China could build high speed rail through Canada to the USA

[agoraflaneur]

One factor not mentioned here is that a significant group of people in China likes subways and infrastructure and believes it shows how "modern" they are - they are seen as prestige projects and also drive GDP growth targets which city managers have to meet every year. Even if China were a democracy, I can't see many people in China's cities raving on about how they don't want to pay for the subways. Also, very few people in China own cars as a percentage of the population and transit isn't just something to hopefully have, it is a necessity. China's cities are much denser, requiring subways to an extent that we in North America just will simply *never* need. Anyone who thinks they can compare Toronto to Nanjing isn't comparing comparable cities. We will never need the same number of subway km's as a similarly populated Chinese city - so don't get your hopes up any time soon. Same goes with HSR - people in North America just don't use trains that much, and most (much to my chagrin) never want to . They don't see HSR as some great achievement, unfortunately. As to the speed of construction issue, China uses huge numbers of workers per construction site, who often work 24hrs a day - their construction laws typically don't hinder development to daytime hours. Last, we are in no great rush to build our infrastructure because we won't be greatly hindered if we don't - whereas China is catching up to developed countries, who have many more times the infrastructure per capita than China, even after the last 30 years of development. I don't have the figures in front of me, but Spain with its 50 million people have an insane number of km's per capita compared to China - just Guangdong has, what, more than 100 million people? China's achievements, while notable, often look better simply because of the sheer scale over there, which never fails to impress (and, unfortunately, on issues like the scale of environmental degradation, shock).

As to our workers being entitled and expensive, well, I am glad that construction workers get fair pay. I do wish that we would move toward a system of infrastructure development that limits the moves such as the Eglinton line cancellation - but I also think that democracy can result in good changes, such as the Allen expressway not being built. Toronto is infinitely better (IMHO) for that intervention, which by Chinese (and American, frankly) standards would have been seen as a disaster.

Last, I just wanted to say to the comment that westerners belittle Arab achievements that what countries like Dubai and Abu Dhabi are doing can be horrible, not impressive. A least a decent portion of their labour force is modern slavery, pure and simple. They use cheap, ill-treated labour and western technical knowledge to build their tall buildings, funded by pumping something out of the ground. What they do themselves is often entirely unclear. For instance, as of 2013, only 476,000 of 2,330,000 people living in the Abu Dhabi were UAE nationals. I will never care that Saudi Arabia has a 1km tower until it has a decent society. China, on the other hand, started from the ground up by building a manufacturing base then expanding technical capabilities, which is respectable and, especially when compared to what is happening in the rich middle east, commendable. Also, you never hear westerners dismissing muslim Turkey, which developed without importing ill treated workers and living off of gushing oil wealth.

Oh, and this line will NEVER happen.

 

[ksun]

As to our workers being entitled and expensive, well, I am glad that construction workers get fair pay.

Obtaining excessively high wage distorting market demand and supply is not exactly "fair pay". Many tend to, often deliberately, use the term fair pay to describe all the unreasonable demands of union greed, disguising the fact that what our union workers receive is nothing but fair. Fair =/= high pay. Fair means pay commensurate with skills and efforts.

What constitutes "fair pay", let's see:

It should be based on market demand and supply. "Fair" means it is the kind of salary that anyone with the same skill level is expected to be paid in the fully competitive labour market. Is out union workers' pay determined by the market (what the private sector pay)? And is their pay and benefit similar to someone of comparable education and skill level who doesn't belong to a union?

I haven't touched the issue of job security. In theory, nobody should have high job security because a reasonable level of risk of being fired encourages hard work. If one has high job security (such as almost guaranteed lifetime employment), he should be paid less than average because he is exposed to less risks. We all know in the private sector contractors are paid more than permanent employees because they face more uncertainty in their employment. But our union workers are the reverse: they are paid more, enjoy more benefits, face close to no risk of being fired (unless they did something terribly wrong) than a typical worker with comparable skills in the competitive private sector. I don't call that "fair". It is definitely NOT fair to non-union workers and those taxpayers from who their generous salary and benefits are from.

