fair point. But I think having the ticket 1 euro/day (365 euros/year), as in Austria, and investing the 2.5 billion Euro in the infrastructure itself (improving trains, hiring and training employees, increasing the offer) would be much better than making it simply "almost free"
You cannot have 10 companies competing on the same stretch of rail, which leads to weird attempts to bring the 'market' into play. I'm thinking of the UK in particular.