boiling down different countries having different things as one of them ‘winning’ and ‘beating us’ always fills me with nuclear levels of contrarianism. can tychus findlay from starcraft have a lit cigar in his mouth? NO, because china doesnt allow smoking in media. Guess we’re beating them!
Orange vs Apple! Who will win!
That being said I do wish every country would have a better public infrastructure.
Just out of curiosity if you do have recent research in economy on the impact of subway, tram, bus, bike lanes, etc on both productivity AND happiness, please do share. I’m already convinced but I’d love to learn more on how and why.
Chengdu is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a population of 20,937,757 at the 2020 census.
Toronto is the most populous city in Canada and the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a population of 2,794,356 in 2021
Meanwhile Hamburg, Germany with only 1.8 Million:
DONT BRING NUANCE AND LOGIC TO A SENSELESS FEELINGS-BAITING POST! It doesn’t MATTER the city layout over top of it, the context of rapid and rampant industrialization in China, or something as inconsequential as number of people!
i don’t understand your reasoning here. are you saying that Toronto hasn’t needed more subway lines than a couple extensions in 15 years? how does the number of people affect the lines? i would think it should affect the number of trains and trips. the lines would be more about where people live and want to go, no?
Its sarcasm
i know. I was addressing the point you’re making not the literal text.
Not me
what
I didnt write the comment you answered to
China BAD?
BUT AT WHAT COST???
NYC with almost half of the population of Chengdu.
All jokes aside, things like this are why China is beating us. I am absolutely not a fan of the Chinese government, but the simple fact is they get shit done.
Much of the growth in China is entirely artificial and is basically a glorified jobs program. China builds tons of cities throughout the country to generate construction contracts and keep people employed. This trend has sort of recently reached a head, and China is now suffering from a pretty large youth unemployment rate (something like 15% of young adults in China cannot find work).
Additionally, many of the public transportation routes in China were designed as vanity projects and have never become profitable. A lot of the high speed rail in China cuts through large swathes of uninhabited land and goes out to ghost cities where nobody lives because they were only built to create construction contracts. These rail lines are expensive to maintain and are bleeding money.
Now, of course you’d probably say that public transportation is a public good; they dont need to profit to benefit the country. That may be true, but it also means that the government needs to borrow money in order to subsidize these largely pointless rail lines (think of those maps where people propose a HSR line that goes from New York to California- a largely pointless route that almost nobody would take because it would be a lot faster to just take a plane).
This is not to say that the United States beats China in every category. In my view the United States has become a barely functioning legal fiction on the precipice of disintegration. My point is just that a lot of these things in China are artificially propped up by their relatively centrally planned economy and are designed to feed the egos of politicians. China is coming up on multiple fiscal, economic, and demographic cliffs that will most likely result in the shuttering of lots of these public works projects similar to how Argentina has been forced to shut down large amounts of public services because of decades of poor economic management.
And finally, to be fair, the United States is ALSO coming up on many economic cliffs, and in many ways has already flung itself far off of some of them, resulting in deteriorating fundamental public services such as education, healthcare, housing, public transportation, and regulatory agencies, not to mention the corruption which has also infested all of those
LOL thanks for your unfunded BS CIA.
I cant find statistics on total occupancy rates, but I never saw a high speed train in China that wasnt mostly full, and they mosty sell out days beforehand, so Im pretty sure that’s just someone making shit up. As far as domestic debt due to infrastructure spending, apply your model to Japan.
Turns our neoliberalism was always full of shit, a jobs program that produces useful infrastructure is infinitely better than leaving people unemployed or subsidizing walmart’s wages.
I think people forget that many of the highways in The West™ were created as part of glorified jobs programs too.
These projects run like utter shit now in places where work is tendered out to corporations now of course, because they’re being driven by private bodies whose sole motivation is profit, not the creation of useful infrastructure. In my own country HS2 is a beautiful example of this.
I think that person’s logic goes like, “government run” = “artificially propped up” = “doesn’t count as real growth”.
It’s the final form of capitalist indoctrination to only be able to reason about other systems through its lens.
Overproduction of commodities is certainly a problem for capitalists. But the workers get to enjoy a lower cost of living. Like I would much prefer we built ghost cities (Chengdu was derided as a ghost city at one point) than have a decades long housing crisis with no signs of improving unless we deport millions of people.
