>>2059225Consider the following (in the economic sense):
1) Railways are goods with large spillover benefits, as a result it is naturally under-supplied (hence governments often kick in money to subsidize or pay for it completely)
2) Railways face high costs in adapting to population movements, changing urban/rural makeup. Compare this with a road for cars, etc. which is much easier and flexible.
3) Governments make 2) even worse by having laws that mandate if and when any given railway can start/stop operations. This is sometimes done as essential service requirements
4) Governments make 1) worse when construction is entirely government controlled/funded because what is built is now built for political purposes, the fact it's a railway is just a nice side effect
5) Governments make it hard for railways to make money with price regulation, which leaves the operator to come up with all sorts of creative ways to perfectly discriminate like airlines do. In the JNR sense, think of all the tiers of service of how fast something is
6) There is a strong bias towards high-speed railways, which can make sense in some places but often do not. Even in Japan, only the original JNR shinkansen lines make money reliability, all post-JNR era ones are marginal in the business sense
