Air travel is cheaper because in Europe at least, we have achieved near perfect competition between many low-cost airlines. This isn’t like dictated by laws of

Air travel is cheaper because in Europe at least, we have achieved near perfect competition between many low-cost airlines. This isn’t like dictated by laws of physics. Trains, on the other hand, are a natural monopoly, and Britain’s privatisation efforts have been a failure. These companies contribute nothing to infrastructure investment, most of our rail is 150 years old and trains between Britains largest cities don’t have access to electricity. For like 70 years western governments did not take train infra seriously. This created huge problems - stations in UK are designed for small population, platforms are short so you can’t have long trains. the whole point of a train is that it can be long, longest trains in the world are measured in kilometres. Eurostar is 400 meters long. British trains are often tiny. the new Elizabeth line in London uses 3 different signalling systems because it runs across some track that’s new and some rail that’s prehistoric. But if you look at physics of it, trains are the only vehicle that does not need fuel or batteries, it feeds on electricity directly from the grid. Electrification of aircraft is both fantastic and fantastically inefficient