At some point, though, when the government keeps running up deficits to subsidize this, the bill comes due
Yeah, sure. China has a debt to GDP of 88.6%. That’s not great. Luckily we don’t have that problem in western capitalist countries, right?
- USA: 121%
- Canada: 104.7%
- UK: 101.8%
- France: 111.6%
- Japan: 251.2%
- Italy: 136.9%
- Belgium: 105%
Did you know that most of China’s debt is held domestically?
It helps that in China you can’t own land. All the land is owned by the government. You only have “use rights” and for a limited time (something like 80 years - I forget the exact number). So when it comes time to build infrastructure the government just tells you to gtfo.
Wait until you hear about the UK! I own the freehold to my land, but technically it’s gramted by the crown, so I could in theory at any moment have my home taken from me.
Wrong, the state owns the land but you can own the house, and not just for your 70y BS period.
There are plenty of articles like of instances where homeowners don’t want to sell for infrastructure like this: https://twistedsifter.com/2012/11/china-builds-highway-around-house/
I know for a fact here in EU or the US they will indeed " just tells you to gtfo"
BTW, in China a high 90% of people OWN their house and aren’t rentslaves.
So there’s that China bad man.China has stronger property laws than the US, look up stuck nail houses. If the US wants your property, they can eminent domain your shit. In China, developers have literally had to swerve highways around property or build shopping centers around that one person who wont sell
And China has slave labor
Proof or I don’t believe.
I mean so does the United States thanks to the 13th amendment but we don’t have anywhere near the same infrastructure to show for it
American slave labor isn’t used for anything interesting - it’s just letting companies pay less for labor for their own benefit.
And what are the Uighurs making that is so interesting?
America is no different. Try not paying your land tax.
The only difference is that, in America, someone needs to shout “eminent domain!” first and slip you $500 for your house.
Isn’t this post about Canada?
Look to public transit development in Taiwan as an example of how to do it right in a democratic nation. There are still loads of problems but the Taiwanese government can’t just take your land outright. Taipei especially has seen phenomenal growth in its metro development in the last 20 years.
The government of Taiwan is the Chinese government
One of the reasons they can build their future so quickly is because they were left in a unique position after WW2 to effectively destroy their past.
And they have slave labor. Oops, I guess that’s something that shouldn’t be said in a post pandering China
The only country I know taht has slave labor is the US and their barbaric Gulf states friend.
But the poor Uyghurs!!! BS propagandaI’ve been to urumqi, literally anyone can go there.
Theres no slave labor, its normal industrial farms. Unless youre suggesting the guys driving the combine harvesters or running the factories are secretly enslaved.
not a downvote either. guess you didn’t say the magic word.
Uyghurs
The US hates China, hates muslims but pretend to care about those poor Chinese muslims.
I wonder why?If you’re USian - you have vastly more domestic slaves (I think you call them prisoners in for-profit prisons) than Uyghur population. Maybe you should do something about it.
If you’re not USian, no rebuttal.
It’s not like workers having to do 2 or 3 jobs in the US just to allow their family to survive are really “free workers”. At least slaves in China seem to benefit the country. In the US, the slaves just benefit big corporations and their shareholders.
Don’t compare struggling to make rent to the prisoners picking cotton by hand in Lousiana.
I’m curious, tell me more about this (actual question, not being sarcastic)
China was invaded by Japan before WW2. Look up the Rape of Nanking if you want specifics. Once WW2 ended China had a civil war. The CCP managed to win and Mao Zedong ascended to power. He led the Cultural Revolution which basically eliminated the old ways of China to pave the way, over the bodies of millions of people, for modern China.
No just any shit, shit that helps everyday people living in their country.
I’m just thinking of the major cities in my U.S. state where the public transit map, before and after, looks like Chengdu in 2010. So as unfortunate as the circumstances are in Toronto, they can be even worse.
as someone who lives in Toronto I mean…you really don’t need an extensive subway network here. We have a lot of buses and several lines of street cars (trollys, trains on the road, whatever you call them where you live).
