Doesn’t Toronto have the tram lines east west or trolley busses and buses with cheap flat price through ticketing for each journey?
The cables over and underground run from the cheap, green hydroelectric power?
If it’s cheap, regular, reliable with through ticketing, it’s good public transport, not bad.
Talking about China’s human rights issues right away is very strange. Nobody does this if someone mentions a US project.
I wonder why
Because the US has no human rights violations?
/s
What’s up with all the China hype on Lemmy? These projects are impressive, no doubt, but their cost in terms of human rights violations are pretty high. I’m speaking generally, I don’t have the specifics with regards to this subway system. Either way it’s not really comparable to a project like this in a country like Canada imo.
The speed and size is impressive, yes.
But I doubt the quality.
“Tofu-dreg project” (Chinese: 豆腐渣工程) is a phrase used in the Chinese-speaking world to describe a very poorly constructed building, sometimes called just “Tofu buildings”. The phrase is notably used referring to buildings that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake disaster,[1][2][3][4][5][6] and the Bangkok Audit Office skyscraper collapse initiated by aftershocks from the March 2025 Myanmar earthquake over 1000km away, which was constructed with poor construction techniques and materials
Lemmy is more international than Reddit, so you’ll see more diverse perspectives
We don’t have to agree with China’s politics to appreciate that they did a positive thing. And we shouldn’t have to emulate their politics to get a thing done. We should be able to do it
Some countries want to sell the image of “China is the absolute evil”, thus from this logic everything “good” must equal something very evil.
Some of those are valid, some are stupid as hell.
For the covid ones - the cost was complete lockdown, with some people’s doors being welded shut (not official government policy, but common enough to make news, as lower level authorities get some decision making power in these cases). Imagine having an emergency and your door being welded shut. And of course we later found out that even multi-dose vaccines don’t stop covid 100%, so instead of stopping the pandemic forever, nothing of value was actually achieved. Covid is the new seasonal flu. For a while we didn’t even get vaccines for Covid here in Estonia anymore, though now they’re back on the table, free if you’re in a high risk group.
Electric cars - the cost is mass government subsidies for BYD and a couple of others. BYD doesn’t make money if they sell you a car I believe, they make money from the Chinese government if they sell you a car. Even if you’re in another country. China wants their EVs to dominate the market and that’s a strategy. This is why the EU had to raise tariffs on Chinese cars. Otherwise the European auto industry would simply die.
Electric cars - the cost is mass government subsidies for BYD and a couple of others. BYD doesn’t make money if they sell you a car I believe, they make money from the Chinese government if they sell you a car. Even if you’re in another country. China wants their EVs to dominate the market and that’s a strategy. This is why the EU had to raise tariffs on Chinese cars. Otherwise the European auto industry would simply die.
Why doesn’t the EU simply also subsidize their EVs?
They’re for-profit companies and so far pretty successful without direct subsidies. EU countries usually have subsidies for purchasing EVs (regardless of manufacturer) rather than subsidizing the manufacturers directly - this leaves the consumers more choice and has a similar or maybe even better effect on EV adoption. On the climate side of things as well as public health and equal opportunities for people, transit investments would be better than outright paying BMW and Mercedes to make their EVs cheaper. China, however, doesn’t just want EV adoption on their own roads, China wants THEIR EVs specifically to dominate the world. Usually this is seen as unfair, regardless of industry, and is one of the few valid reasons for tariffs in an otherwise free global market.
The funny thing is, if the Chinese subsidize their EVs and the EU tariffs them, the tariff money could then be spent on EV subsidies - bringing all the different manufacturers to equal ground again.
What helps is that the aumomotive/gas industry lobby there isnt so effective.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
Lemmy has tankie problem.
Is this another bot that all hails great mother china? They use people like disposable biomass when building this crap.
lol, as if it’s all magic?
Does the sinkhole caused by slapdash construction feature on the map?
How about the shed where 4 people died during construction?
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202109/11/WS613ba6e7a310efa1bd66ebdc.html
How many lives are saved by not having people in cars?
We have had industrial accidents and deaths as well… We may have better safety standards but going from no subway system to a massive full city system more robust than Western countries in a fraction of the time is pretty remarkable.
Digging tunnels is dangerous. Especially if you dont have a century of experience to build off of.
This is like the 2 extremes. China with terrible human rights violation and sloppy construction and cities where even thinking about mass public transit is akin to killing puppies.
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.
Very recent, non-peer reviewed research, n=1. It makes me very happy to be able to nap on a subway/night bus or safely ride a bicycle or somewhat less safely ride a motorbike. My productivity is the same because I work remotely.
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!
While your comment is very amusing, accessibility and congestion are pretty high up on the list of things that make a place “nice.” A deep Investment into public transit is very likely to have a positive impact on an inhabitant’s happiness.
(Incidentally, it’s ironic that you have leapt to the conclusion that one of these cities is “winning” while nothing of the sort is stated in the post, only then to take objection to people drawing such conclusions.)
