China’s High Speed Rail Network Continues To Grow The majority of these railroads are operating at a loss. So the taxpayers are paying for them. As with anything, maintenance is often more expensive than building something new. Some of these problem appeared in their infrastructure built in the 2000s. As well as older homes built in the 80s.
We are talking about daily gas line explosions due to lack of maintenance. And lack of funding to provide for these maintenance projects. It’s great that they could pool the money at once to build something new and fast. But maintaining them would be a much bigger problem for years to come.
At the same time, American roads operate at a loss.
User fees (annual tabs for registration and license fees) and fuel taxes only cover about 2/3 of the total upkeep; the general tax fund subsidizes the other 1/3 that the users of the road aren’t paying for. The general fund also subsidizes the large part of our military budget that polices the Arabian peninsula. And keeps gas taxes artificially low.
High Speed Rail Europe
But of course in China’s case there is no red tape. As long as you don’t care. And nobody is allowed to ever report. Such as rail safety, worker safety, the environment, endangered animals/habitat, property rights, destruction of ancient landmarks. And a host of other things that civilized countries worry about when building things in the modern era….Yeah, you can do some pretty impressive stuff really fast. The Great Wall, AKA the longest graveyard in the world. Was also built with impressive speed. The Chinese are good at that.
In contrast the US is filled with red tape.
The administrative laws and environmental review processes or permitting that we have in this country. And especially California. Make it extremely costly and time consuming to even get to the point where you can implement new infrastructure projects. Then there are lots of compliance requirements during construction. Compared to China where private property rights and environmental laws don’t exist.
