this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Because high speed rail requires costly viaducts that can make the project cost several times the price of a lower speed line.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the actual economists in Africa have done the math here.
The summary isn't detailed to go through how the system gets implemented. I also noted in another comment that it is would be wise to design the geometry of some segments to high speed rail standards if the cost increase due to tighter geometry requirements are negligible.
A continental high speed rail network is a great goal, but there are ways to implement the system that can yield faster benefits to Africans than just building the whole system to high speed standards at once.
Again, I have no idea why you're assuming these countries haven't done due diligence before embarking on a megaproject like this. A really weird premise to start from to be honest.
I'm assuming the same due diligence my country puts into these kinds of projects. Hell, there are large parts of the Internet that critique projects like this in general, no matter who builds it.
If I'm willing to critique developed countries in infrastructure projects, why shouldn't do the same for developing countries?
Hell, it isn't like they have to listen to me.
If you wanted to make a serious critique then you should spend the time to actually learn about the project and criticize specifics instead of just making stuff up based on what your country does.
Why so defensive?
And my critique is based on the experience of Chinese High Speed Rail, which I noted in other comment. All you did was ask me by what right I can critique them, and I responded that I will critique any of these types of plans, including plans in my country.
Why are you saying I'm being defensive when I'm simply pointing out that what you're saying is unsubstantiated, and it's not really possible to have a meaningful discussion without knowing the actual details of the plan. If there's something specific you want to criticize then that would be an interesting discussion, but simply claiming high speed rail is a bad idea because reasons is just noise.
This post doesn't have that detail. I'm only critiquing the project based on the information at hand which you provided. If there is noise, it is because the resolution of the plan as detailed is allow you are going to only get noise as part of the discussion. I don't know if the planning has been gotten to my discussion points yet.
You had also said several times asking if I thought the African economists did their jobs competently. It sounds like an appeal to authority to not talk about what is known. I'm looking at this project as being planned by experts and I haven't said anything to suggest otherwise. However, people can still critique experts.
I know the post doesn't have the details, hence it doesn't really much make sense to make extrapolations you're making based on the content of it. The post just says that Africa is building high speed rail, which I think is an interesting development. Whether there are going to be problems or not remains to be seen but to me this is clearly a positive development.