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[LouP]

Lisa and I took China's high-speed train from Guangzhou to Nanchang, The distance is comparable to New York to Denver and only took seven hours, On the way we saw both a solar farm and a wind farm (No windmills were turning.) We wound up in a cafe car. If we get to visit other cities we'll again take a high-speed train. OTOL is the only forum I can use to write to the US as both Yahoo and Facebook are blocked in China.

[LouP]

One of Lisa's nephews gave me a mini tour of Nanchang's Metro yesterday. The oldest line (Line #1) is only seven years old so it's a very new system. First of all, it's a lot deeper than most American systems, comparable to Washington's. The trains resemble BART or Washington. The cars are about the same size as Boston's Red Line, with four doors. Further, there's open passage between cars so that passengers my board one car but then move to another car. The announcements are in both Chinese and English. The platforms are all island platforms between the two tracks. The platforms are walled off from the tracks with doors to let people entrain or detrain, much like the system at Atlanta's airport. The system was very well attended; there's no problem of not enough passengers. The stations are very well marked both in Chinese and English and are very well maintained. In short, we wish that American transit systems were as well kept.