Yup, Chinese Tier 1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen) are probably 20 years ahead of their Western counterparts (in terms of crime, or lack thereof, public transportation, convenience, cleanliness, etc).
They are not. Everything is prebooked with airport-style "security" scanning. You can't even go onto the platform until your train arrives. And the experience is not quite as polished in various ways.
China is pretty good, but the only place I've ever seen proper turn-up-and-go HSR is Japan. Tap your card or phone (NFC-F, because credit card contactless is too slow for Japan), walk on. If you missed the train you were aiming for there'll be another one 7.5 or at most 15 minutes later, so no big.
China's land area is approximately 25 times of Japan, def has a bigger network. But the top speed is comparable in current generations[1] except the Maglev.
I would think that the vast amount of central/Western land in China that is sparsely populated might skew this statistic quite a bit, where Spain and Japan don't have that at the same scale.
> A highly competent government in America has been a massive contributor to our success.
I doubt this. Do you really think the government is the reason Silicon Valley has been so successful? Sure the government created the internet, but after that many tech companies flourished in Silicon Valley with very little regulation. I think that's why America has been so successful. If you look at anything the government gets its hands in, costs sky rocket (education, healthcare, etc).
The whole point is a highly competent government is one the does have an appropriate level of regulation. Regulation like disallowing non-competes. I think that there is plenty of good evidence that the whole reason Silicon Valley is in California is their long (and historically unusual stance among US states) history of disallowing non-competes.
This is why all this DOGE shit is so frustrating to a lot of people. I don't disagree that there is government waste, or that there are regulations that should be scrapped. But people don't realize how much success in this country is due to having largely fair and functioning institutions. That's all getting chucked out the window now.
Yes, why is it called Silicon Valley? Are you aware it’s because the federal government set up a nasa program in the Bay Area that concentrated engineering talent and kick started the first set of companies? Are you aware government contracts provided much of the initial demand that got those companies revenue? Are you aware of the massive public investment to establish the internet? Or the GPS network? I could go on and on. The government pays for the basic research and infrastructure that isn’t commercially viable, companies then take up the mantle of commercialization from a significantly derisked reality.
Ten television stations, three FM radio stations, and 20 wireless and mobile communications users (i.e. law enforcement agencies, taxi cabs, school buses, wireless internet, etc.) rely on Sutro Tower antennas to transmit signals over the air to the entire Bay Area.
For some reason it never occurred to me that Sutro was still a live radio tower - it’s such an SF landmark that I think I just assumed it was decommissioned or something.
It always saddens me that in the 1960s it took 7 hours to fly from NYC -> London, and today, 60 years later, it still takes 7 hours to fly from NYC -> London...
Apart from fuel efficiency improvements, there hasn't been much innovation in the commercial commercial aerospace industry, with the exception of Boom's supersonic passenger airplanes which is just now starting to become a reality.
There's been a ton of innovation in the space. It used to be seven hours hotboxing a melange of cigarettes while they lose your luggage, but now it's 7 hours of having your knees jammed up against the seat in front of you while they tell you that three grams of peanuts is a proper snack. It's a whole different experience.
Top tip : if you are flying internationally avoid Uas airlines where possible. The US airlines are built around domestic flights. They treat international flights as "long domestic ".
By contrast some airlines are built around long-haul (international) flights, with domestic either not there at all, or just a feeder.
Don't get me wrong, economy is still economy. But an economy seat on Emirates is better than economy on United or Delta (well, last time I flew those anyway.)
Perhaps the biggest innovation though is seat-back entertainment. Done well, it makes a huge difference to long-haul flights.
Correction: while they helpfully wake you up in the middle of your redeye to tell you about a new exciting credit card offer only available to you in flight
> For trains, you would be hard pressed to find a route that is not significantly slower today than 60 years ago.
It took 64 years (until 1997) to again reach the 1933 speed of the Flying Hamburger [0] - 138 minutes from Hamburg to Berlin. Trains today need about 115 minutes.
If you want to go by top speeds, for the 787 (entered service 2011) it's Mach 0.9, for the A-350 (2015) it's 0.89, while for the 707-120 (1958) it's Mach 0.91. The 747 (1970) can go Mach 0.94.
Modern jets are built to fly slightly slower than early jetliners, both in normal operation and at top speed. The reason is fuel economy, but the difference is real.
You're saying planes have a top speed faster than their cruise speed; I'm saying it doesn't matter which of the two metrics you compare on, older jets are faster on both.
A specific Mach number is what airliner airframes are designed to fly at; it's absolutely the correct unit to talk about in this context. If airplane A is designed to cruise at 0.94 mach, it is faster than airplane B that cruises at 0.89 mach.
I don't understand the need for all the smoke and din in this argument thread. Old passenger jets flew a little faster than modern ones and that's okay!
They're not faster in any absolute sense, look at the wing sweep angle of new vs old jets or the fact that early low bypass ratio jets have a much higher exhaust velocity, the old jets are marginally faster by every metric.
Modern airplanes can exceed their cruising speed in a relative sense but older planes have a higher absolute maximum speed, as well as cruising speed.
Why is everyone trying to ackshewally this? The stat's are publicly available. Aircraft are optimized for a particular speed range and that impacts the designed cruising speed as well as Vs and VNE.
I think there has been a ton of improvement in commercial flight — think safety, for example — but my understanding is that there has simply been no incentive to improve flight times. Customers aren’t willing to pay for it. Which sort of makes sense: Generally speaking flight time is less than half of the total door-to-door time of air travel.
> Generally speaking flight time is less than half of the total door-to-door time of air travel.
Maybe for domestic flights but for international flights (especially if you live in Australia) it would improve the flying experience. I've noticed a big difference on my body when flying 8hr vs 12hrs.
It may not seem like a big difference but those extra 4hrs put a massive strain on your body and mind.
> there has simply been no incentive to improve flight times
It's more that you just run in to real limits of physics; many planes already fly at mach 0.8 to 0.9, and going faster than sound is always going to be difficult because of the sonic boom. Realistically, there just isn't that much you can do without solving that first, which is a difficult problem to solve in a practical way. And even if you do, the fuel efficiency is always going to make it much more expensive.
Would you be willing to pay 50% more for tix per flight? I think that’s the issue. And airlines have realized that, no: By-and-large people prefer low price over saving a few hours.
Those have been huge, and are a primary driver for new airplane designs. The reason is simple. Back in the 80s, fuel was 40% of the operating cost.
The 757 came about because of new, more efficient engines and a more efficient wing. If my brain hasn't fully rotted away yet, it offered a 35% reduction in fuel costs.
The 737MAX was green-lighted because it offered a 15% improvement in fuel consumption. That's Big Money for the airlines.
Trains are worse. I found a New York Central timetable from the 1930s. The morning train I take from Albany to NYC is 7 minutes longer (although it now goes to Penn station.
There has been a ~90% decrease since the 1960s in the cost to fly from NYC to London due, in large part, to mind-blowing technological innovations in materials, engines, and aerodynamics.
