[mytailorisrich]

My point is not related to seeing it as a market (although in most cases it is broadly one because it "competes" against other means of transportation).

It is a question of how to pay for the cost of things, allocation of resources, subsidies, best use of taxpayers' money, not least when public finances are under high strain and/or huge structural investments are needed in many countries.

[muyuu]

but that is a market you are describing, one for the allocation of resources

it isn't really, the resources are created by the structure commercialising the service, and incidentally the other means of transportation are also made expensive by a connected structure

owning and operating a car in the UK is very expensive, esp. if you need to regularly park it near the most important economic centres, and this is also by design

more than a market, it's engineered scarcity and tax collection running this service and that is what they're maximising for, instead of economy of transportation which is perhaps the implied real metric of what would work as a market

[mytailorisrich]

> "the resources are created by the structure commercialising the service"

So you mean selling tickets, not subsidies?

Building railways and operating rail services cost money, a lot of it, actually. Is it a good allocation of resources, especially taxpayers' money, to make it free/almost free when people can afford to pay for it via tickets and funding/investments are needed elsewhere and (as the case may be) public finances are in a bad shape?

That's the way it is. Resources are always finite and thus there is always an issue with allocating them.

[muyuu]

no, i don't mean that at all

there is not a set number of tickets that either get bought by the consumer or subsidised, that is so far departed from the issues it's pointless to even consider