I'm Impressed and Just a Little Scared -- China's City of 42 Million

I don't know whether I should be impressed, saddened, or just stay very very still and look away.  The Chinese have decided to create a beast.  By incorporating the 9 (quite large) cities of the Pearl River Delta, they will be making a megalopolis of 16,000 square miles -- 26 times bigger than the London metro area, and far and away the worlds largest city.   From Reuters:

"The idea is to merge all nine cities around the Pearl River Delta (under the aptly-named plan, “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One”) and connect them via power and water, telecommunications networks and 29 new rail lines."

Now, while the 26 new high-speed rail lines are cool, and emblematic of China's commitment to come out on top of the race to modern transport, and the idea of dense urban living being modular (city centers linked by rail forming a network of urban cores) is on-track with most futurist visions for megalopolis living, the sheer SIZE of this project is terrifying.  If you ask me.

China plans high-speed rail to Europe. Really? I'm jealous.

They've already got the most advanced high-speed rail system in the world, and now the Chinese have announced plans to extend it to Europe.  This means a two-day trip from King's Cross to Beijing!!  Detractors say this is the modern Imperialist equivalent of the Via Publicae -- a move to cement China's supremacy across the continent -- but others doubt it will ever come to fruition . . . the perceived benefits beyond passenger service being somewhat limited for the cost.  The US, for all it's "security" spending abroad, could take a page from this strategy book and strengthen our domestic infrastructure in a similar way to vast benefit. FULL STORY from the Edmonton Journal.
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Get your Green Goo OUT.

Find out what this sludge is . . .

and now . . . Road Rage with Andy Battaglia -- Episode 1 [ding]

From time to time I'll bring you a totally justified rant from the brilliant cramped mind of Andy Battaglia. Here we go!

"To Whom It May Concern: China is currently building 12 high-speed rail lines that will go upwards of 250 miles per hour across thousands of miles and will open by 2012 effectively making air-travel across short distances a thing of the past. In America we're building a two-mile long subway extension in New York that was first proposed in 1920 and will open in 2017 (maybe), and even that is only partly funded and could be halted (for the fourth time).
If you want crumbling highways and bridges packed with traffic and slow Amtrak trains that take two full days to get from New York to Florida, America is the country for you. For the love of all things, can we invest in rail infrastructure! And by invest, I don't mean talk about it for years and spend millions on "studies" only to delay actual construction for it to eventually be derailed by the automobile industry lobby. France, Germany and Sweden have managed to create the most comprehensive rail systems in the world, and I don't think our being a huge country is a good enough reason for us to not be investing in this stuff. We USED to have fancy things and amazing pieces of engineering and infrastructure in the early parts of the last century. Then we stopped investing and sold off thousands of miles of railroad rights-of-way so that "developers" could replace them with strip malls, and McMansion gated communities with no sidewalks and only cars to get to and from anywhere. Ohh and before that GM bought all of our clean electrified light rail and trolley lines across the country, decreased service to make them unattractive, and then ripped them up so they could be replaced with slow smog-producing GM-made buses. But I digress...Thanks. -Andy"

Thank YOU, Andy.

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