Back to China labour cost. it used to be dirt cheap but not any more. Labour cost in China increased by an average of 19% in the past 10 years. In 2002, you can expect to pay a completely illiterate cleaning lady with no skills less than a dollar an hour in Shanghai. Nowadays it is close to $3/hour. Construction workers make more than $1000 a month, and some make $2000. $1000 may not sound a lot, but it is sufficiently to rent a very nice two bedroom apartment in central Shanghai, and an average lunch in the city costs $2. In Guangdong there is a shortage of labour because cost is increasing so rapidly and many young workers refuse to work for a low wage as their father did.

I agree this line has little chance to happen unless modern train technology can increase the speed substantially.

 

[agoraflaneur]

So basically you think all construction workers are overpaid. Nice to know. What exactly would be a fair wage?

I never said anything about China's labour costs - I criticized UAE and Saudi Arabia for "distorting" their labour market by bringing in semi-slave temporary labour.

I know what things cost in many places in China, I have been there. Yes you can rent for a pretty low cost (depending on the area). But, everyone wants to buy. Heck, all my Chinese friends openly admitted that they couldn't get married/a good serious girlfriend without owning a property. And property costs a lot relative to income. But yeah, fantastic $2 lunch.

 

[ksun]

So basically you think all construction workers are overpaid. Nice to know. What exactly would be a fair wage?

I never said anything about China's labour costs - I criticized UAE and Saudi Arabia for "distorting" their labour market by bringing in semi-slave temporary labour.

I know what things cost in many places in China, I have been there. Yes you can rent for a pretty low cost (depending on the area). But, everyone wants to buy. Heck, all my Chinese friends openly admitted that they couldn't get married/a good serious girlfriend without owning a property. And property costs a lot relative to income. But yeah, fantastic $2 lunch.

I am saying our unionised construction workers are being overpaid. What would be a fair wage? Very simple: if someone equally qualified is willing to do the a job for $20 an hour,that would be fair wage. But our system says, no, you don't belong to our union. You can't get the job, which is exclusive to us. And we are charging $40 an hour, although someone else is able to do it for $20.

Remember last time the Toronto garbage workers not only went on a big strike for weeks in the summer, they forbade volunteers from collecting garbage for them?

I don't know why you mean by "everyone wants to buy". Yes, housing price is expensive, but renting is always an option. Many do. When one can't afford buying a $1M condo, he has to rent. It is that simple. I quoted rent to indicate the real cost of living in Shanghai. The highly inflated property price there is not a good indication, is it?

And you probably only visited tourist areas. In Shanghai, $2 (CNY 11, tax included, no tip necessary) is more than enough for a decent lunch in most part of the city. You can also get a hair cut for as little as $1 (no HST, no tip) if you know where to go. Of course as a foreigner, you won't know those place but usually end up buying stuff at popular and expensive parts of the city.

 

[agoraflaneur]

Settle down ksun - I said that the $2 lunches were fantastic. I wasn't being sarcastic. I saw a lot of China backpacking through the eastern cities and the western countryside and saw a whole range of prices - I wasn't exactly the 5 star traveler and never ate at expensive restaurants. I didn't disagree with anything else that you said. Still, there is huge pressure to buy property in China - I heard it there and I hear it in Canada (I grew up in Vancouver with lots of Chinese friends, and know lots of Chinese people in Toronto, too). I understand that you don't agree with unions. I think society is better off paying most people a good wage - but I do get annoyed when things go too far as well, and the garbage strike was certainly an example. If unions are really gauging, that isn't right either - but I highly doubt that anyone is getting paid $40 an hour. Garbage workers certainly weren't getting paid $40 (wages are publicly available in union contracts). Anyway, I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Cheers.

 

[Xiaohaha]

Last, I just wanted to say to the comment that westerners belittle Arab achievements that what countries like Dubai and Abu Dhabi are doing can be horrible, not impressive. A least a decent portion of their labour force is modern slavery, pure and simple. They use cheap, ill-treated labour and western technical knowledge to build their tall buildings, funded by pumping something out of the ground. What they do themselves is often entirely unclear. For instance, as of 2013, only 476,000 of 2,330,000 people living in the Abu Dhabi were UAE nationals. I will never care that Saudi Arabia has a 1km tower until it has a decent society.