So what’s being shown here is ONLY the subway network. it doesn’t show the vast street car lines would would make it look A LOT like the China photo.
street cars
Is at least one of them called Desire?
is this why there is no traffic problems in Toronto and commute is not a suicide inducing nightmare?
mean…you really don’t need an extensive subway network here
Found the 905’er
The streetcar network is a complete shitshow. Multiple streetcars bunched up, with hundreds of people inside, being blocked by a few SUV drivers and parked cars on the side of the street.
Its faster to bike or walk in most cases.
Same for the buses. There’s a reason the bus lines here have nicknames like “the sufferin’ dufferin”
with hundreds of people inside
Wow. It sounds very utilized. That awesome.
Utilisation is good, but overcrowding illustrates the point of this meme, which is that the public transit system is being neglected and hasn’t kept pace with demand.
sorry bud, I live in Beaconsfild village. I ride the vomit commit almost daily. We don’t need an extensive subway network.
At grade == weak
Toronto isn’t filled with great alternate modes of mass transit so much as it’s filled with excuses not to build mass transit.
Let me weep in “Ontario line”.
I don’t care about the post itself, but OP, in the last 24 hours you’ve made something like 80 posts. What the fuck?
I’m posting an absolute shit ton of content to support Lemmy.
You aren’t the first one to notice :)
o7
So, first of all: o7, thank you for your service. Second, where the heck do you find the time?
o7
o7
o7
Bot, perhaps?
Nope. I’m definitely not a bot.
I regularly post a lot of articles from some websites, but you will notice my patterns can be extremely irregular. There are some articles that I don’t find interesting/attractive, so I just don’t share them.
However, I do find the rise of sophisticated bots worrying.
Obligatory that’s exactly what a bot would say comment
How many of those are pandering to China? You left a lot of context off the post, like the population numbers And the fact that China uses slave labor
I wonder how many accounts on Lemmy.world are cia-bots that keep repeating the `China uses slave labour" mantra
Sounds like something that a real person would never do.
Maybe they’re not just mildly infuriated.
I guess it’s easier to undertake a massive infrastructure project if you can just tell residents to move it or else…
The idea that you get to put a stake in the ground and then that plot of dirt yours forever is insane. The amount of infrastructure projects in Denmark that are put on hold indefinitely because locals are upset, not at being forced to move, but because they think they own their land and the view, is nuts.
I agree. There needs to be a middle ground. In Germany, NIMBYs opposed to wind turbines because they’re supposedly loud and ugly, as well as NIMBYs opposed to high-capacity power lines have become somewhat of a meme.
The right way to handle this is buying the land at a reasonable price (where you actually need to build on someone’s land, not buying ‘the view’).
The irony is even bigger in the Netherlands: our proudest most beautiful national icon: old wind power.
New wind power however it’s deemed ugly and ‘visual pollution’ even though it’s the same thing and clean energy.
NIMBYs opposed to windpower seems like a tale as old as time. Case in point, read Don Quixote, old man is so angry at wind turbines he actually tries to joust them through
That’s not the story in Don Quijote. Guy is nuts and mistakes the windmills for giants.
Let’s not forget that he was an old guy with the hots for a younger woman - Dulcinea - who he wanted to impress, hence attacking the “giants”.
There are many levels in Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Isn’t that why people are so scared of modern windmills? They think they’re giants?
But if they lose power for 20 minutes god save you from their wrath
I’ve heard people around me saying they make people sick. By spinning, I guess?
No, its because they are loud and make flickering shadows. Which is true if you live under them. That’s why there are regulations on how close to buildings they are allowed.
Besides other really stupid things like they explode bats because of infrasound…
For the same reason as WiFi supposedly making people sick.
To be clear, what I mean by that is “its utter horse shit”.
WiFi at least does go through you. It’s harmless, even if it was four orders of magnitude more powerful it’d just cause heating, but there’s contact.
If I had to think of a reason a windmill could cause illness, I’d guess infrasound, but the the proponents seem to be think it’s something about the way they reflect sunlight. It reminds me of when people in England though the first trains were making their cows sick, it’s like real bumpkin stuff.
It’s either your land or it’s someone else’s. In a place like China the government owns all the land which means it’s all owned by wealthy, ultra-powerful, ultra-connected party elites. At no point is there a situation where millions or billions of people all share land in common. There is always politics, there will always be powerful elites, there will always be people getting screwed over.
