Orange vs Apple! Who will win!
That being said I do wish every country would have a better public infrastructure.
Just out of curiosity if you do have recent research in economy on the impact of subway, tram, bus, bike lanes, etc on both productivity AND happiness, please do share. I’m already convinced but I’d love to learn more on how and why.
boiling down different countries having different things as one of them ‘winning’ and ‘beating us’ always fills me with nuclear levels of contrarianism. can tychus findlay from starcraft have a lit cigar in his mouth? NO, because china doesnt allow smoking in media. Guess we’re beating them!
Chengdu is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a population of 20,937,757 at the 2020 census.
Toronto is the most populous city in Canada and the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a population of 2,794,356 in 2021
Meanwhile Hamburg, Germany with only 1.8 Million:
Kind of misleading. That’s metro+light rail. Above ground light rail is massively cheaper to build than subways.
NY with almost half of the population of Chengdu.
DONT BRING NUANCE AND LOGIC TO A SENSELESS FEELINGS-BAITING POST! It doesn’t MATTER the city layout over top of it, the context of rapid and rampant industrialization in China, or something as inconsequential as number of people!
i don’t understand your reasoning here. are you saying that Toronto hasn’t needed more subway lines than a couple extensions in 15 years? how does the number of people affect the lines? i would think it should affect the number of trains and trips. the lines would be more about where people live and want to go, no?
Its sarcasm
i know. I was addressing the point you’re making not the literal text.
Not me
what
I didnt write the comment you answered to
China BAD?
man China is knocking it out of the park.
they are so successful!
/s
Yeah but how much of that is up to code?
Probably most if not all. Despite some well publisized failures these big government transit projects tend to be pretty good. It’s amazing how fast you can get things done if you don’t care about zoning, the environment, money, worker conditions or safety.
(American) zoning (besides industrial/residential) is bullshit anyway.
Just give me the three major industrial, mixed residential/commercial and some small purely residential zones and be done with it.
No need to basically outlaw a business in a residential area.
as someone who lives in Toronto I mean…you really don’t need an extensive subway network here. We have a lot of buses and several lines of street cars (trollys, trains on the road, whatever you call them where you live).
So what’s being shown here is ONLY the subway network. it doesn’t show the vast street car lines would would make it look A LOT like the China photo.
is this why there is no traffic problems in Toronto and commute is not a suicide inducing nightmare?
mean…you really don’t need an extensive subway network here Found the 905’er
The streetcar network is a complete shitshow. Multiple streetcars bunched up, with hundreds of people inside, being blocked by a few SUV drivers and parked cars on the side.of the street.
Its faster to bike or walk in most cases.
Same for the buses. There’s a reason the bus lines hete have nicknames like “the sufferin’ dufferin”
sorry bud, I live in Beaconsfild village. I ride the vomit commit almost daily. We don’t need an extensive subway network.
with hundreds of people inside
Wow. It sounds very utilized. That awesome.
Utilisation is good, but overcrowding illustrates the point of this meme, which is that the public transit system is being neglected and hasn’t kept pace with demand.
At grade == weak
Toronto isn’t filled with great alternate modes of mass transit so much as it’s filled with excuses not to build mass transit.
Let me weep in “Ontario line”.
All jokes aside, things like this are why China is beating us. I am absolutely not a fan of the Chinese government, but the simple fact is they get shit done.
Much of the growth in China is entirely artificial and is basically a glorified jobs program. China builds tons of cities throughout the country to generate construction contracts and keep people employed. This trend has sort of recently reached a head, and China is now suffering from a pretty large youth unemployment rate (something like 15% of young adults in China cannot find work).
Additionally, many of the public transportation routes in China were designed as vanity projects and have never become profitable. A lot of the high speed rail in China cuts through large swathes of uninhabited land and goes out to ghost cities where nobody lives because they were only built to create construction contracts. These rail lines are expensive to maintain and are bleeding money.
Now, of course you’d probably say that public transportation is a public good; they dont need to profit to benefit the country. That may be true, but it also means that the government needs to borrow money in order to subsidize these largely pointless rail lines (think of those maps where people propose a HSR line that goes from New York to California- a largely pointless route that almost nobody would take because it would be a lot faster to just take a plane).
This is not to say that the United States beats China in every category. In my view the United States has become a barely functioning legal fiction on the precipice of disintegration. My point is just that a lot of these things in China are artificially propped up by their relatively centrally planned economy and are designed to feed the egos of politicians. China is coming up on multiple fiscal, economic, and demographic cliffs that will most likely result in the shuttering of lots of these public works projects similar to how Argentina has been forced to shut down large amounts of public services because of decades of poor economic management.