Oh, and this line will NEVER happen.

Sure, they are modern, prosperous cities with unsustainable resource- and speculation- based economies and occasional instances of right-wing paternalistic/traditionalist persecution of women and minorities. But you agree that this is mostly an economic and political issue, not an issue about Islam? The Western media too often criticizes them on the basis that they are Islamic, and Islam is not Western civilization, and therefore everything they do is oppressive, theocratic, backwards. I guess I'm just complaining about the lack of perspective and neutrality in the journalism profession as a whole. In my opinion the problem is most journalists have only a 4-year bachelors degree in journalism, but they write articles as if they were simultaneously professors of history, economics, political science, theology and Middle-Eastern studies. But this is off-topic now, I'm willing to let this discussion come to an end.

 

[RC8]

I am saying our unionised construction workers are being overpaid. What would be a fair wage? Very simple: if someone equally qualified is willing to do the a job for $20 an hour,that would be fair wage. But our system says, no, you don't belong to our union. You can't get the job, which is exclusive to us. And we are charging $40 an hour, although someone else is able to do it for $20.

Remember last time the Toronto garbage workers not only went on a big strike for weeks in the summer, they forbade volunteers from collecting garbage for them?

I don't know why you mean by "everyone wants to buy". Yes, housing price is expensive, but renting is always an option. Many do. When one can't afford buying a $1M condo, he has to rent. It is that simple. I quoted rent to indicate the real cost of living in Shanghai. The highly inflated property price there is not a good indication, is it?

And you probably only visited tourist areas. In Shanghai, $2 (CNY 11, tax included, no tip necessary) is more than enough for a decent lunch in most part of the city. You can also get a hair cut for as little as $1 (no HST, no tip) if you know where to go. Of course as a foreigner, you won't know those place but usually end up buying stuff at popular and expensive parts of the city.

It's funny to listen/read the opinions of people who think understanding an economic dogma translates into understanding economics.

Regarding Chinese infrastructure - sure they build it fast because they don't have to have any environmental assessments or public consultations, or ensure it's politically viable... but for the same reason what they build is often grossly misguided.

For every subway line they have built several new urban highways - and have basically turned all major streets into de-facto lakeshore-like semi-expressways.

Cyclists, pedestrians, and transit users, and especially disabled/elderly people are routinely discriminated against through planning policies, too. In spite of the amount of lines crowding in transit at peak hours is actually much worse than it is here, etc.

 

[ksun]

^ you made some points, but keep in mind large Chinese cities such as Shanghai are NYC's size, and they need the expressway to transport cars. If you look at NYC's map, they don't really lack highways either.

While I agree that Chinese cities are making mistakes by copying the American model in building very wide car oriented roads (Beijing, Shanghai Pudong for instance), they also have the vision to build plenty of pedestrian only streets. Nanjing Road in (Shangha's Yonge st) is an example. Cities like Toronto has none of such pedestrian friendly retail streets. We give all our streets to car traffic.

All I am saying is, don't be all dismissive when it comes to Chinese cities. Despite their problems, there can be a lot to learn. A city the size of Toronto shouldn't have such a big traffic problem. In Suzhou, a city with 10M near Shanghai, there is rarely much congestion. Century Park in Shanghai is of much better design and more interesting and enjoyable than High Park which is of similar size.

 

[ksun]

Also, very few people in China own cars as a percentage of the population and transit isn't just something to hopefully have, it is a necessity. China's cities are much denser, requiring subways to an extent that we in North America just will simply *never* need. Anyone who thinks they can compare Toronto to Nanjing isn't comparing comparable cities. We will never need the same number of subway km's as a similarly populated Chinese city - so don't get your hopes up any time soon. Same goes with HSR - people in North America just don't use trains that much, and most (much to my chagrin) never want to . They don't see HSR as some great achievement, unfortunately.

