China is going to spend $1 trillion on high speed rail in the coming years.
Trains have invariably led to economic growth. Real estate prices grow near stations, whether in Japan or at India's metro stations. Europe and Japan have benefited tremendously from their regular and high speed train networks. The economic impact, as well as the improvement in quality of life, is well studied over and over by reputed economists.
Meanwhile the Indian Railways keeps breathlessly repeating to its passengers, ad nauseam, that it loses money on passenger traffic.
Nobody cares. The NHAI is spending ₹1,68,464 crore this year, on just highways. The fuel spent on those highways, the cost of the vehicles running on them, the cost of driving and operating those vehicles - all those are additional costs. And in spite of this huge expense, we seem to pay hundreds of rupees in toll every time we go from city A to city B.
The railways are infrastructure, just like the highways. You aren't supposed to make money on infrastructure. It is this kind of reductive thinking that has put American infrastructure in the terrible place it is now. You build infrastructure, at cost to the public and the economy, and then said infrastructure benefits the economy.
I think the language of the government needs to change. The job of the government is to take money from individuals and businesses, and in return build that infrastructure which individuals cannot build and operate themselves. No part of doing that job entails whining about how much the infrastructure costs. We voted you in to make the right investments on our behalf. Just do it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/urban-infrastructure/transportation-infrastructure/china-is-building-30-000-miles-of-high-speed-rail-that-it-might-not-need/ar-AA1ut4Pf
Trains have invariably led to economic growth. Real estate prices grow near stations, whether in Japan or at India's metro stations. Europe and Japan have benefited tremendously from their regular and high speed train networks. The economic impact, as well as the improvement in quality of life, is well studied over and over by reputed economists.
Meanwhile the Indian Railways keeps breathlessly repeating to its passengers, ad nauseam, that it loses money on passenger traffic.
Nobody cares. The NHAI is spending ₹1,68,464 crore this year, on just highways. The fuel spent on those highways, the cost of the vehicles running on them, the cost of driving and operating those vehicles - all those are additional costs. And in spite of this huge expense, we seem to pay hundreds of rupees in toll every time we go from city A to city B.
The railways are infrastructure, just like the highways. You aren't supposed to make money on infrastructure. It is this kind of reductive thinking that has put American infrastructure in the terrible place it is now. You build infrastructure, at cost to the public and the economy, and then said infrastructure benefits the economy.
I think the language of the government needs to change. The job of the government is to take money from individuals and businesses, and in return build that infrastructure which individuals cannot build and operate themselves. No part of doing that job entails whining about how much the infrastructure costs. We voted you in to make the right investments on our behalf. Just do it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/urban-infrastructure/transportation-infrastructure/china-is-building-30-000-miles-of-high-speed-rail-that-it-might-not-need/ar-AA1ut4Pf