is a 35 billion yuan maglev train necessary

[font=arial][size=2]The local government has announced a new Maglev train will be built to link Shanghai and Hangzhou at a cost of 35 billion yuan, or about 4.3 billion U.S. dollars.  That seems like an awful lot of money that could perhaps be used in many other more practical ways( such as to build more primary schools for those poor school dropouts across the country, especially in some north poverty-striken area) . I've been on the Shanghai airport Maglev that's currently in service.  It's a really impressive high-tech train, traveling at a whopping 430 km per hour, but I was left with the feeling that it was more for show than anything else. With the new train, it will take passengers only a half an hour to travel from Shanghai to Hangzhou.  Would it be better to build a slower - billion dollar train and allocate the excess money for something else?[/size][/font]

that's why the poor-rich gap between the east devoloped coast and the remote west area has been widening...