I think you are wrong here.
Whether the public wants to drive or take transit is a culture that can change. Nobody says Torontonians have to drive. NYers don't drive much, do they? China use to have a predominantly transit culture, but in the past decade things changed rapidly. People who can afford it seem to fall in love with cars. The city of Chengdu, with 8M urban residents, already has 3.5M personal cars. Beijing has 6M cars and the authority is putting a cap on that. You still think the Chinese don't drive? Cars provide comfort and speed regular transit cannot match, so it is not surprising that many new middle class in Shanghai don't take the subway that much, and many consider it to be the transportation for the unfortunately poor, much like the culture in most American cities.

My point is transit culture can change, provided that the city makes it easy for people to do. Have you thought about the reason why most people love their cars primarily because our transit sucks? If one has a car, why would he be crazy enough to take the subway and possible two buses to the airport while a car ride takes 25 minutes? People love their cars largely because the transit can't take them where they want to go, or it takes too long (going from downtown to Eglinton/Don Mills which is not that far can easily take 45 minutes involving a bus ride).

I don't buy this "because we are north Americans there will never be such a transit culture as they have in Europe/Asia" argument. When congestion is bad enough and transit is convenient and affordable enough, people will make the right decision. Madrid is of comparable size of Toronto yet had a transit system 4 times of Toronto does - Madrid should be our goal. Right now, the most importantly reason why people don't love transit is because it is not good enough.

 

[RC8]

^ you made some points, but keep in mind large Chinese cities such as Shanghai are NYC's size, and they need the expressway to transport cars. If you look at NYC's map, they don't really lack highways either.

Try London, UK. It's perfectly possible to have a massive city without urban expressways.

What has happened to Chinese cities (especially Shanghai and Beijing) is a disaster. The amount of highways and wide semi-expressways crisscrossing the city, and the lack of connectivity between secondary streets, combined with the lack of walkable/cycling-friendly streets and humane surface transit, all add up to an urban catastrophe.

The reason why Chinese transit lines are built so swiftly has nothing to do with union-wages, and everything to do with the system through which authorities can build whatever they want whenever they want. If we had that here - unions and all - we'd have a bunch of new subway/LRT lines, but our highways system would look like this:

Toronto as we know it would be destroyed.

Ironically, we'd have a bunch of LRT lines up and running (or about to be) already if not for the irruption of Rob Ford and his nonsense approach to transit building - which of course was heavily inspired by 'the Chinese way'.

I can and will categorically say that we have nothing to learn from Chinese-style urban planning and project management. What good things they have necessarily come with a package of chaos and disrespect for expert opinions.

There are many other cities around the world who have figured out how to build transit, rail, and pedestrianise streets efficiently without handing over the decision-making process to an entitled elite, and while paying employees fair wages for their labour.

 

[Xiaohaha]

The reason why Chinese transit lines are built so swiftly has nothing to do with union-wages, and everything to do with the system through which authorities can build whatever they want whenever they want. If we had that here - unions and all - we'd have a bunch of new subway/LRT lines, but our highways system would look like this:

Wait, 2 additional highways going downtown AND a bunch of new subway/LRT lines? I'd actually be quite pleased with that. The Spadina expressway didn't happen because it required the complete destruction of mature neighborhoods. But replace 'mature neighborhoods' with 'rows of derelict mud-brick houses without electricity or plumbing' and the calculus would change considerably.

Anyway, I'm a paid wumao, have to earn my dinner somehow, so here's my reply to your comments. It is true that China's earliest cities to modernize had misguided policies and built too many ring roads, as well as roads that were too wide. Unfortunately, the rest of your comments do not reflect reality or any real life facts. Chinese decision-making, if anything, can be characterized as too orderly, too top-down, and with not enough respect for grassroots opinions. Basically, the opposite of what you've described. Furthermore, your claim that Chinese construction workers are not paid a fair wage is frankly laughable, given the trend in blue collar wages there.