The difference with Denmark is that individual small people have a tiny bit more power than individuals in China. The fact that this results in progress being impeded is a tradeoff that brings enormous benefits for personal freedom.
Read about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Over a million people were forcibly displaced from their homes as a result. Many cities, towns, and villages were completely destroyed. The living conditions of the displaced deteriorated and their lives were irrevocably altered.
There is world of difference between displacing a million people and doing little to help them along, and telling a small group of farmers to fuck off or get rolled over. It’s not either / or. It’s that in the western world, we attribute too much to land ownership because it’s deeply tied to peoples personal economy and nebulous concepts like freedom. I think that’s insane. Decomodify housing and ban the trading of land as a speculative market, and I think you’ll see people give less of a shit about it.
Here in Denmark, farmers (and suburbanites pretending to be rural, let’s be real) have an immensely disproportionate amount of power to veto infrastructure projects that benefit us all for the dumbest reasons, but I can’t veto the parking lots they demand be built on my street even though it only benefits them.
Last month, some-200 farmers got off their subsidized ass to bitch and whine about how some electric poles off in the distance would, and I quote, “ruin my life”. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/niels-bliver-nabo-til-44-meter-hoeje-elmaster-vi-faar-oedelagt-vores-livsvaerdi
Why not vote against subsidies for farmers then? I’m just as against subsidies as I am in favour of land ownership. The biggest problem I have with subsidies and high taxes and government control of property is that it politicizes these decisions and pits special interests against the common good.
Once you create a subsidy it becomes very difficult to get rid of it, politically. The farmers who benefit from it will fight tooth and nail to keep it regardless of whether or not the subsidy actually benefits society.
Why not vote against subsidies for farmers then?
What makes you think I don’t? Farmers also hold a disproportional amount of political power. My one vote isn’t going to uproot the fundamental flaws of how we choose to do democracy.
I think it’s more useful to talk about how insane the status quo is, like that land is a speculative market that effectively locks lower-class people out of living on their own terms, as it might awaken more people to the reality that we live in, and the inevitable far-worse future we’re rushing headfirst into.
At least in Europe the land used to be owned by everybody (the so-called “Commons”) and then kings decided to take it all and make it the property of the Crown which would then divy it out to favored servants of the Crown.
Modern laws around Land Ownership are just a natural extension of the laws made in the Monarchical system and which were mainly preserved and extended in the transition to Republic and later Democracy, probably as a way to try and keep the landed gentry from stopping that transition (also, having lived through a Revolution from Authoritanism to Democracy an its aftermath, it’s my impression that the powerful from the previous regime generaly get to keep most of their possessions and hence power, even some amount of political power as they use their wealth to fund parties to represent their interests under Democracy).
Exactly. Sure, China gets shit done. But it comes with not giving a fuck about a lot of their own people, a lot of the time.
Read about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Over a million people were forcibly displaced from their homes as a result. Many cities, towns, and villages were completely destroyed.
The US did this all the time back when we actually built things.
The good old days where highway planners looked upon black communities and called them free real estate.
This is not a dunk on your comment, just historic context.
While I was more specifically referring to dam projects in the US that displaced people as a direct comparison, you’re absolutely correct. That bastard Robert Moses fucked up our cities so badly.
And the advantages of the autocratic approach only show up for slices of time. Eventually, elites will give up on development if it impedes their control. All dictatorships slide into feudal monarchy over time (see the last several thousand years).
Is it less insane than the government owns it forever?
Preferable to the idea that the state can come in and force your local area to bend to its will.
If your land, serving you and your family of 6, could serve a thousand people instead via infrastructure or urbanization, then yes, I think the government has the right to uproot and resettle you. Obviously, on the condition that you are compensated and helped along, which I know doesn’t happen in either country, but clinging to ideals isn’t helping solve the issue.
Gestures in eminent domain.
What I thought as well, but that still pays the residents fair housing market value.
This source (pages 124-128) for the Wikipedia page on eminent domain makes China and the USA both seem abysmal when it comes to reasonable compensation for seized property.
though still China more abysmal than others
I think but an not sure that China does that too.
Probably in theory. In practice, the judiciary works for the party, the party has a stake in the construction, and there’s branches of the party that are always trying to get an advantage over each other, ethically or not. When I see a story about civil unrest in China, it’s usually due to local officials making an entire village homeless.
