That £300 return subsidizes train services in rural parts of cornwall. That's a political decision. Other options are to have more taxpayer subsidy, higher prices in Cornwall, close services in cornwall, or reduce operating costs (which are heavily staff and rolling stock based -- something that HS2 will slash)

P.S. I just looked up an equivalent London-New York economy flight (flexible flight leaving this evening and returning tomorrow), and it's £2,481.02

It also subsidized Richard Branson's lifestyle. This is also a political decision.

I looked at London-NY - if I put it off one week I can easily cross 1/3 of the world for less than the price of a day trip to Manchester tomorrow.

Where does the subsidy for Branson's lifestyle come in? Branson hasn't been involved in the UK rail network for a couple of years.

If I look at Manchester-London in a weeks time with a non-flexible ticket it costs £45 return (actually for £45 it's pretty flexible - you are just limited to one firms trains, a bit like that BA fare, and can't travel in the morning rush hour)

https://i.imgur.com/CNCzmKu.png

That's less than 9p per mile. What do you think a fair price would be?

A fair price would be a £45 return ticket London to Manchester if I bought it at 9am tomorrow at the station.

This would bring the UK rail prices more in line with most other European countries.

£300 is gouging.

That's available and fine, as long as you leave Euston after 0845.

You can take the 08:46, arriving in Manchester at 12:13 - an average speed of about 60mph.

The £300 is an option that few choose, because that journey gives them major benefits. The money raised from that is plowed back into the railway and used to subsidise services to Harrogate, Holyhead and Hungerford

Average speed of 60 mph? Is this 18th centurely where rail competes with horse carriages?

You do realise that a country needs 21st century rail service to be competitive interbationally?

You can pay a £20 premium each way to up that to about 100mph average. Competition and choice is great.

Quality services and products are great, choice for the sake of choice has no value.

Otherwise we would bring back bloodletting, leeches and snakeoil salesmen to get more choice in cancer treatment.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Rail is as expensive as a plane ticket that goes much further because the railways have far more limited capacity than the skies do. It's not related to competition or lack of it - those rails just cannot safely take more vehicles.

Lol, no, rail has 10x to 50x more capacity than skies do, a single train can carry thousands of passengers and China has invested in modern raileay because their airspace is clogged. Now they have more high-speed rail than the rest of the world conbined while plans for HS2 are older than I am and are still nowhere

Seriously? You do realize that we're talking about the capacity of the air vs land, not individual trains vs individual planes? Yes, a single train has more capacity than a single plane, but the limit to how many planes can be in the sky is more or less a function of how sophisticated your ATC system is. UK rail hit the physical limits a long time ago, and expanding it is extremely hard because the land is all taken. That's why HS2 is so expensive and slow, yet (was) still being pursued, because it's the only way to add meaningful capacity. Same with Crossrail.