Is this another bot that all hails great mother china? They use people like disposable biomass when building this crap.
Here is an analysis on construction related fatalities in China.
And here is some reporting construction related fatalities in the US
Do you have statistics from the last 15 years to back up that claim?
Doesn’t Toronto have the tram lines east west or trolley busses and buses with cheap flat price through ticketing for each journey?
The cables over and underground run from the cheap, green hydroelectric power?
If it’s cheap, regular, reliable with through ticketing, it’s good public transport, not bad.
I still find it unbelievable that a full subway line was just erased and there was no plan for a replacement.
man China is knocking it out of the park.
they are so successful!
/s
They just started the Ontario line. W are still waiting for he Eglinton Street car. i get your frustration! I think it’s a financial issue mainly, because the last CEO did a post about that, and said there is no money for expansion, and they had to ask government.
There is not even enough money for proper maintenance let alone new construction! Of course new construction looks good politically so it will get separate budgets while the existing infrastructure slowly crumbles. Look at the “reduced speed zones” that have lasted for years because the rails can’t properly be maintained.
Wikipedia article for reference.
The Chengdu Metro is now the fourth largest metro system in the world with 630 km. To compare, London’s Unterground has about 400 km.
as someone who lives in Toronto I mean…you really don’t need an extensive subway network here. We have a lot of buses and several lines of street cars (trollys, trains on the road, whatever you call them where you live).
So what’s being shown here is ONLY the subway network. it doesn’t show the vast street car lines would would make it look A LOT like the China photo.
The last video of Not Just Bikes is specifically about Toronto’s streetcar.
is this why there is no traffic problems in Toronto and commute is not a suicide inducing nightmare?
street cars
Is at least one of them called Desire?
At grade == weak
Toronto isn’t filled with great alternate modes of mass transit so much as it’s filled with excuses not to build mass transit.
Let me weep in “Ontario line”.
mean…you really don’t need an extensive subway network here
Found the 905’er
The streetcar network is a complete shitshow. Multiple streetcars bunched up, with hundreds of people inside, being blocked by a few SUV drivers and parked cars on the side of the street.
Its faster to bike or walk in most cases.
Same for the buses. There’s a reason the bus lines here have nicknames like “the sufferin’ dufferin”
sorry bud, I live in Beaconsfild village. I ride the vomit commit almost daily. We don’t need an extensive subway network.
with hundreds of people inside
Wow. It sounds very utilized. That awesome.
Utilisation is good, but overcrowding illustrates the point of this meme, which is that the public transit system is being neglected and hasn’t kept pace with demand.
Easy when all the equipment and materials needed are made by the same people that will build it
We also have non labour’s camps
Toronto in 1990 was approximately the same map.
Yeah but how much of that is up to code?
Probably most if not all. Despite some well publisized failures these big government transit projects tend to be pretty good. It’s amazing how fast you can get things done if you don’t care about zoning, the environment, money, worker conditions or safety.
(American) zoning (besides industrial/residential) is bullshit anyway.
Just give me the three major industrial, mixed residential/commercial and some small purely residential zones and be done with it.
No need to basically outlaw a business in a residential area.
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There’s loads of countries and cities around the world with better public transit than Toronto.
Plenty with democratic elections and freedom of expression too.
Only one reason someone would pick China over anywhere else.
Public transport policy in Toronto is a disaster. It is a complete disappointment of a city and an ugly blight on the landscape that serves only captialism and vapid mediocrity
its sad im over here in Dallas and im envious of Toronto.
Here in San Antonio we have zero rail so…
And still WAY ahead of a ton of similarly sized cities on the continent
It’s a disaster until you compare it to most other North American cities. Like what is better? NYC and Montreal? I’m sure there are a few other cities that I can’t think of.
But its true that it has been neglected for decades. Thankfully that has changed a bit recently with 2 new lines being in construction. However the maintenance budget is continually insufficient to keep everything in good repair. Only new projects make your government look good I guess. (But we need both new projects and maintenance)
I agree that North America is appalling. I grew up in Europe, so that is my main comparison.
