[vel0city]

> You make a lot of assumptions here and it's pure speculation

Both of us are in both of our comments.

> demand absolutely rises with free services

Its not free, its 49 euros a month.

> "adding the weight of a person or two" - again, you don't know that. Also, it's not the weight

My response was to the "It should cost at least enough to cover the energy expenses" part, which the energy cost is practically entirely the weight of the passengers and their cargo. Which for a whole train the marginal energy cost of a person riding a train that was already going to go on that journey and probably already had capacity on board is miniscule. We're talking about a train that weights hundreds of tons and you're adding like <100kg to it for some fraction of a $49 euro monthly pass.

I don't doubt it will increase the demand that much, but at the same time its "off-peak". That inherently means there's extra capacity. If a massive amount of people shifted their schedules to meet this new "off-peak" ridership time I'd imagine the "off-peak" schedules would update...otherwise they wouldn't really be on and off peak schedules anymore by definition would they?