Chinese High-Speed Railway Map 2008 vs. 2020. But we still don’t have a rail link to the airport. Is there anything to be said for a benevolent dictatorship?

43 comments

  3. >Is there anything to be said for a benevolent dictatorship?

    Not sure if China qualifies as a “benevolent dictatorship”.

  5. In context china is going through a huge slow down. They spent money they didn’t have and are now knocking complete apartment blocks after only building them.

    That doesn’t excuse the inept response from government. The port tunnel was thought to have been too expensive, several other big projects like it were objected to by opposition and the general public alike. That said post construction we would never go back to a time before the port tunnel.

    Investment is critical for an economy to thrive. Government need to act on some big projects and just pull the trigger on them.

    Also I don’t live in Dublin but can see the need for a rail link all day long.

  6. A benevolent dictorship or benevolent monarchy is probably the only truly competent form of top down governence but China is so far from being one its laughable .

  10. Benevolent my ass. When a country still has “reducation camps” in this day and era they are anything but benevolent

  12. The high speed rail is excellent here in China, though they kept building when there was no longer a need primarily due to the rampant corruption involved.

    They say from every ¥100M that went towards building only about half that ended up actually being used to build, the other half went to pockets at different levels.

    The provincial mayor got a cut plus a few of his selected officials to oversee the project. Any City mayor the same. Then every company involved had to get a slice of the free flowing money.

    On top of that the routes were kept secret so that other individuals could buy up the property both in the stations arrival area, and the area the tracks would go through. So they could once again make a tidy sum.

    Ireland has corruption too, but it’s at a minnows scale in comparison.

  15. Pretty sure slave labour and shit working conditions and ‘if u object to the planning you’ll disappear’
    may have had an impact on the auld timeline

  17. Ironically regular rail is used a lot more commonly than high speed in China bc half of those are going hundreds of miles through wasteland and bleed money. But atleast if we had it in Europe we all live close enough to one another to actually make it profitable.

  18. Because of a shocking lack of future-proofing in the early days of the Irish State, a lot of compulsory purchase orders would be needed to increase rail capacity in Ireland, especially as you get closer to city centres.

    If you look at the golden age of rail in Britain, they would knock houses, relocate stadia/big buildings to make room for train routes to major cities. These days in Ireland there is so much red tape and so much hesitancy to mess with private property that very little gets done. Add the housing crisis to the mix and things are unlikely to change any time soon.

  20. in all fairness most of those high speed links connect literal megacities in a country over one billion. Ireland only really has a handful of cities and the population isn’t really dense enough to justify a rail network as extensive as china’s or most eu states.

  21. Ha, I am Chinese. I guess I have rights to answer your question. Yes, China has so many railways, but the central railway company which belongs to the government loses money for every year. The government have to spend founding to support it.
    And just reminder you, if you really need a dictator to rule you, just look at the Chinese strict lockdown policy, I guess you will “love” it.

  23. Imagine if we had high speed rail connecting the major cities?

    ^(Ignoring the sad reality that they’d spend 15 years and blow their entire budget on a high speed rail to Belfast that gets as far as Dundalk)

  25. This sub is becoming more of a meme every day.

    “Why can’t Ireland be more like this authoritarian state c with a $14 trillion GDP that uses slave labour to build infrastructure with virtually no safety regulations”.

  28. Helps that all land belongs to the government and there are plenty of cheap workforce. Also the train connects massive cities with millions of people. This comparison makes no sense.

  29. Those railways are costing them dearly right now. They’ve overbuild and the less frequented lines are losing them millions each day.

  31. This is built on trillions of $ of Debt. The whole Chinese financial system is about to collapse because of bad investments like this and in real-estate sector. Evergrande is already gone bust and more are sure to follow.

  32. There may be.

    The dictatorship of the Chinese communists over the Chinese people is anything but benevolent, however.

  33. Living in the West it scares me that OP just casually dropped “to the airport”. We have a few of them in this country. I once decided to go by bus to the Knock airport. I was able to get as far as Charlestown and then the first shuttle didn’t arrive, then the second one. Then the next one. If not for some good people that gave me a lift, I would miss my flight.

    Also rail link to Dublin Airport? Try to get to Dublin city from around Westport and back via train in one day. I dare you. Public transport is a total mess. I have 2km to the nearest bus stop, 4km if I want to get on the bus to Dublin. Getting to Cork takes almost a frigging day if all buses will show up.

    Somehow other countries were able to solve it, routes are connected with each other. I was visiting my wife’s family in Poland. They are bitching how bad their public transport is. But in the city I got an app that was in realtime adjusting recommended route and bus/tram/city train stops. When I had my destination a little further from the stop – there was an electric scooter parking right there. I took a taxi on the return journey and public transport was actually faster than the taxi.
    Same story when we went to the train and from the train to some small town where her family lives. The town is small and doesn’t have local busses, but there are multiple bus stops, so when you are arriving you can disembark pretty close to any point in the town.
    We also travelled by public transport in Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Netherlands. Public transport there is just light years ahead of what do we have here.

  34. How many slaves died building this rail network? How were the ‘workers’ recruited ? How were they treated.

  38. Can’t speak for Ireland, but here in Canada we’ve had politicians firmly in the pocket of petroleum companies and land developers for decades. Infrastructure limited almost exclusively to roads and highways. Currently in Ontario, where our healthcare system is being purposefully tanked and the government says they have no money, the plan is to spend $10.4 billion on a bypass highway no one wants (and will cut an average of 11 minutes off the commute of those who will use it) but the premier’s developer buddies who own swaths of land where it’s going.

  40. China is massively overspending on the railroad and it’s hemorrhaging money. Trains run with zero passengers. Xi Jinpeng is also far from a benevolent dictator.

  41. Given that people who tarmaced every inch of their driveways, got a sudden urge to protect trees in front of their house when bus connects was announced, I say fck them. Zero irony seen

  42. Rail is more expensive than roads. Comparing Irelands to China is illogical here. You can drive to any part of the island to another in less than ~6hours. Road trips in China could 4-5 days plus the expensive tolls, as much as $200-300.
    China also has some of the worst traffic in the world, they have traffic jams that are gargantuan to anything close to what we have.

    I’m not criticising what China have achieved with their rail. Having traveled to Zhongwei for work, I have only one experience (3weeks) but I’d rather commute in Ireland than China, both public and private.

  43. The upside to a Dictatorship would be limited committee control. A Dictator would have immediate say where committees want to debate it into the ground.

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