Railways are one of these fields where markets regularily fail to deliver because you are in monopoly region and building another railway system to get some competition is unfeasable.
I don’t really see this as very ideological btw. I just have never seen a public transport market that developed much in favour of the general population without government intervention. So anecdotal evidence etc.
About affordable inter-city buslines, I feel that the new companies (uber like) that handle buses brought much more affordability than any law before.
In Germany at least, rail is viewed as a public good that should provide mobility to people in both big cities and more rural areas. Making it available outside the most heavily trafficked routes at a reasonable price is incompatible with privatization, again unless heavy subsidies are involved.
It isn’t odd because City Lab is generally in favor of leftist economic and urban policy. Exploring price controls might call into question their fundamental bias. Price controls are anti-market and typically so is City Lab.