That’s really a great article, thanks for the link!
Still, there’s plenty of criticism in the article I linked that is not touched on, I hardly think it becomes irrelevant by reading Jon Worth’s writing! Even with his proposals I’m really not sure if we would get back the cheap and still relatively fast connections that have been removed. To me there’s not a clear benefit to getting rid of the old “low-speed” rail even if we fix SNCF.
Is it really? Because that claim goes against my intuition so if it’s true I would be happy to get more details! But what you say doesn’t quite make sense to me, sorry if I seem pedantic: transporting people faster is not the same as transporting more people. You transport more people per unit time, but not necessarily in total. I also don’t see how faster trains need less staff. When you say it’s cheaper, do you also take into account investment cost, or do you neglect those and just mean operating costs?