And finally, to be fair, the United States is ALSO coming up on many economic cliffs, and in many ways has already flung itself far off of some of them, resulting in deteriorating fundamental public services such as education, healthcare, housing, public transportation, and regulatory agencies, not to mention the corruption which has also infested all of those
LOL thanks for your unfunded BS CIA.
I cant find statistics on total occupancy rates, but I never saw a high speed train in China that wasnt mostly full, and they mosty sell out days beforehand, so Im pretty sure that’s just someone making shit up. As far as domestic debt due to infrastructure spending, apply your model to Japan.
Turns our neoliberalism was always full of shit, a jobs program that produces useful infrastructure is infinitely better than leaving people unemployed or subsidizing walmart’s wages.
I think that person’s logic goes like, “government run” = “artificially propped up” = “doesn’t count as real growth”.
It’s the final form of capitalist indoctrination to only be able to reason about other systems through its lens.
I think people forget that many of the highways in The West™ were created as part of glorified jobs programs too.
These projects run like utter shit now in places where work is tendered out to corporations now of course, because they’re being driven by private bodies whose sole motivation is profit, not the creation of useful infrastructure. In my own country HS2 is a beautiful example of this.
Do you have any clues why privatization was so much more destructive in the UK than Japan? The JNR breakup increased ticket prices, decreased service, and made the system overall much more inefficient (Nagoya has subway, rail, elevated rail, bus, elevated bus, ferry, gondola, run by 16 different companies, tokyo has vital subway lines run by different companies, so you pay nearly the cost of a 24 hour pass for using this one transfer), but regulation and infinite loans stemmed the bleeding. You still have rail service to the boonies, even if its an unmanned platform or a guy who shows up twice a day to check shinkansen tickets. The destruction to the UK rail system seems much more permanent.
Overproduction of commodities is certainly a problem for capitalists. But the workers get to enjoy a lower cost of living. Like I would much prefer we built ghost cities (Chengdu was derided as a ghost city at one point) than have a decades long housing crisis with no signs of improving unless we deport millions of people.
At some point, though, when the government keeps running up deficits to subsidize this, the bill comes due
Yeah, sure. China has a debt to GDP of 88.6%. That’s not great. Luckily we don’t have that problem in western capitalist countries, right?
- USA: 121%
- Canada: 104.7%
- UK: 101.8%
- France: 111.6%
- Japan: 251.2%
- Italy: 136.9%
- Belgium: 105%
Did you know that most of China’s debt is held domestically?
One of the reasons they can build their future so quickly is because they were left in a unique position after WW2 to effectively destroy their past.
And they have slave labor. Oops, I guess that’s something that shouldn’t be said in a post pandering China
The only country I know taht has slave labor is the US and their barbaric Gulf states friend.
But the poor Uyghurs!!! BS propagandaIt’s not like workers having to do 2 or 3 jobs in the US just to allow their family to survive are really “free workers”. At least slaves in China seem to benefit the country. In the US, the slaves just benefit big corporations and their shareholders.
Don’t compare struggling to make rent to the prisoners picking cotton by hand in Lousiana.
I was not doing any comparison, sorry of this sounded like it.
I’ve been to urumqi, literally anyone can go there.
Theres no slave labor, its normal industrial farms. Unless youre suggesting the guys driving the combine harvesters or running the factories are secretly enslaved.
not a downvote either. guess you didn’t say the magic word.
Uyghurs
The US hates China, hates muslims but pretend to care about those poor Chinese muslims.
I wonder why?If you’re USian - you have vastly more domestic slaves (I think you call them prisoners in for-profit prisons) than Uyghur population. Maybe you should do something about it.
If you’re not USian, no rebuttal.
I’m curious, tell me more about this (actual question, not being sarcastic)
China was invaded by Japan before WW2. Look up the Rape of Nanking if you want specifics. Once WW2 ended China had a civil war. The CCP managed to win and Mao Zedong ascended to power. He led the Cultural Revolution which basically eliminated the old ways of China to pave the way, over the bodies of millions of people, for modern China.
No just any shit, shit that helps everyday people living in their country.
I’m just thinking of the major cities in my U.S. state where the public transit map, before and after, looks like Chengdu in 2010. So as unfortunate as the circumstances are in Toronto, they can be even worse.
It helps that in China you can’t own land. All the land is owned by the government. You only have “use rights” and for a limited time (something like 80 years - I forget the exact number). So when it comes time to build infrastructure the government just tells you to gtfo.
Wait until you hear about the UK! I own the freehold to my land, but technically it’s gramted by the crown, so I could in theory at any moment have my home taken from me.
China has stronger property laws than the US, look up stuck nail houses. If the US wants your property, they can eminent domain your shit. In China, developers have literally had to swerve highways around property or build shopping centers around that one person who wont sell
Lies. My family had a factory in Wuxi, China. 2 buildings that were dedicated to dormitories. 4 buildings dedicated to manufacturing promotional products.
