China’s entire high speed network (42000km) was funded on only $900 billion of debt… Yet HS2 is estimated to cost $130 billion and California HSR $128 billion. For comparison, the Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail cost $38 billion (inflation-adjusted) and the Beijing-Tianjin line (China’s first HSR) cost about $3.3 billion (inflation-adjusted).
London-Birmingham is a distance of about 160km, Los Angeles-San Francisco is a distance of about 560km, Beijing-Shanghai is a distance of about 1060km, and Beijing-Tianjin is a distance of about 110km (all straight-line).
Edit: another comparison, Japan’s Chuo Shinkansen, which is pioneering high-speed maglev technology at scale and involves an absolutely astronomical amount of tunneling, is estimated to cost only $60 billion for 266km.
Just to note, the 130 billion figure for HS2 isn’t just for the London to Birmingham leg.
Also there’s a lot of things that went into making it expensive: a lack of high speed expertise, extra tunnels to satisfy nimbys, the government insisting on low risk contracts and changing plans constantly, etc
However, Japan’s Chuo Shinkansen is like 90% tunneled or something crazy and the rest of Europe (and China and Japan) has a ton of high speed expertise to draw from.
In general. Construction can be made very cheap in dictatorships.
The other thing making things cheap is scale.
China did a lot of things well, but especially on point 1 - we need to hold the line.
Lots of projects are expensive in the west because we care about nature, quality, worker safety and the communities impacted by the work (but also because this all opens the doors to malicious bad faith legal battles that make projects stupid expensive)
Although the best I could find for California was household average salary, it is 62k USD for Madera county and 55k for Kern county. These two counties make up the endpoints of the initial segment of California HSR, which is currently projected to cost $35 billion.
There’s definitely a gap, but it’s not a huge one.
Guess what? Being an authoritarian government means never having to ask permission to steal someone’s land, rip up a pristine habitat or demolish an entire village. Those types of considerations are what make infrastructure expensive in democratic countries.
You mean the principle of eminent domain? China is legally required to pay fair market value and rehouse displaced peoples, but it’s also just the right thing to do for political stability. The key is that China doesn’t really have the concept of private land ownership (only leased government and collective-owned land). That’s the primary driver behind why China’s costs are lower than the rest of the world in this domain, but doesn’t explain how Japan and France and etc. are also so cheap.
For large government projects the principles tend to be followed (for example, China HSR and Shanghai’s subway expansion). There’s corruption that happens at the local (rural) government level that sometimes requisitions farmland for commercial or industrial use, and the systems there are usually less robust, but when talking about regional, provincial or national projects there are better systems in place to handle things with minimal risk and it’s seen as more politically expedient to just pay the piper than it is to deal with the civil unrest.
China’s land ownership system means that land is split between being owned by the national government and being owned by small collectives. The greatest corruption (requisition without proper compensation) usually occurs at the collective-level. At a higher administrative level, it’s not like China is missing housing that it can use to rehouse people lol.
China’s entire high speed network (42000km) was funded on only $900 billion of debt… Yet HS2 is estimated to cost $130 billion and California HSR $128 billion. For comparison, the Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail cost $38 billion (inflation-adjusted) and the Beijing-Tianjin line (China’s first HSR) cost about $3.3 billion (inflation-adjusted).
London-Birmingham is a distance of about 160km, Los Angeles-San Francisco is a distance of about 560km, Beijing-Shanghai is a distance of about 1060km, and Beijing-Tianjin is a distance of about 110km (all straight-line).
Edit: another comparison, Japan’s Chuo Shinkansen, which is pioneering high-speed maglev technology at scale and involves an absolutely astronomical amount of tunneling, is estimated to cost only $60 billion for 266km.
Just to note, the 130 billion figure for HS2 isn’t just for the London to Birmingham leg.
Also there’s a lot of things that went into making it expensive: a lack of high speed expertise, extra tunnels to satisfy nimbys, the government insisting on low risk contracts and changing plans constantly, etc
You know what, that’s a good point.
However, Japan’s Chuo Shinkansen is like 90% tunneled or something crazy and the rest of Europe (and China and Japan) has a ton of high speed expertise to draw from.
In general. Construction can be made very cheap in dictatorships.
The other thing making things cheap is scale.
China did a lot of things well, but especially on point 1 - we need to hold the line.
Lots of projects are expensive in the west because we care about nature, quality, worker safety and the communities impacted by the work (but also because this all opens the doors to malicious bad faith legal battles that make projects stupid expensive)
Japan isn’t a dictatorship, nor are France or Spain.
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https://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/china-chine/wages-salaires.aspx?lang=eng
Average salaries in Beijing and Shanghai are 24k USD and 22k USD, respectively.
https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/2867/average_earnings_2022.pdf
Average salaries in Birmingham are 38k USD. In London, they’re 49k USD.
https://stacker.com/california/lowest-earning-counties-california
Although the best I could find for California was household average salary, it is 62k USD for Madera county and 55k for Kern county. These two counties make up the endpoints of the initial segment of California HSR, which is currently projected to cost $35 billion.
There’s definitely a gap, but it’s not a huge one.
Guess what? Being an authoritarian government means never having to ask permission to steal someone’s land, rip up a pristine habitat or demolish an entire village. Those types of considerations are what make infrastructure expensive in democratic countries.
You mean the principle of eminent domain? China is legally required to pay fair market value and rehouse displaced peoples, but it’s also just the right thing to do for political stability. The key is that China doesn’t really have the concept of private land ownership (only leased government and collective-owned land). That’s the primary driver behind why China’s costs are lower than the rest of the world in this domain, but doesn’t explain how Japan and France and etc. are also so cheap.
Lol.
For large government projects the principles tend to be followed (for example, China HSR and Shanghai’s subway expansion). There’s corruption that happens at the local (rural) government level that sometimes requisitions farmland for commercial or industrial use, and the systems there are usually less robust, but when talking about regional, provincial or national projects there are better systems in place to handle things with minimal risk and it’s seen as more politically expedient to just pay the piper than it is to deal with the civil unrest.
China’s land ownership system means that land is split between being owned by the national government and being owned by small collectives. The greatest corruption (requisition without proper compensation) usually occurs at the collective-level. At a higher administrative level, it’s not like China is missing housing that it can use to rehouse people lol.
The minister in charge of HSR was sentenced to death for corruption.