apple juice

“When lunch break comes at the construction site between Shanghai and Suzhou in eastern China, Xi Tong-li and his fellow laborers bolt for some nearby trees and the merciful slivers of shade they provide. It’s 95 degrees and humid — a typically oppressive summer day in southeastern China — but it’s not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.

Xi is among a vast army of workers in China — according to Beijing’s Railroad Ministry, 110,000 were laboring on a single line, the Beijing-Shanghai route, at the beginning of 2009 — who are building one of the largest infrastructure projects in history: a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network that, once completed, will be the largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated in the world. “

(emphasis mine)

(Via China’s amazing new bullet train.)

How’s that for a stimulus? 110,000 workers? The article goes on to say that China is spending $300 billion dollars on the project, which will take 15 years to complete.

We are way behind…

“. . .Japan’s zip through the countryside at an average of 180 m.p.h. One difference, of course, is that governments overseas have put big money behind these forms of transit. Spain, for example, plans to invest about $140 billion over the next decade to develop a network of 6,200 miles of high-speed rail lines.”

(Via Editorial – America’s Not-So-Fast Trains – NYTimes.com.)

Spain plans to invest $140 billion dollars on rail in the next 10 years.

Where is our plan for high-speed rail?

it is a minnesota state law that you must yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, correct?

actually…

Where traffic-control signals are not in place or in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop to yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a marked crosswalk or at an intersection with no marked crosswalk. The driver must remain stopped until the pedestrian has passed the lane in which the vehicle is stopped.

nobody seems to obey this law.

i’ve taken to standing and pointing at the sign, while staring disapprovingly at the cars driving past.

it’s called a parkway for a reason.

slow down.

“Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout.”

(Via Slate Magazine.)

The narrative the author cites is exactly the same story I heard from someone at a recent community meeting here in Minneapolis. The article cites Golden, CO as an example (which I remember everyone professing to hate).

I love roundabouts, for all the reasons listed… the only thing I don’t like is people who can’t figure them out.

great article about the california high-speed rail project in the new york times magazine over the weekend: Getting Up to Speed

it’s going to require a political will that is practically unheard of… I can’t even imagine all of the backyards they’re going to have to criss-cross to make it work.

Apart from the breathtaking price tag, commentators often focus on the projected velocity of the California trains, on how they will reach an astounding 220 m.p.h. in some stretches near Bakersfield and will cover the distance from L.A. to the Bay Area at an average speed approaching 175 m.p.h. As someone who never understood the zealotry of hard-core train enthusiasts, I found the project’s other selling points more compelling: center city to center city in a few hours without airport lines or onerous security checks. No bus connections. No traffic. And no counting on luck. Which is to say that high-speed trains are obviously about going fast, but when you think about it, they’re just as much about time as speed.

I’m still hoping for the Minneapolis to Chicago connection. We just flew down there, to Midway airport, and it’s just so much more of a production than it needs to be.

It’s about 400 miles, doable in 2 hours and 15 minutes at an average of 175mph (as discussed in the article). I don’t know what the recommended lead time for boarding a train is, but let’s call it 30 minutes.

By plane, it takes 1 hour and 15 minutes. Add an hour for the check-in security lead time. And now add in additional travel time. Instead of arriving in downtown chicago, you’re arriving out at midway or o’hare. Add another 30 minutes.

We’re right at the same point. Except that a train can do this for 500 passengers, while each plane is only carrying ~150 passengers.

Well, anyways. Enough of that…

To sell his vision of a high-speed train network to the American public, President Barack Obama this week cited Spain, a country most people dont associate with futuristic bullet trains.

via Spains Bullet Train Changes Nation — and Fast – WSJ.com.

Great article about the progress Spain has made with regards to rail travel. This is exactly the type of transformation we could experience here in America.

The government has identified 10 corridors, each from 100 to 600 miles long, with greatest promise for high-speed development.

They are: a northern New England line; an Empire line running east to west in New York State; a Keystone corridor running laterally through Pennsylvania; a major Chicago hub network; a southeast network connecting the District of Columbia to Florida and the Gulf Coast; a Gulf Coast line extending from eastern Texas to western Alabama; a corridor in central and southern Florida; a Texas-to-Oklahoma line; a California corridor where voters have already approved a line that will allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours; and a corridor in the Pacific Northwest.

via Obama Seeks High-Speed Rail System for U.S. – NYTimes.com.

Emphasis mine. Great news! Here’s to hoping that train trips to Duluth and Chicago are in the near future!