We were able to lease the land for 50 years with a 50-year option at the end of the term.
Around year 5, the government decided to turn the main dirt road into a proper road. They took back 1/4 of the land. They just used our area for staging.
About a year after the road was made, they decided to expand the road. They took back now 1/2 of the original land and buildings.
Less than a year after the expansion, they turned the 4 lane road i to a highway. They took the entire land back. My family invested millions of dollars in buildings and infrastructure. We got back pennies on the dollar spent on the investment on compensation.
My family never fully recovered financially.
Huh, if the government has that power, why don’t they use it for stuck nail houses? I talked to a few people in shenzhen who made significant sums selling land to developers.
Different type of ownership due to your family purchasing the land vs inheriting it? Different provinces?
And China has slave labor
Proof or I don’t believe.
I mean so does the United States thanks to the 13th amendment but we don’t have anywhere near the same infrastructure to show for it
American slave labor isn’t used for anything interesting - it’s just letting companies pay less for labor for their own benefit.
And what are the Uighurs making that is so interesting?
America is no different. Try not paying your land tax.
The only difference is that, in America, someone needs to shout “eminent domain!” first and slip you $500 for your house.
Isn’t this post about Canada?
Look to public transit development in Taiwan as an example of how to do it right in a democratic nation. There are still loads of problems but the Taiwanese government can’t just take your land outright. Taipei especially has seen phenomenal growth in its metro development in the last 20 years.
The government of Taiwan is the Chinese government
There’s loads of countries and cities around the world with better public transit than Toronto.
Plenty with democratic elections and freedom of expression too.
Only one reason someone would pick China over anywhere else.
I do think there needs to be a shift in how the government invests in this country, but the answer isn’t “let’s go authoritarian”. Governments need to stop looking for big, complicated answers though and realize that production and growth comes from within, and improving mobility increases production, simple as that. You can invest in industries till the cows come home, but the optics of giving tax breaks and incentives to companies when it takes John 2 hours to drive to work is never going to be good.
Bet money America’s interstate highway system would not pass today’s Congress. And can you imagine conservatives bitching about the spend?!
For non-Americans, our interstate highways are federally funded, safe, consistently engineered and tie the country together. If interstates magically disappeared, our economy would collapse within a month.
improving mobility increases production
Can you restate that in a way that makes it clear that the billionaire class will be able to utilize the project to rape and pillage society and increase income inequity? Otherwise, I don’t see how anyone can support it.
Toronto in 1990 was approximately the same map.
I still find it unbelievable that a full subway line was just erased and there was no plan for a replacement.
I don’t care about the post itself, but OP, in the last 24 hours you’ve made something like 80 posts. What the fuck?
I’m posting an absolute shit ton of content to support Lemmy.
You aren’t the first one to notice :)
o7
So, first of all: o7, thank you for your service. Second, where the heck do you find the time?
o7
o7
o7
Bot, perhaps?
Nope. There are some articles I don’t find interesting/attractive that I don’t post.
How many of those are pandering to China? You left a lot of context off the post, like the population numbers And the fact that China uses slave labor
I wonder how many accounts on Lemmy.world are cia-bots that keep repeating the `China uses slave labour" mantra
Obligatory that’s exactly what a bot would say comment
Sounds like something that a real person would never do.
Maybe they’re not just mildly infuriated.
When you say “public transit”, does that include bus lines, or only rail?
Only rail. Toronto has an excellent bus network that is not pictured here.
Maybe a car tunnel and more lanes, ready in 15-30 years, will solve the congestion!
Population: Chengdu over 20 million vs. under 3 million in Toronto.
The maps above also seem to be differently scaled.
Also, the fact that it has technologically developed fast in the past decades, as compared to Canada that has developed steadily in the past century, is not really the gotcha OP seems to imply it is.
That said, it’s perfectly possible that public transport in Toronto leaves much to be desired - without comparing it to Chengdu.
Having moved to Toronto from NYC, transit could be much worse. NYC’s is larger due to the greater population but nearly everything else about it is trash tier. Gods help you if you need to go to a borough other than Manhattan. I honestly much prefer Toronto’s transit.
Also, the picture leaves out a lot of context. There’s a large network of street cars and busses that fills in the gaps here, as well as a massive underground pedestrian network called the PATH. The subways are only a small part of the equation.
(Currently writing this from a TTC street car)
Don’t forget Chinese corner cutting. You probably have to knock 25% off of that if you want infrastructure of a level of quality and safety tolerable to Westerners.