Careful, you might get a ban from .ml for saying that
The Chinese government is the most ethical government in the world according to people in .ml haha. Really boggles the mind
When you develop a knee-jerk reaction to phrases like “Chinese propaganda” and “Russian propaganda”, you really open yourself up to being manipulated by them.
Fuck ml. I am willing to bet the Chengdu one won’t survive the next 14 years. Or 5. But I am willing to give an half honest thumbs up to the tankies if it still stands in 2026.
Why‽ There’s no sign of this subway failing at all. Rail enthusiasts everywhere praise Asian subways.
Also easier when you don’t need to worry you’ll be voted out for spending tax money on a massive infrastructure project.
No, they do, the big difference is that they’ll be voted out and replaced by someone else from the same party.
Because there’s only one party.
it’s a metro, no need to move anyone…
Metros aren’t always underground. They also need entrances to their stops above ground.
Is that what they did? It’s a legitimate question, I’m not finding info online.
Population: Chengdu over 20 million vs. under 3 million in Toronto.
The maps above also seem to be differently scaled.
Also, the fact that it has technologically developed fast in the past decades, as compared to Canada that has developed steadily in the past century, is not really the gotcha OP seems to imply it is.
That said, it’s perfectly possible that public transport in Toronto leaves much to be desired - without comparing it to Chengdu.
Not to undermine your point on the demand, but note that Chengdu’s population has grown <7 million since phase 1 of Line 1 (the 18.5km middle quarter of the navy purple line; for reference the green Toronto line is 26.2km) was opened, while the decades that preceded this saw the city having similar population growth rates to Toronto.
The maps above also seem to be differently scaled.
The Toronto map is ~2x more-a-zoomied-in, judging by the distances between the farthest stations. In 2024, looking at the track maps, the driving distance between the farthest stations (Vaghan Met. to Victoria Park) is 36km while that of Chengdu (天府机场北 to 何公路) is 93 km.
Having moved to Toronto from NYC, transit could be much worse. NYC’s is larger due to the greater population but nearly everything else about it is trash tier. Gods help you if you need to go to a borough other than Manhattan. I honestly much prefer Toronto’s transit.
Also, the picture leaves out a lot of context. There’s a large network of street cars and busses that fills in the gaps here, as well as a massive underground pedestrian network called the PATH. The subways are only a small part of the equation.
(Currently writing this from a TTC street car)
That doesn’t really place the transit network.
I don’t know what you mean by this. The yellow lines are transit lines. The red circles are stops.
Sorry, I got confused by the regional rail lines.
and pop density?
Don’t forget Chinese corner cutting. You probably have to knock 25% off of that if you want infrastructure of a level of quality and safety tolerable to Westerners.
I think it’s fair to guess China is less car-obsessed than Canada, and more serious about fighting climate change. That being said, without cheating it becomes pretty obvious we’re working with the same technology and fundamental logistics in this map.
Don’t forget Chinese corner cutting. You probably have to knock 25% off of that if you want infrastructure of a level of quality and safety tolerable to Westerners.
Is that a thing? It sounds a bit like some bullshit propaganda from here. China = bad.
As another who has been to China a few times and has friends there: It’s a thing.
The lack of regulations (better now than even 5 years ago, but still shit (*1), the lack of pollution protection laws (*3) and the lack of care in build quality (*2) in order to drive down project costs isn’t just a thing, it’s a fact:
(1) https://www.adenservices.com/en/blogs/china-green-buildings-regulations/
(2) https://www.aii.org/chinas-infrastructure-and-construction-problem/
(3) https://shunwaste.com/article/how-do-people-get-around-the-pollution-law-in-china
I have family from out that way. It’s absolutely a thing in the third world in general, and then in China you have an enormous case of single metrics being used for success (like speed of project completion) and so becoming useless.
In the West, people would become outraged by unheated, crumbling train terminals and it would become a political issue. In China, they tend to censor negative political commentary, so the only people who’s opinion actually matter are other party officials.
Edit: Lol, two instant downvotes. Looks like someone is big mad about facts.
