate budget while trying to avoid becoming a new Liveleak upload.
>>2031662>These commies are making us look like clowns!No they aren't. Communism has always had good mass transit because people don't have any property rights and cannot meaningfully oppose it. How old are you?
No matter what China's political or economic future is, Shanghai will always be one of the world's largest and most impressive cities. I hope to visit someday. Probably when Xi is no longer in power.
>>2031743And why can't mutts do the same thing...?
>>2031770Cuz money is spent on more important thing like the military industrial complex, ai datacenters and oligarch's flying dicks ehm.. """rockets""".