I grew up watching dirty, chaotic, backwards Chinese cities build themselves into modern metropolises. Before there were so-called 'disastrous highways into downtown' and 'inhumane subways built by slave labor', people got around on donkey carts, crush-load minivans and cycling, often on unpaved dirt roads. Too wide roads that favor the automobile are still better than no roads at all. You never had to live there, you don't understand that five years of delay due to public consultation and environmental assessment meant five more years of backwardness. In the past, to visit my grandmother, I'd have to ride a donkey cart for 30 minutes to go from the train station to her house, and she lived in a town of 200,000 people. That part of town now has a paved road, donkey cart ride is replaced by a 5-minute cab ride, and a high speed rail link is being built. Perhaps you think I should still ride a donkey cart the next time I go see her.

The point is, China had built all this infrastructure very quickly because she was backwards and poor, and there was a real sense of urgency. They have built entire road networks and subway systems in a span of 20 years, without bankrupting their cities. You might scoff at that, but I think that's an inspiration to developing countries around the world. Despite some misguided projects and accidents due to hasty planning and construction, the net effect of this transformation has led to a major improvement to peoples' lives. This is why, in my opinion, to call the transformation of Chinese cities an 'urban catastrophe' is an insult to the 500 million Chinese people who live in cities.

Toronto today has about 70 km of higher-order transit. I did a regression study a while back, compared to the world average, a city of Toronto's size, density and prosperity should have 142 km of higher-order transit. The reality is the transit here is at least 30 years behind. If you don't want to learn from China, that's fine, but so far Toronto has not learned from ANYONE. And don't blame Rob Ford, he is a symptom but not the disease. The fact that one single politician can cancel existing transit plans on a whim is the real problem, and maybe you should ask Londoners how they'd tackle this issue.

 

[howl]

fair assessment.

China is more about "I have decide and let's get to work tomorrow". Public consultation, einvironement study etc don't matter, and even if they have it, it is a matter of formality. Neither experts nor the public are in a position to challenge the government's decision. The move forward at the expense of some minority. Essentially what they think is, too bad your family will be worse off due to this project - but it is doing the city a good, so sorry and suck it up. That's how they built things fast.

On the other hand, spending millions and millions in endless studies doesn't sound like a responsible way of doing things either, not to mention efficiency. Should it really require 10 years for EA and study for a LRT project? I doubt it. Did the Yonge and Bloor subway have such lengthy EA? Would the DVP be able to be built at all if we do it today? I doubt it. Regarding public consulation, yes, people should be allowed to speak out about their opinions, but how much of it is really just sheer NYMBYism under the disguise of "freedom" - in the end, the vast majority of Toroninians lose in terms both money and time, just because 1% of the people don't feel like it.

What frustrates me is not about consulations and reviews, but there doesn't seem to be a timeline. There has to be a reasonable fixed date when the government should say "that's it. We need to make a decision now", instead of just keeping having endless meetings and studies on paper. What good does it do? Does one additional review really add much value? How many versions of transit plans did we see in the past 5 years, and do we believe it is a result of freedom and democracy, or utter ineffiency and waste of time? Worst thing is, after all the money spent and years in waiting, there is still no conclusion.

See: Haussmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Paris)

I don't think anyone would argue that Ontario's planning system is one of the most onerous in the world. Most other states and jurisdiction either use top-down planning (e.g China) or have comparatively few planning regulations (e.g. USA). There are pro's and con's to Ontario's system, one of which is it can be hijacked by politicians or the people who shout the loudest.

 

[ehlow]

If the topic is "what cities should Toronto learn from", then isn't it more straightforward to look towards UK, Australian and American cities than China?

Places like Melbourne, Washington DC, and Boston maybe due to similar size (& Melbourne having a large streetcar system)?

 

[rbt]

If the topic is "what cities should Toronto learn from", then isn't it more straightforward to look towards UK, Australian and American cities than China?

There are more Chinese cities similar in population to Toronto than nearly anywhere else; we just don't hear about them very often.

That said, so it's still worth watching Chinese cities for long-term effects simply because of the speed of the experiment. They can show whether our recent traffic models are skillful (able to make reliable predictions) far faster than anywhere else.

 

[salsa]

Places like Melbourne, Washington DC, and Boston maybe due to similar size (& Melbourne having a large streetcar system)?

Largest in the world in fact.