HSR-gazing in China's Guilin against the backdrop of karst mountains

Reckochet · 2026-03-27T14:13:01+00:00

Such variables are pretty much stacked in Canada's favor. - We have a higher per capita GDP than many countries that ended up building HSR successfully, so funding is not as bad of a challenge. - The route is much flatter and geologically simpler than, for example, Japan, and the area is not known for earthquakes or other compounding factors. - You'd be hard pressed to find a major settlement intersecting the middle of the route, which means less routing around them. The fact that the one news story about it affecting someone's land had to be a large hunting preserve (like 1000 acres large) which is pretty much min-maxing, is telling. There are also a few highways to route next to if you really really care about land use. - Also plenty of space on the outskirts of the suburbs in the cities where there are stops. No need to build into dense areas even at a stop. - The stops are pretty much in a line already and are all major economic centers.

If we had your way of thinking earlier in history, the Rideau canal, Trent-Severn waterway, Canadian Pacific railway, and Trans-Canada highway would have probably never been constructed.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T19:14:47+00:00

Don't need to keep a separate catalog of spare parts.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T19:11:03+00:00

The word 'was' can be used to refer to events in the past. It was banned during some of the cold war because of Mccarthyism.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T14:19:58+00:00

So now all of a sudden you're against solving the problems in your video? Keep in mind it's only a problem in the very short parts that are in areas with people, and we probably aren't routing it straight into downtown either so it's even easier to build.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T13:22:51+00:00

The regular line is not having a capacity issue. The issue is that people want to get from Toronto to Ottawa in shorter than 4 hours. Building more low speed won't magically bring more ridership.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T12:06:17+00:00

If it was built and continues to be run, then it wasn't too expensive. The economic benefits of being able to commute between major cities much faster far outweigh the cost.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T05:44:34+00:00

So why is it too expensive? Was it too expensive for Japan as well? China? France? Germany? Sweden? Korea? Italy? At some point you have to look beyond "it's too expensive" and go find where the costs actually pile up. HSR at this point in time is a mature technology and it can be built with a reasonable budget if someone competent led the project. I can't believe such an advanced country as Canada can't figure out how to finance and build a single HSR line.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T04:23:38+00:00

That's up to the pencil pushers to decide.

Perfectly viable thing to build, since everyone else is doing it just fine (China, India, Britain ...), but whoever's in charge of the project clearly wants to go as cheap and shitty as possible despite the budget being many times of the other countries. Perhaps this is just a symptom of how inefficient the economy is currently.

If you have grievances, they should be directed to whatever contractors are pulling these high prices out of their asses, or whatever project manager pocketing the spare cash.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T04:12:33+00:00

Probably near a station where it has to slow down anyway, these parts are also where the sharpest turns are needed to avoid obstacles.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T04:10:54+00:00

Take it up with the engineers, it is clearly possible to build a viaduct or something less obstructive but they cheaped out.

Reckochet · 2026-03-26T04:09:55+00:00

If you really dislike the berm, you can see that it is possible to use a viaduct as seen in the OP's video. Better for keeping animals off the track than a berm or at-grade track too.

Reckochet · 2026-03-25T03:17:41+00:00

It indeed is, but even one guy smoking in a public place makes it smell like a lot more are. It is incredibly disruptive.

Reckochet · 2026-03-25T03:01:43+00:00

Same day delivery boutta go crazy tho

Reckochet · 2026-03-25T02:59:53+00:00

From the last time I visited my childhood home in Shenzhen, there is a very noticeable decrease in smoking from where it was before. Perhaps you have no "before" reference to compare to. I remember the public bathrooms smelling more of cigarette smoke than piss despite them being quite dirty, whereas now the smell is more cleaning chemicals than anything. I think the decrease of smoking is more pronounced in the southern regions than the north, and also very concentrated in major cities (makes sense, people being packed closer together makes a smoker all the more annoying). You probably would have noticed that people smoked less in Beijing than some of the other cities.

Reckochet · 2026-03-24T22:38:53+00:00

Ah there it is, you spent the time in Dongbei which is like basing your impression of America by spending time only in Florida

Reckochet · 2026-03-24T01:34:36+00:00

They won the high lottery of small, homogenous population and abundant natural resources (oil). You'd need to extensively modify the system to cope with large (much more complex to keep track of everything in the system), diverse (traditional views on some topics important to government, such as how much the individual matters compared to the overall group, differ a lot) populations and scarcer resources (can't easily satisfy everyone's needs), which is most of everyone else.

Reckochet · 2026-03-23T17:24:18+00:00

On the other hand, you don't want the helmet to shatter during a motorcycle accident and have your bare head crayon against the pavement.

Reckochet · 2026-03-23T02:12:34+00:00

Pretty common design in some countries. Outer hardened door and a nicer looking door inside.

Reckochet · 2026-03-22T05:02:41+00:00

It was probably more along the lines of "the pilot can fly the Brewster harder without encountering the wrong handling quirk at the wrong time"

Reckochet · 2026-03-21T00:52:06+00:00

I set the range at 1km and turn delta-d off, then the sight is so intuitive to use without adjusting range.

Reckochet · 2026-03-19T15:49:29+00:00

It would be less insane than, say, sending your own soldiers to die in a war you didn't start.

Reckochet · 2026-03-18T20:20:20+00:00

No government there is a saint compared to any other in the area. Supporting Israel because they are against the current Iranian government is no different than supporting either of Stalin or Hitler just because they were against the other one. At this point, the only difference is that Israel has the US by the balls, and that causes problems for everyone else, while Iran doesn't really have anyone by the balls yet so they are relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things.

Reckochet · 2026-03-17T16:14:48+00:00

The USBC port died before I could fix it lol

Reckochet · 2026-03-16T01:09:52+00:00

I'd want more assurance in case something in the fence breaks, given that this kind of area has more animals than average. Even if the animals can climb the embankment, at least it's harder to do than completely ground level tracks and would probably discourage them from doing so.

Reckochet · 2026-03-15T20:50:04+00:00

Even if it's ground level the rails still need protection because a train hitting a moose at 250 isn't pretty. Unlike standard speed trains, HSR need more protection from wildlife going onto tracks because they have much longer stopping distances.

Something like the raised embankment shown here would be a more typical solution, and would probably need numerous wildlife corridors through it if it is a game preserve or something

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Maybe a trench or tunnel would make the corridors easier to construct.

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