Yep, developing country is developing? Holy crap, imagine that!
Add to that, Toronto’s transit system includes light rail that pulls together a much wider geographical area, outside its subway system. It’s a pretty good system, actually
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
What is the required population threshold for investing into public transit? Above 3 million and below 20 million, it seems, but can you be more specific?
Why is it my job to provide policy? Can you be more specific?
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.
How is it misleading? The post says ‘public transit’ and both are.
Still gets you places almost the same. Just have to have the foresight to leave space for it above ground.
Someone should let the leadership of Toronto know, they keep increasing costs with having it go underground
We have two LRT lines opening in short order. Both the eglinton crosstown and finch west. They’re also actively working to make all the Line 2 stations accessible by way of adding elevators where the designers in the 1960s saw no need for them. Believe it or not, they’re aware, but the TTC fights more than just a budget when trying to implement these things.
Besides NIMBYs, there’s the rapid expansion of the GTA to consider, which has led to either a redevelopment of land or a requirement for mass transit in places that were developed 20 years ago without consideration for it. As densification occurs, it is both more required, but more logistically complicated. The current municipal gov does genuinely seem interested in fixing this, but doing so is kind of a nightmare without the funding to buy property and redevelop entire civic centers. Add to the fact that the provincial government seems to wage its own war against changes to anything that would affect a car’s right of way and the downtown suddenly becomes this unchangeable monolith.
Then there’s the bonus factors of Bombardier, the supplier of basically every train for every LRT or Subway line in Canada, the fact that Toronto is actually a collection of smaller municipal regions with their own concerns and challenges, and that they’re also still trying to add ATC to all of Line 2 in order to replace the aging trains there. It becomes pretty clear that building out an entirely new transit system under the directive of your federal government with next to unlimited funding is probably a lot easier than reworking a 60 year old subway network that had vastly different aspirations than now.
China runs the benefit of uniform prioritization of these networks, in places that had no previous infrastructure to contend with. They aren’t currently splitting a budget between maintaining/retrofitting 60 year old subway lines, stations and cars. I’d be more interested in see if they were able to continue this kind of buildout in 30 years, or if they end up facing a lot of the same logistical challenges.
I’d be more interested in see if they were able to continue this kind of buildout in 30 years
The Beijing subway opened in 1971, when they had less than half the current population. All I can say is that it felt slow, like 2 hours to get what looked like 3-4 blocks on a map
I think I’d almost consider it the same as starting with nothing when they began the next phase of construction in 2002. The map then vs now demonstrates that, and mostly follows China’s industrial/modern expansion in urban environments in recent memory. I think it’s still difficult to comprehend what a massive shift they’ve had in urban construction since the mid-90s as they’ve become the economic center for trade and manifacturing in the last couple decades. The transit still can’t keep up with demand, even with a subway system so extensive. It’s also still a very car-centric urban environment and I imagine now faces many similar civil construction challenges as in North America. It’s a good part of why I’m curious to see how things shape up in the coming decades for them and how they overcome those challenges at a scale Canada hopefully never needs to contend with.
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!
Reading past your sarcasm, you’re suggesting that it’s better to have reduced public transit options than investing into them. I’m curious to hear your reasoning to argue that.
No im not. You’re just seeing the issue-as-it-is as binary. I’m saying it’s bad to ignore all context to make a cheap point, even if your point is good. There are a billion ways to make a good point. Why choose a bad one.
It’s odd to me to take objection to a post making a bad point by making a sarcastic statement that was open to misinterpretation. The thread invites a discourse about building better cities and yet, in classic Lemmy fashion, it’s just about semantics.
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?
BUT AT WHAT COST???
man China is knocking it out of the park.
they are so successful!
/s
Yeah but how much of that is up to code?
Actually, the funny thing is, in my experience in both China and the United States, I noticed that the US has no safey barriers while China actually does. The first few yesrs of my life in the US, I had a phobia of falling onto the tracks so I basically just hug the wall. There are some stations where there are tracks on both sides and the station is in the middle, I hate those. No safety barriers really sucks.
Although, I got to say, the “Tofu-dreg construction” is a big problem in China. Luckily, I’ve neven fallen in to an escalator platform in the years I was there. Food safety tho, that’s probably an even bigger problem, its a common issue that I remember my mom always talked about. The government sucks at enforcing food safety (I’m not sure if they even had food safety laws).
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.
street cars
Is at least one of them called Desire?
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.
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.
https://asiatimes.com/2025/06/chinas-fast-growing-high-speed-railway-network-faces-reality/
It’s a well-documented problem, even from Chinese government sources.
In February this year, a group of Chinese commentators said a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) had found that China’s high-speed railway saw an “about 100 billion yuan of total loss”
[…]
The article pointed out that China’s high-speed railway network was 45,000 kilometers at the end of 2023, but only 2,300 kilometers, or 6% of the total, could make a profit. It said that out of all 16 high-speed railway lines, only six in coastal cities are profitable.
