And I know this sounds bizarre, but a healthy railway system inevitably will have a bunch of empty or close to empty trains running
You can’t ever precisely match your operations to the demand. You can’t only run peak hours service (if you do people whose plans change can’t rely on the train)
So aiming for an ever higher % of your seats full might help a railway company’s bottom line, but won’t help rail’s modal share - and its modal share that matters, ultimately
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Also, both people and trains need to go both ways. People can't take their cars on the train, so they will go both or neither way. Trains can't teleport, so serving a handful of people on the way back is better than serving none.
