>Xinjiang compare very favourably with those in the US

https://www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains/urumqi-lanzhou-...

LOL, keep spreading that propaganda comrade!

All I was saying was that the easiest argument to shut down a discussion is to invoke the fact that "America is huge". Nothing can be done, bc it's huge, end of story.

You’re giving China credit for being huge while talking about what goes on in 1/3 of its land area.

The US is populated end to end

So what's your point? A comparable part of the US railway network is what, Chicago to Denver: 10% less distance, 33% slower even over that shorter distance (much the same as the non-high-speed trains in Xianjing), 1/4 as frequent (and that's only if we ignore that Xianjing also has the slower trains) - and significantly less punctual IME (to say nothing of nicer to ride).

My point is that over that distance, any train is impractical?

Like sure China has fast trains in a small area, but west of Chengdu, they don’t, so saying “China is a country nearly as large as the US with a robust train network” is a red herring.

The US is much more spread out than China or Russia, even if land areas are of similar scale.

This supports the original point that it’s hard for large countries to have robust train networks, which was the idea that was being challenged.

Did you not read the whole thread?

> My point is that over that distance, any train is impractical?

It is practical though. Those 21 trains a day to/from Urumqi aren't running empty; I'm sure part of the motivation was national pride (as with most megaprojects anywhere), but those high speed lines were built primarily because they're useful.

> Like sure China has fast trains in a small area, but west of Chengdu, they don’t

And yet, as per your own link and my response, train service west of Chengdu is still significantly better than in the US. The US being big and spread out is just an excuse.

You can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

You've unfortunately been posting unsubstantive and flamebait comments in other places too. Would you please stop? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so we eventually have to ban accounts that do it.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.