I live in Toronto and was in the Chengdu metro a month ago. I didn’t do a close inspection but it was fine. Honestly probably better than Toronto. The trains had AC and the terminals that I went to were not crumbling.
I think this meme is pretty reasonable. Toronto had a great start with subways, and still has huge ridership. They also have an excellent bus network. But the funding is very tight and the city has long prioritized inefficient personal vehicles. But it is a good point that you are comparing cities that an order of magnitude apart in population. Toronto also has 2 train lines (one light rail that should be opening within a year, and one subway that is probably 10 years away from opening) which are great to see, finally showing some investment in public transit. But the rate is nowhere near what the political will in China allows and also has a huge focus on new projects rather than keeping maintenance of existing infrastructure.
In many ways this is a wakeup call. If we wanted this level of infrastructure we could have it. But we need to actually commit rather than continuously slashing budgets so that we can let the rich pay less taxes and continue to subsidize car ownership.
Yes, like I said to someone else, I actually don’t know much about the rail system specifically. That was just an example of typical corners to cut.
The state of public transit in Canada is truly dire. Vancouver’s system seemed useable, but I haven’t personally spent enough time abroad to know if it is, or if it just is by comparison.
i think the measure is how many trains carrying industrial chemicals derail in china vs the usa
Well considering China would never report on an accurate number, we’ll never know.
Wait until you see the absolute dog shit they are building in the US right now for 4x the cost in China
Easy to build cheaply when you use slave labor
I mean…
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-states/
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/china/
3.3 slaves per thousand people vs 4.0 per thousand seems very similar to me.
You have to adjust for labour costs. For reasons that have to do with certain industries not existing in the third world, it’s much higher in the West.
Seeing that China enslaves people AND has highrises that crumble to pieces yeah, there’s definitely corner cutting
But hey, defend China all you want, bootlicker
what do you mean “knock 25% off of that” (off what?) and “without cheating it becomes pretty obvious we’re working with the same technology and fundamental logistics in this map”? sorry i’m just struggling to parse this
Off of the remaining size of the Chengdu network after you correct for the other issues in OP’s representation.
Regardless of the ethnicity and mother tongue of the workers, smelting and extruding rebar, shipping it and pouring concrete around it is the same process. They can’t magically go faster over there, and the reason their labour seems cheaper on paper has to do with the West producing things they can’t (yet). If correctly presented, it would be pretty obvious it’s not apples-to-oranges like this comparison looks in OP, I think.
I am wondering WTF happened to Toronto line 3, though.
btw as mentioned below, line 3 was cut to make way for replacing it with a line 2 extension
Can you please “correctly present” what about the classic Chinese cookie-cutter metro technology is deficient and 25% behind Western technology?
For why Chinese metro construction seems apparently faster you can watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehTy-qQVZhM; it’s just like them Cape Cod suburbs in North America. Nobody claimed that construction magically works faster. It all comes down to not making new logistical decisions and putting in money.
I don’t have rail-specific knowledge here. It’s just generally how construction works in places like China or Laos. Many other things, too.
Even if that is true, this is pristine underground rail!
Public transport policy in Toronto is a disaster. It is a complete disappointment of a city and an ugly blight on the landscape that serves only captialism and vapid mediocrity
And still WAY ahead of a ton of similarly sized cities on the continent
its sad im over here in Dallas and im envious of Toronto.
Here in San Antonio we have zero rail so…
It’s a disaster until you compare it to most other North American cities. Like what is better? NYC and Montreal? I’m sure there are a few other cities that I can’t think of.
But its true that it has been neglected for decades. Thankfully that has changed a bit recently with 2 new lines being in construction. However the maintenance budget is continually insufficient to keep everything in good repair. Only new projects make your government look good I guess. (But we need both new projects and maintenance)
I agree that North America is appalling. I grew up in Europe, so that is my main comparison.
The two new lines would be helpful, but as someone that lived in Toronto for 15 years until very recently, I believe they were horribly mismanaged. Like most of the city is…
I do think there needs to be a shift in how the government invests in this country, but the answer isn’t “let’s go authoritarian”. Governments need to stop looking for big, complicated answers though and realize that production and growth comes from within, and improving mobility increases production, simple as that. You can invest in industries till the cows come home, but the optics of giving tax breaks and incentives to companies when it takes John 2 hours to drive to work is never going to be good.
