The question is: just what do we want our railways to be?
Are they a public service, with social benefits that can't be quantified financially, or a transport provider driven by profit? One will inevitably generate monetary losses and the other will involve closures.
Railways can be a mixture of both, where some services can turn a profit (although in Britain, the vaguaries of franchising mean 'profit' is subjective) which supports routes which are loss making and yet feed passengers onto the profitable routes.
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