"We should accept that where passenger flows are too low, lines should close. Cross subsidies within rail make little economic or social sense."
This is just plain stupidity. The railway operates as a network and feeder routes are needed to deliver passengers to and from the mainline. Without these, the mainlines themselves become less useful and frankly less viable. In this context, it makes sense for feeder routes to be cross-subsidised as much as possible from the main lines, where more passengers are likely to use them for onward travel rather than from general taxation which will inevitably include a proportion of people who don't use the train at all.
For these reasons, it makes no economic or social sense not to have cross-subsidies in rail. This was recognised by the private entrepreneurs who built and ran the railways up until nationalisation in 1947. The cinderella world in which mainline services can be operated entirely seperately from other routes simply has no precedent or credibility outside of some right of centre theorist circles.
Also, I'm curious as to how the commentator has decided upon his figure of 30% of stations that should close. DoT actually publishes station usage figures (available to all if you care to check) which can be ranked by numbers of entries and exits. However, out of the 2531 stations listed, the vast majority of those past 1772 (marking the beginning of the 30% least heavily used by descending order) are on routes linking more heavily used stations, so if Leunig really is proposing a massive rationalisation involving route closures, he must inevitably include a lot of stations in the better used 70%. Has he even done any sort of analysis as to how much money the closure of an unstaffed wayside station, where the only costs are operating the lamp posts and occasional maintenance (such as repainting the white line on the platform every couple of decades) would actually save ? I suspect that this would be miniscule in comparison the the overall cost of running the railway.