It said the most profitable Beijing-Shanghai line will have to spend 20 years recovering its initial investment of 220.9 billion yuan.
[…]
"Since the beginning of 2024, data from many high-speed rail lines have been unsatisfactory,” a Henan-based writer says in an article published in February. “There were very few passengers on weekdays, but the maintenance costs stood high.“
I think you’re thinking of this purely from a political standpoint, and the point I’m making is completely an economic one. This isn’t about China vs. The West - this is just about China. You might think that these rail lines don’t need to make a profit because they provide a public good, but these railways are run by private/state partnerships and their stated goal is to make a profit (they even trade on the stock exchange). If they don’t, it’s likely they will be shuttered
It’s almost as if infrastructure is there to facilitate growth and economy and not to turn a profit.
Do the same math for roads: How many percent of the roads in your country (or any other country) turn a profit?
Do the same with water works, sewage and so on. All these things have benefits far greater than immediate profit.
You need roads so that people can get to work and to places where they can spend money and so that goods can be shipped. And all of these things generate taxes and economic benefit, which in turn finance, among other things, road building.
It would be entirely stupid to think that every piece of infrastructure needs to finance itself and turn a profit, while completely forgetting the actual purpose and benefit of the infrastructure.
These are corporations that run the railroads. They do exist to make a profit. China is not a totally socialist country. they’re pretty market oriented but with a strong centrally planned flavor. Their own stated goal, if you had bothered to read my comment before replying, is to be profitable
Ok, let’s assume you read the article. Quiz question: who owns the China State Railway Group Co Ltd? (Hint: it’s in the name)
Also, I guess you didn’t just invent the “stated goal” of the China State Railway Group, so it should be quite easy for you to find said stated goal in their actual stated goals (http://wap.china-railway.com.cn/english/about/aboutUs/201904/t20190408_92993.html), correct?
If you had bothered to actually read the article and if you had bothered to actually research anything at all about the topic at hand, we probably wouldn’t have the discussion.
The reality is the high speed rail it China is not solvent and is operating at a tremendous loss. That’s just reality. The question is if that loss serves a larger benefit to Chinese society. It’s a gamble either way.
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 you didn’t read the original post very well
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%
This isn’t about the US. My criticism of the US was pretty clear in the original post
I also didn’t only post numbers for the US.
Ok fine: this isn’t about the west. You see a comment about economics and your immediate response is whataboutism because you think this is about politics
Did you know that most of China’s debt is held domestically?
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.
Wrong, the state owns the land but you can own the house, and not just for your 70y BS period.
There are plenty of articles like of instances where homeowners don’t want to sell for infrastructure like this: https://twistedsifter.com/2012/11/china-builds-highway-around-house/
I know for a fact here in EU or the US they will indeed " just tells you to gtfo"
BTW, in China a high 90% of people OWN their house and aren’t rentslaves.
So there’s that China bad man.It’s hard to overstate how much safer and more ethical it is to use eminent domain and fairly compensate someone monetarily for their property than to leave their house in the middle of a highway
That’s besides the point wether you think it’s better or not, it should be the OWNER’s decision as is the case in China.
And not what this rustydomino is pulling out of his ass.No it’s not besides the point, it’s in direct response to your point. Leaving a house in the middle of the highway is a better outcome for no one
The discussion was about having rights of ownership and on the decision, not anyone’s opinion what is better.
So you’re completely besides the point even if you can’t admit this obvious fact.
I’m sure the developers offered “fair compensation”, you need to demand lot before fucking up the highway design is more economical than meeting their offer.
In the US, the government provides compensation, not developers, and they pay fair market value as determined by local appraisal districts.
The main difference here seems to be that the US can compell property owners to accept what they determine is a fair market rate, but another poster informed me that in some cases the chinese can compell people to sell too.
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.
I’m sure that’s the whole story.
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?
I don’t know. Wuxi is significantly smaller than Shenzhen. I think it was around 2 million people at that time.
They didn’t give my parents much of an option. When they did finally take the land away, they did offer to relocate us to another location, but at that time, my family was already struggling from the 2nd loss, my parents just ended up closing the business all together.
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?
that’s not the slave labour that’s building china, just as prison labour isn’t what’s powering the US
the actual productive slave labour is done by regular workers who nominally have “freedom”, just that they don’t actually have a choice if they and their family want to live.
lmao do you think china has an industry of mustache-twirling villains whose job it is to threaten peoples families if they dont work for free? Presumably they work for free to keep their families alive too.
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.
LOL
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.
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”.
In the end, its more about getting things done, and investing in society, rather than how strongly you can shout your opinion about transgender folk. A government that invests in society is one not focused on either enriching itself, or cutting all social spending to fund tax cuts for oligarchs. When the only acts we/society/rulers ever implement is giveaways to their sponsors, you could think about your programming that tells you your rulership is the best system of all.
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.
Interstate highway is oil. Interstate highway is love.
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.
