Wednesday, May 20, 2009

1,000 High Speed Trains

When China stimulates, it's with trains. Where did that trillion dollars go for our stimulus?
By the end of the first quarter 2009, the approved Chinese railway investment exceeds $292 billion including more than $175 billion investment in the process projects. The data shown in the recent “Research Report on the Investment in Chinese Railway Transport Industry, 2009” indicates that China plans to construct 40-thousand-kilometer railways with the total investments of over $730 billion by 2012.
Is this real? Seems insane. I know they don't have to go through the environmental processes we do but that seems crazy. But if not, time to step up. Siemens AG will get a $1B train order while the United States sucks its Amtrak thumb.

6 comments:

crzwdjk said...

I don't think all that money is going to Siemens. The way China does things is buy a few examples from all the world's manufacturers, and then use them to make their own cheap knockoffs. It's not really a strategy that would work here, at least not on that scale. Amtrak is looking to buy some new rolling stock though, including a new fleet for the midwest corridors, new electric locomotives to replace the AEM-7s, more cars for the Acelas, and I think more single level sleeper cars. The latter is especially significant: there's only about 50 Viewliners total, and that's the main constraint on sleeper services in the East.

Unknown said...

It seems like D.C is just too squeamish to do anything bold in this country, with the exception of starting trillion dollar "Wars to Nowhere."

Our network in the US would have been smaller given a $730 billion investment, but we'd be able to finance a lot of improvements throughout the country with cash like that - all of Obama's network and thensome probably.

Anonymous said...

We could string a lot of over head wire!

crzwdjk said...

Heck, we could do a lot with $7.3 billion, like starting on a program of mainline electrification, or helping Chicago untangle the knot of freight railroad interconnections. Or get that direly needed new fleet of corridor rolling stock for the Midwest.

Anonymous said...

Stringing over head wire would ald also be good for fixing parts of the power grid too.

Matt Fisher said...

I'd like to. I'm just angry. Puttin' up a lotta wire is good to me.