The two new lines would be helpful, but as someone that lived in Toronto for 15 years until very recently, I believe they were horribly mismanaged. Like most of the city is…
What’s up with all the China hype on Lemmy? These projects are impressive, no doubt, but their cost in terms of human rights violations are pretty high. I’m speaking generally, I don’t have the specifics with regards to this subway system. Either way it’s not really comparable to a project like this in a country like Canada imo.
We don’t have to agree with China’s politics to appreciate that they did a positive thing. And we shouldn’t have to emulate their politics to get a thing done. We should be able to do it
Something about a street being made that leads into hades.
The speed and size is impressive, yes.
But I doubt the quality.
“Tofu-dreg project” (Chinese: 豆腐渣工程) is a phrase used in the Chinese-speaking world to describe a very poorly constructed building, sometimes called just “Tofu buildings”. The phrase is notably used referring to buildings that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake disaster,[1][2][3][4][5][6] and the Bangkok Audit Office skyscraper collapse initiated by aftershocks from the March 2025 Myanmar earthquake over 1000km away, which was constructed with poor construction techniques and materials
What helps is that the aumomotive/gas industry lobby there isnt so effective.
Pentagon wasted tax money on facebook bots to convince people in East Asia that the chinese covid vaccine was poison, so no one is really buying the “China human rights abuses are what allow China to succeed” idea anymore.
Especially since you can just as easily point to Japan’s infrastructure projects which achieved the same thing under US supervision post WWII, meaning said human rights violations aren’t even a supposed cost if there’s less evidence of it that of UAE literally pirating in immigrants to build their lavish towers and stadiums.
Of which the US fully supports, so this just goes back to the blame game of who is worse.
Yes, China has some shady ideas of what is considered acceptable behavior and work output from citizens, but the point is that they are using it to rapidly grow their infrastructure, unlike NA which take a decade for a single transit system to get approved all while car OEMs are pumping out dumpsterfire vehicles of whose parts are overwhelmingly made in China.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
Lemmy has tankie problem.
you are the problem
Lemmy is more international than Reddit, so you’ll see more diverse perspectives
I don’t know about Canada but the USA has been pro-child factory work lately. China’s wages have been rising faster than expected so they have gone all-in on automation. So when I see people claim their stuff is cheap because of “slavery” or human rights, it reads like projection.
I’m from neither the US nor Canada, and in my case it certainly isn’t a matter of projection. I’m sure things have been getting a lot better for many people in China. However, it is still the case that China has a lot of human rights issues which are simply not as widespread in a lot of Western countries, the US included. And due to nation wide systems, such as hukou, it is very difficult for the population in poorer, rural areas to work legally in more affluent areas where the pay is higher. My understanding is that this has led to large scale “illegal migration” within the country’s borders, where workers are paid far less (sometimes not getting paid at all), work under poor conditions, and suffer abuses at the hands of their employers with little to no legal recourse due to their illegal status. China is a very inequitable society, and a lot of the misery that its less rich and powerful citizens have to deal with goes unnoticed by the rest of the world (and indeed the rest of its population), because we see stuff like this and are impressed by China’s progress. And no doubt that there’s actually been progress in a lot of areas, but the somewhat tired “at what cost?” question is still as pertinent as ever.
None of this is a defense of the US or Canada. Just saying that for the average person, China is probably a worse place to live and to work in.
Hukuo in modern China could be perceived as prioritizing the right to have a home over choosing to have none. “At what cost” includes homelessness and higher unemployment rates. We are quick to highlight where there is a lack of right in China but not how it reflects on our own lack of rights. That is to say, they aren’t trading their rights for economic progress, which is how the west often frames progress (our foreign sweat shops are good actually because it helps them in the long run). They are trading one set of rights for another.
Some of those are valid, some are stupid as hell.
