Well HS2 is a belated attempt to start building a high speed, high capacity network, about 30 years later than France, and look at the trouble that brings.
There is no public appetite in the UK for more rail capacity, or for faster services, so the only way to control numbers and prevent people from being (mostly) left behind is to increase costs on the busiest services.
This is fortunate too, the UK does not want to subsidise rail to the same extent as france -- Rail subsidies per passenger km (in euro-cents)
Isn't "Rail subsidies per passenger km (in euro-cents)" a bit of a strange metric? If the UK would half the amount of passengers, this metric would double, but it would definitely not be an improvement I'd say?
The UK makes a conscious decision not to subsidise its rail network to the extent of France and Germany. I'd rather we had spent the last 40 years building high speed lines, but as a country we didn't want that.
My list would be
* HS2 as now planned, extended up the east coast to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen
With junctions to allow services to run as appropriate for demand (e.g. Swansea-Cardiff-Bristol-Birmingham once an hour, continuing to Manchester or Leeds, Swansea-Cardiff-Bristol-London twice an hour, Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Newcastle-Edinburgh, etc)
Had we done that we'd have the capacity to offer cut price, but alas we didn't.
As it stands, trains - especially cross country ones - are massively crowded even with the price as high as it is, because people prefer to take a dog-slow overcrowded train from Reading to Manchester, rather than to take a cheaper coach.
But the TGV network makes a profit as does the intercity network in the UK. So those subsidies are for commuter rail which make dense cities viable economic centres. If you don't subsidise those services then many more people are either forced to drive or they don't make a trip. If you take Kings Cross station as an example it would be literally impossible for 750,000 cars to pass through that area in the morning rush hour and once they got to their destination you would need 4.8 square miles of car parking area with circulation aisles. There are five more major rail termini in London with passenger number as high or higher than that and another five smaller ones that probably add up to one more. Major European and Asian cities are not viable without commuter rail. I would argue that the higher the subsidy, the better lubricated your cities are.
The problem with the UK is that if you compare HS2 to comparable French lines, we are 10 times less efficient at procuring public projects than they are. They can cross the Massif Central for ~€30m/mile, we cross the Midlands for ~€300m/mile. In flat country their costs are much lower, Paris-Bordeaux cost ~€10m/mile.
There is no public appetite in the UK for more rail capacity, or for faster services, so the only way to control numbers and prevent people from being (mostly) left behind is to increase costs on the busiest services.
This is fortunate too, the UK does not want to subsidise rail to the same extent as france -- Rail subsidies per passenger km (in euro-cents)
Netherlands: 14.7
France: 15.7
Italy: 19.1
Germany: 21.4
The UK in comparison is 6.75.