Bet money America’s interstate highway system would not pass today’s Congress. And can you imagine conservatives bitching about the spend?!
For non-Americans, our interstate highways are federally funded, safe, consistently engineered and tie the country together. If interstates magically disappeared, our economy would collapse within a month.
Interstate highway is oil. Interstate highway is love.
can you imagine conservatives bitching about the spend?!
Nonsense. They wouldn’t even know that ‘spend’ isn’t a noun when you’re not on the car lot. #soFetch
I do think there needs to be a shift in how the government invests in this country, but the answer isn’t “let’s go authoritarian”.
In the end, its more about getting things done, and investing in society, rather than how strongly you can shout your opinion about transgender folk. A government that invests in society is one not focused on either enriching itself, or cutting all social spending to fund tax cuts for oligarchs. When the only acts we/society/rulers ever implement is giveaways to their sponsors, you could think about your programming that tells you your rulership is the best system of all.
improving mobility increases production
Can you restate that in a way that makes it clear that the billionaire class will be able to utilize the project to rape and pillage society and increase income inequity? Otherwise, I don’t see how anyone can support it.
Yeah but how much of that is up to code?
Probably most if not all. Despite some well publisized failures these big government transit projects tend to be pretty good. It’s amazing how fast you can get things done if you don’t care about zoning, the environment, money, worker conditions or safety.
(American) zoning (besides industrial/residential) is bullshit anyway.
Just give me the three major industrial, mixed residential/commercial and some small purely residential zones and be done with it.
No need to basically outlaw a business in a residential area.
Actually, the funny thing is, in my experience in both China and the United States, I noticed that the US has no safey barriers while China actually does. The first few yesrs of my life in the US, I had a phobia of falling onto the tracks so I basically just hug the wall. There are some stations where there are tracks on both sides and the station is in the middle, I hate those. No safety barriers really sucks.
Although, I got to say, the “Tofu-dreg construction” is a big problem in China. Luckily, I’ve neven fallen in to an escalator platform in the years I was there. Food safety tho, that’s probably an even bigger problem, its a common issue that I remember my mom always talked about. The government sucks at enforcing food safety (I’m not sure if they even had food safety laws).
Did … Did they close stations on the Eastern line in Toronto?
Yeah. Line 3 used different rolling stock than the other three lines, unusual linear induction motor powered equipment, which was reaching the end of its service life. The plan was to shut it down in November 2023 and temporarily replace it with bus service while they built a Line 2 extension to serve the neighborhoods Line 3 used to. Unfortunately, a train derailed in July 2023, which resulted in the system shutting down four months sooner than expected.
The Line 2 extension is going to take a different route to eventually arrive at Line 3’s old terminus. I think there’s plans to covert the old line 3 viaduct into a Bus Rapid Transit guideway.
If I’m not mistaken, the rolling stock (cars/trains) from the, now closed, Scarborough line is actually in use in Detroit because they used the same systems.
There’s loads of countries and cities around the world with better public transit than Toronto.
Plenty with democratic elections and freedom of expression too.
Only one reason someone would pick China over anywhere else.
Not a fair comparison as Chengdu has multiple times the population of Toronto.
I think it’s less about the absolute dimensions than about the fact that Toronto’s metro barely grew at all.
Shrunk, even.
But the 1 line did get longer. So total capacity is probably higher overall. That being said the 1 line is already insufficient for the capacity needed downtown so I’m not sure making it longer helps that much. Maybe in a decade when the Ontario Line opens it will get the long needed relief.
This. 20 million vs. under 3 million in Toronto.
Also, the fact that it has technologically developed fast in the past decades, as compared to Canada that has developed steadily in the past century, is not really the plus OP seems to imply it is.
That said, it’s perfectly possible that public transport in Toronto leaves much to be desired - without comparing it to China.
Also, the fact that it has technologically developed fast in the past decades, as compared to Canada that has developed steadily in the past century, is not really the plus OP seems to imply it is.
Why not? What am I missing? It’s developing fast against a slow competition is not a plus? I am not a fan of china but what kind of cope is this?
Wikipedia article for reference.
The Chengdu Metro is now the fourth largest metro system in the world with 630 km. To compare, London’s Unterground has about 400 km.