For the covid ones - the cost was complete lockdown, with some people’s doors being welded shut (not official government policy, but common enough to make news, as lower level authorities get some decision making power in these cases). Imagine having an emergency and your door being welded shut. And of course we later found out that even multi-dose vaccines don’t stop covid 100%, so instead of stopping the pandemic forever, nothing of value was actually achieved. Covid is the new seasonal flu. For a while we didn’t even get vaccines for Covid here in Estonia anymore, though now they’re back on the table, free if you’re in a high risk group.
Electric cars - the cost is mass government subsidies for BYD and a couple of others. BYD doesn’t make money if they sell you a car I believe, they make money from the Chinese government if they sell you a car. Even if you’re in another country. China wants their EVs to dominate the market and that’s a strategy. This is why the EU had to raise tariffs on Chinese cars. Otherwise the European auto industry would simply die.
Electric cars - the cost is mass government subsidies for BYD and a couple of others. BYD doesn’t make money if they sell you a car I believe, they make money from the Chinese government if they sell you a car. Even if you’re in another country. China wants their EVs to dominate the market and that’s a strategy. This is why the EU had to raise tariffs on Chinese cars. Otherwise the European auto industry would simply die.
Why doesn’t the EU simply also subsidize their EVs?
They’re for-profit companies and so far pretty successful without direct subsidies. EU countries usually have subsidies for purchasing EVs (regardless of manufacturer) rather than subsidizing the manufacturers directly - this leaves the consumers more choice and has a similar or maybe even better effect on EV adoption. On the climate side of things as well as public health and equal opportunities for people, transit investments would be better than outright paying BMW and Mercedes to make their EVs cheaper. China, however, doesn’t just want EV adoption on their own roads, China wants THEIR EVs specifically to dominate the world. Usually this is seen as unfair, regardless of industry, and is one of the few valid reasons for tariffs in an otherwise free global market.
The funny thing is, if the Chinese subsidize their EVs and the EU tariffs them, the tariff money could then be spent on EV subsidies - bringing all the different manufacturers to equal ground again.
yeah this makes sense to me
i guess there is a lot of ways to subsidize something. for example, if you want your local EV company to produce cheaper EVs, you could also subsidize public housing sothat rent is cheaper, sothat workers have cheaper rent and don’t need to ask for such high wages to cover the cost of living.
Lots of things, yeah. Many countries have set up energy efficiency loans too - for home renovations, or for business purposes. The idea is that you give out low interest loans so people (or companies) can achieve what they need earlier. I don’t know if anything like that is in place in Germany, France or Sweden (or Italy, I suppose they still have a bit of their car industry left), but if I was in a relevant position in one of those companies and there was a need to, say, build a battery manufacturing plant locally so that EVs could be built for cheaper and less dependence on existing battery manufacturers, I’d definitely go ask the relevant nation’s government, parliament and/or business development department, for a loan, tax break, or subsidies. Worst that could happen is they say no.
But yeah, an already successful car manufacturer getting straight on subsidies for selling cars they’re already making and selling anyway - extremely unlikely in most countries I’d think. Now if one or two of the German big 3 were on the verge of bankruptcy because of Chinese competition, that might change. Still sounds unlikely though. China’s GDP is 4x that of Germany’s, they can afford to keep subsidizing their shit for longer.
Some countries want to sell the image of “China is the absolute evil”, thus from this logic everything “good” must equal something very evil.
Did … Did they close stations on the Eastern line in Toronto?
Yeah. Line 3 used different rolling stock than the other three lines, unusual linear induction motor powered equipment, which was reaching the end of its service life. The plan was to shut it down in November 2023 and temporarily replace it with bus service while they built a Line 2 extension to serve the neighborhoods Line 3 used to. Unfortunately, a train derailed in July 2023, which resulted in the system shutting down four months sooner than expected.
The Line 2 extension is going to take a different route to eventually arrive at Line 3’s old terminus. I think there’s plans to covert the old line 3 viaduct into a Bus Rapid Transit guideway.
If I’m not mistaken, the rolling stock (cars/trains) from the, now closed, Scarborough line is actually in use in Detroit because they used the same systems.
