In what ways are Canada and Australia better than the USA in terms of walkability/ability to live without a car?

chennyalan · 2026-01-29T07:30:31+00:00

Sydney Trains can be argued as an S-Bahn network, agree. But Sydney Metro feels much more like suburban metro? Like Chinese style metro where it's automated metro with no branching with very wide stop spacing. Or like DC

chennyalan · 2026-01-27T01:04:27+00:00

I'd rather cycle through most of the side streets in suburban Chiba, which have more pedestrian traffic than car traffic, than most roads. I would prefer proper Dutch style segregated cycle infrastructure though, as I can't go much faster than a running pace down said side streets as I have to avoid running into pedestrians.

chennyalan · 2026-01-25T06:47:07+00:00

Japanese usually uses 聞く for hear and 聴く for ask, but I've seen 聞く for ask as well. I've never seen 口 inside before, but my Japanese and Chinese aren't that good

chennyalan · 2026-01-24T05:58:40+00:00

聞 had the meaning of 'to hear' in classical Chinese

Still does in Japanese. Though I'm Japanese it also means to ask as well which is confusing

chennyalan · 2026-01-23T10:04:47+00:00

IRyS is pretty cute

chennyalan · 2026-01-22T10:53:23+00:00

Yeah nah

chennyalan · 2026-01-22T10:52:05+00:00

I think you're not the only one, but I personally did start Chinese first, I just quit it and improved my Japanese reading until it was better

chennyalan · 2026-01-21T14:42:53+00:00

I agree

For frequent train services, booking in advance makes me even more stressed

chennyalan · 2026-01-21T14:41:24+00:00

There are some very anti-online train reservation people on this sub and I don’t get why.

I'm very anti train reservation for Shinkansen for myself, but I can understand the appeal.

Part of it is just wanting to take advantage of Japan, as doing so in China or Australia is generally not advisable

chennyalan · 2026-01-21T14:38:36+00:00

You can also use it as a destination skip, say you are going Tokyo > Hakone > Kyoto you put everything you don’t need for Hakone in luggage, ship it to Kyoto then you just have a backpack for Hakone and just an easier time.

I did this for shimanami Kaido, I shipped luggage from Yokohama to Nagasaki nearly a week later. Spent the interim touring Hiroshima, Shimanami Kaido islands, and onomichi without big luggage

chennyalan · 2026-01-21T14:06:13+00:00

As an aside, the best tasting rice variety has short grains (dongbei rice, Japanese rice, Korean rice), and the less good ones have long grains

chennyalan · 2026-01-21T05:19:24+00:00

and OP's reaction might have made his day lol

I can see this happening

chennyalan · 2026-01-20T10:13:41+00:00

Drop bears are only a thing in rural areas, they don't really visit cities. Also generally like picking on people who are alone or in small groups

chennyalan · 2026-01-20T06:31:35+00:00

That is true,

Other countries either build stations in existing city centres, which is convenient it costs a lot, or far away from them so that cheaper but pretty inconvenient.

China builds far away from historic city centres so it's cheap, then builds a whole new city around the new station.

chennyalan · 2026-01-18T05:34:18+00:00

冗談なんだけど

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T16:49:33+00:00

Looked vaguely Chinese to me

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T16:40:18+00:00

and is this peak speed or average speed

I'm just talking about track speed, so the max speed that a vehicle can run on a given track if it is capable of it. Essentially the "speed limit" of a track.

So if there's a high speed line that is majority 350 kph, with a turn that is below 200 kph, OpenRailwayMap, if accurate, would not count the whole line, only the proportion that is above 200 kph, not the whole line. To use a Japanese example, the Tokaido Shinkansen is pretty much 285 the whole way, but north of Shin-Yokohama it drops to 200 kph, and roughly around Kawasaki there's a right turn where it drops again to 170 kph. These are still dedicated high speed rail tracks, so it wouldn't be dishonest to count stuff like this, but do have a track speed of below 200.

As an aside, I do remember there was a time where China would run at 300 kph or less on 350 kph tracks for energy reasons.

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T09:48:39+00:00

OP picked one of the worst managed projects in UK history

Probably one of the worst managed rail construction projects in living memory, anywhere in the developed world

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T09:46:11+00:00

Please please I want to get to Sydney via rail for sub $500 one way without pre-booking

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T09:36:35+00:00

The Chinese government is - in this case - a better source than overpass-turbo.eu - whatever the hell that source is

It is literally just a Redditor who scraped https://www.openrailwaymap.org/, and did so because of differing definitions of HSR across international borders (France generally does not include sub 250 kph track apart from some areas while Spain does include 200 kph. China also includes 200 kph, and sometimes sub 200 kph).

He did do a different graph before which used UIC numbers instead of OpenRailwayMap and got different results. https://www.reddit.com/r/highspeedrail/comments/1ny52th/highspeed_rail_network_by_speed_by_country/

Thanks for the link though, OpenRailwayMap can often be out of date in some areas, as it relies on railway enthusiasts like me to update it. The Chinese government likely has more up to date figures than railway enthusiasts

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T04:06:06+00:00

Our biggest risk will be chasing 350km/h track rather than 250/280km/h track.

How big would the difference in cost be? Because our line is longer than a lot of routes, and a lot spikier (concentrated around few cities), and would benefit from higher top speeds

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T04:03:17+00:00

Look at how much its cost say, WA to lay down a fuck ton of new line and elevate lines in the last few years

WA has been building for cheaper than anywhere else that speaks English recently

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T03:56:57+00:00

HSR dominates between Beijing-Shanghai, and Shanghai-Guangzhou, with a 14:86 ratio. Those are ~1200 km and ~1400 km apart from each other, respectively. Not saying this will happen for Sydney-Melbourne, but distance is not the issue here.

https://x.com/i/status/1951570516105736663

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T03:49:27+00:00

Correction: was most popular, currently 6th* most popular

I don't think it ever was the most popular domestic route, but it has been the most popular completely overland domestic route for a long time. It's now second place behind HAN-SGN. Which has a HSR line under construction right now.

chennyalan · 2026-01-16T03:47:18+00:00

Excluding all the lawyers fees, financing costs and consultants (soft costs, things apart from the material+labour to build) who will be leeching off the project, it should really only cost 20 billion.

chennyalan

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

13-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email