The Chinese high­speed rails have a quality all on its own, because it's so massive. There are more than twice as many high­speed trains in China as the rest of the world combined.

Firstly, China's technology on building the railway is leading the rest of the world and there is no sign that any other country could surpass China's position in the near future. Secondly, China's trains are based on Japanese, German and French models. At last, the scale of Chinese high­speed train is unthinkable to other countries which has high­speed train network. I had my first opportunity to ride the high­speed trains last week when I had a business meeting in Zhengzhou. As someone who grew up with a disdain for public transportation, I was dreading the experience. I pushed hard to fly, but was told that it would be much better if I took the train. I had traveled on an Amtrak train before in the US, and hated how slow it was and how many stops there were. Chinese high­speed trains are on a different level.

First, when I say they are high­speed, I mean they are high­speed. The trains are clean and the seats are huge. There are ample power outlets and you can't even feel how fast the train is moving. If there were no windows, I wouldn't be able to tell when we were stopped or when we were traveling at 300 km/h—it is that smooth. The terminal in Zhengzhou looked like you could fit a million people in it. It had shops and a food court and the trains would silently pull in and out of the station perfectly on schedule.

I'm traveling again this week by train and I'm excited. The high­speed trains are incredible.

Now cities are full of cars. Some families even have two or more cars. Parking (停车) is a great problem, and so is the traffic in and around the cities. Something will have to be done to change it. What will the cars of tomorrow be like?

Little cars may some day take the place of today’s big cars. If everyone drives little cars in the future (将来) there will be less pollution (污染) in the air. There will also be more space for parking cars in cities, and the streets will be less crowded. Three little cars can fit (适合) in the space now needed for one car of the usual size.

The little cars will cost much less to own and to drive. Driving will be safer, too. What is more, these little cars can go about 65 kilometers per (每) hour.

Little cars of the future will be fine for getting around a city, but they will not be useful for long trips. If big cars are still used along with the small ones, two sets of roads will be needed in the future. Some roads will be used for the big, fast cars, and other roads will be needed for the slower small ones.

Since Tesla founder Elon Musk published his White Paper On The Fifth Mode of Transportation in 2013, the concept of “Hyperloop” has caught the imaginations of engineers and investors across the world. Simply put, it is just an idea that vehicles filled with passengers or goods are sent through a nearly airless pipe at airliner-speeds of up to 1,223 kilometers per hour.

Critics(批评者) say Hyperloop may only amounts to a pipe dream that would be technically and financially impossible to achieve.

They argue that there are too many safety questions that need to be answered. What if the airless tube breaks? What if the train somehow crashes through the tube? What if earthquakes occur? Such events will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to be engineered into the system, especially when a vehicle runs at such high speeds in a hundreds-of-miles-long airless tube.

Turning will also be extremely difficult for the high-speed hyperloop. They say that a hyperloop vehicle would need approximately 10 kilometers for a 90-degree turn at 965 kilometers per hour. This may determine how useful the hyperloop can be.

It's still unclear how much it would cost to build a hyperloop, but surely it would be in the billions of dollars. Financial documents leaked from Virgin Hyperloop in 2016 suggested its Hyperloop One would cost between $ 135 million and $ 193 million per kilometer ---significantly more than high-speed rail. Even with public funding, the ticket prices will be unacceptably high for passengers.

Last week, Virgin Hyperloop, one of the leading companies devoted to realizing Elon Musk's pipe dream, announced that for the first time it has conducted a test of its Hyperloop One with human passengers and set a new speed record; 386 kilometers per hour. It is aiming to hit 643 kilometers per hour for the next run.

“Hyperloop One wouldn't have existed unless we put it here. It is going to be that spot where the public can look and say, ‘that was a really big idea,’” said Giegel, co-founder of Virgin Hyperloop, “’but they came, they did it, and they made it a reality.’”