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Tor-Buff-Chester - One of 20 New Megalopolis

adma said:
"The fact of the matter is that Buffalo is a key node in one of the world’s most economically potent mega-regions — stretching from the high-tech center of Waterloo on the west, through Toronto, Buffalo and Rochester, over to Ottawa and on to Montreal. Tor-Buff-Chester is currently home to about 22 million people and more than $530 billion in economic output, making it the fifth-largest megaregion in North America and the 12th largest in the world."
Click to expand...

Wow, look out Pearl River Delta, there's a new kid in town.

I'm going to buy me a house in Napanee and be at the centre of this economic juggernaut.
 
^ One advantage that the Pearl River Delta has over the bi-national Toronto-Buffalo region is that it is so easy to cross an international border (even though the border between Hong Kong and China is now an internal border, it is still treated like an international border, with immigration checkpoints on both sides). Hong Kong's new biometric identity cards allow HK residents to enter and exit HK just by swiping the card and going through a fingerprint scan at a turnstile at the border (photo below), a process that takes less than a minute. A Hong Kong resident who carries a "Home Return Permit", a similar card for entering mainland China, only needs to get through a second turnstile to get into the mainland.

I carry both cards, and it never ceases to amaze me that this is how I can get into what you might call a "totalitarian" country. Meanwhile, here I have to waste my time waiting in line (in a car or standing in a line as a bus passenger) to get into the US, and then wait again when coming back to Canada.

CBS%20001.jpg
 
^ HSR service hasn't started yet between HK and Guangzhou. The Guangzhou-Hong Kong high-speed rail link will be completed in 2014/15 (with the Hong Kong section finishing 4-5 years after the China section).

Here's a map of the line:

xrl_map.jpg


http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/projects/future_gz_sz_hk_xrl.html
 
wyliepoon said:
^ Meanwhile, here I have to waste my time waiting in line (in a car or standing in a line as a bus passenger) to get into the US, and then wait again when coming back to Canada.
Click to expand...

well, to be fair, how do/would they handle passengers driving across the HK/mainland border? not much different than US/Can border.

have you tried walking across our border at niagara or seattle,washington? its pretty easy. its not hi-tech.. but its quick.
 
^ Apparently, it works for drivers too. (I've never tried driving across the border. Only truck drivers and a few people who own cars in Hong Kong and have license plates to drive in HK and Guangdong can drive across the border.)

echannel3.jpg


http://www.immd.gov.hk/ehtml/20041216.htm
 
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