Chinese bullet trains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
That’s true of a lot of things in China, I suspect. Including its space program.
9 thoughts on “No One Tell Tom Friedman”
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Chinese bullet trains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
That’s true of a lot of things in China, I suspect. Including its space program.
Comments are closed.
High Speed Train-Wrecks!
Now the Chinese high speed train system is on record as killing people?! Say it ain’t so!
I wonder if this will put enough pressure on the Chinese government to get reforms started. The Chernobyl accident helped end the USSR. Maybe a few Chinese FUBARs of this scale will do the same for the current venomous crop of Chinese leaders.
Actually they’re cracked up rather more than they wanted them to be.
An even bigger scandal than the wreck itself is how they quickly dug big ditches and buried the wrecked train cars. Contrast to how civilized people search thoroughly for trapped survivors and bodies and keep the wreckage around as evidence to be thoroughly analyzed.
“Maybe a few Chinese FUBARs of this scale will do the same for the current venomous crop of Chinese leaders.”
I doubt it. According to a DoT statistician I know, Chinese transportation fatalities number 600,000 a year.
What strucke (among other things) was the small number of casualties given the magnitude of the wreck. It tells me the train wasn’t very full.
That, and the fact that they consider a train with a top speed of 95 mph as a “bullet train.”. The Amtrak runs 135 mph and the MARC up to 125. Neither is a bullet train (believe me).
Ummmm … let me offer a contrasting view here.
Yes: they had a train wreck. So do lots of countries. A train lost power after being struck by lightening. This doesn’t prove that their trains are no good, or that they’ve developed their train system too fast etc.
Yes: they did act to quickly cover it up, and prevent negative coverage of the story, but this is just “business as usual” for the Chinese government, and doesn’t prove anything one way or the other about the quality of the trains.
Yes: the head of the rail service was busted for corruption, but this too doesn’t prove anything one way or the other about China’s trains. Every top official is corrupt (it’s the only way to become a top official) so the reason for getting busted isn’t because you’re corrupt, it’s simply the excuse the officials use. In this case, it was power-games between the Hu Jintao faction and the Jiang Zemin faction, in the build up to the selection of the next Chinese president.
I’ve ridden this exact same model of fast train in China. I’ll make two observations based on those experiences. 1) Ticket sales are booming. All the seats are occupied, despite the higher cost of the tickets. 2) The service is remarkably efficient, departing on time, almost every time, and arriving on time, almost every time. Speeds vary at different stages of the journey (presumably depending on the condition of the line) but almost never dropped below 150kph, and were usually higher.
Lastly: none of this means that a high speed rail network would work in USA. It IS working in China, but the conditions in the US are totally different (much less dense population, and much higher car ownership)
Is anyone’s space program all that it’s cracked up to be?
From what I read it was an issue with the automatic train signalling or control software. One train had to make a forced stop and another train slammed into the stopped over train.
One of the main issues in having an high-speed rail network is the control software to ensure the trains run at high-speed and on time. I guess theirs isn’t up to snuff yet. Despite China investing in practically every high speed rail system known today (including France, Germany, Japan).
It’s a systemic failure. People probably don’t realize that air traffic although it uses high tech electronics isn’t based on high tech electronics. The system is set up so a failure of high tech electronic communications will slow things down but traffic will still land safely. The difference is historical but trains could be handled in a similar way. A running train ran into a stalled train. Why? Because of lightning? No. Because of relying a system that could be disabled. Solution? Instead of having a system that warns you when you are too close to a train in front, have it positively determine that no train is in front. If the system goes down for any reason, you then slow the train to visual stopping distance. This changes the system so this kind of wreck can’t happen (not that other kinds can’t but then a review should determine how to systematically fix that as well.)
For space this is why there is a demand for pilots rather than just passengers on an automated system. While a pilot may not save the day in all cases it provides a progressive backup that should fail gently rather than abruptly. (SDB said it better in a post years ago about how things properly engineered tend to fail non catastrophically.)
Another thing to be careful of when discussing “bullet trains” in China, (or whatever you call them) is that the Chinese don’t consider this particular type of train to be their bullet train. It’s merely a faster option with priority routing. Their “bullet train” or “gao tie” (literally “high speed rail”) is on the Beijing to Shanghai route, and it’s a whole other thing. An inside source tells me that in THAT particular case, some of the consultants went back to their engineering school in Shanghai and told their students that they and their families would never ride the thing, and warned their students to stay clear, because parts of it never passed quality inspection. You can’t just read one thing about “high speed rail” in China, and apply it to all fast trains.