I think it’s fair to guess China is less car-obsessed than Canada, and more serious about fighting climate change. That being said, without cheating it becomes pretty obvious we’re working with the same technology and fundamental logistics.
what do you mean “knock 25% off of that” (off what?) and “without cheating it becomes pretty obvious we’re working with the same technology and fundamental logistics in this map”? sorry i’m just struggling to parse this
Off of the remaining size of the Chengdu network after you correct for the other issues in OP’s representation.
Regardless of the ethnicity and mother tongue of the workers, smelting and extruding rebar, shipping it and pouring concrete around it is the same process. They can’t magically go faster over there, and the reason their labour seems cheaper on paper has to do with the West producing things they can’t (yet). If correctly presented, it would be pretty obvious it’s not apples-to-oranges like this comparison looks in OP, I think.
I am wondering WTF happened to Toronto line 3, though.
Can you please “correctly present” what about the classic Chinese cookie-cutter metro technology is deficient and 25% behind Western technology?
For why Chinese metro construction seems apparently faster you can watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehTy-qQVZhM; it’s just like them Cape Cod suburbs in North America. Nobody claimed that construction magically works faster. It all comes down to not making new logistical decisions and putting in money.
I don’t have rail-specific knowledge here. It’s just generally how construction works in places like China or Laos. Many other things, too.
Don’t forget Chinese corner cutting. You probably have to knock 25% off of that if you want infrastructure of a level of quality and safety tolerable to Westerners.
Is that a thing? It sounds a bit like some bullshit propaganda from here. China = bad.
As another who has been to China a few times and has friends there: It’s a thing.
The lack of regulations (better now than even 5 years ago, but still shit (*1), the lack of pollution protection laws (*3) and the lack of care in build quality (*2) in order to drive down project costs isn’t just a thing, it’s a fact:
(1) https://www.adenservices.com/en/blogs/china-green-buildings-regulations/
(2) https://www.aii.org/chinas-infrastructure-and-construction-problem/
(3) https://shunwaste.com/article/how-do-people-get-around-the-pollution-law-in-china
Seeing that China enslaves people AND has highrises that crumble to pieces yeah, there’s definitely corner cutting
But hey, defend China all you want, bootlicker
I have family from out that way. It’s absolutely a thing in the third world in general, and then in China you have an enormous case of single metrics being used for success (like speed of project completion) and so becoming useless.
In the West, people would become outraged by unheated, crumbling train terminals and it would become a political issue. In China, they tend to censor negative political commentary, so the only people who’s opinion actually matter are other party officials.
i think the measure is how many trains carrying industrial chemicals derail in china vs the usa
Well considering China would never report on an accurate number, we’ll never know.
I live in Toronto and was in the Chengdu metro a month ago. I didn’t do a close inspection but it was fine. Honestly probably better than Toronto. The trains had AC and the terminals that I went to were not crumbling.
I think this meme is pretty reasonable. Toronto had a great start with subways, and still has huge ridership. They also have an excellent bus network. But the funding is very tight and the city has long prioritized inefficient personal vehicles. But it is a good point that you are comparing cities that an order of magnitude apart in population. Toronto also has 2 train lines (one light rail that should be opening within a year, and one subway that is probably 10 years away from opening) which are great to see, finally showing some investment in public transit. But the rate is nowhere near what the political will in China allows and also has a huge focus on new projects rather than keeping maintenance of existing infrastructure.
In many ways this is a wakeup call. If we wanted this level of infrastructure we could have it. But we need to actually commit rather than continuously slashing budgets so that we can let the rich pay less taxes and continue to subsidize car ownership.
Yes, like I said to someone else, I actually don’t know much about the rail system specifically. That was just an example of typical corners to cut.
The state of public transit in Canada is truly dire. Vancouver’s system seemed useable, but I haven’t personally spent enough time abroad to know if it is, or if it just is by comparison.
Wait until you see the absolute dog shit they are building in the US right now for 4x the cost in China
Easy to build cheaply when you use slave labor
and pop density?
That doesn’t really place the transit network.
I don’t know what you mean by this. The yellow lines are transit lines. The red circles are stops.
Sorry, I got confused by the regional rail lines.
Not to undermine your point on the demand, but note that Chengdu’s population has grown <7 million since phase 1 of Line 1 (the 18.5km middle quarter of the navy purple line; for reference the green Toronto line is 26.2km) was opened, while the decades that preceded this saw the city having similar population growth rates to Toronto.
The maps above also seem to be differently scaled.
The Toronto map is ~2x more-a-zoomied-in, judging by the distances between the farthest stations. In 2024, looking at the track maps, the driving distance between the farthest stations (Vaghan Met. to Victoria Park) is 36km while that of Chengdu (天府机场北 to 何公路) is 93 km.
