In the UK you get on a west coast train in the evening and it's rammed, with people paying 50p per mile. That service costs money to run. We could increase pub

In the UK you get on a west coast train in the evening and it's rammed, with people paying 50p per mile. That service costs money to run. We could increase public spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on the train because it's already full. Now how are you going to increase that spending? Raise taxes? Cut other public services? Borrow more? Miraculous "efficiencies" no doubt. We could make it more cost effective, by building a new line instead, which would carry more people per operational cost. HS2 is this (1000 seats doing the journey in 1 hour for 2 members of staff is 500 seats per person hour, vs 500 seats doing it in 2 hours for 3 members of staff which is 83 seats per personhour, thus staffing costs drop 84%). And that's what we're doing.