>>1800415and to add on a little, see
https://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2021/04-20/9458867.shtmlrough translation of the title: "china's hsr building hitting the 'brakes', greater focus on maintaining ratio of hsr to conventional rail"
it's a massive waste of money to build whole 250kph segments used by only 4 trains per day, and in my opinion, building more capacity/speed onto the trunk routes in inner china would've been a better use (for example, chongqing is missing quite a few high speed links to the more northern cities, though that could also be because of the mountainous terrain)
granted, the worst case scenario for a HSR that grows too costly to maintain is just "HSR standard line with regular train speeds", but that's still a massive waste of the upfront investment put into the line if it happens, so you want to avoid that
>>1800412sure, but 150-ish kph should be enough for highway replacement purposes, and in that event focus should be placed on more robust conventional rail rather than high speed rail
>>1800416despite personal dislike for the regime, i have nothing but respect for their railway building efforts
