I’d agree with that.
I’m sure it won’t be popular on here but there should be some kind of sensible exception to the duty to provide taxis in situations where there’s severe disruption, people have been advised not to to travel etc.
Examples might be severe weather events, or scenarios like LNER having to ground its entire fleet due to cracking etc. Customers will be entitled to refunds but expecting alternative travel for potentially hundreds of thousands of passengers to be sourced and paid for seems OTT. It is often physically impossible due to the impossibility of raising enough taxis, rail replacement buses etc.
But such an exception doesn't even exist in the airline industry. So why should the rail industry have a special dispensation?
There will always be times where the volume of affected customers is such that the TOC can't help everyone. But that doesn't excuse an outright refusal to help anyone at all. For instance, during the recent heatwave, many TOCs not only said there would be no replacement transport (understandable in some cases, though perhaps a questionable blanket policy given not everywhere was as badly affected) - but that they would also not reimburse any additional costs incurred.
It's the latter attitude which is absolutely unacceptable - if people are able to make their own arrangements, they should be reimbursed for their reasonable costs.
At the end of the day, this is all a fun -but useless- thought exercise.
EU261/UK261 was functionally defined on the basis of court cases. If you look at the pure text, it doesn't contain many of the provisions we take for granted these days.
For some reason, it seems that customers (and lawyers) are not willing to take these claims to the bitter end. Without this exercise, no precedent is actually generated. Also, keep in mind that MCOL claims do not build jurisprudence. Ultimately, I think the cost-to-benefit ratio is too low compared to an airline case.
Much of EU261 was indeed fleshed out through precedent, but that's because some of the most elementary bits of now-recognised rights (e.g. that a long delay is equivalent to a cancellation) simply weren't spelled out. The PRO aren't perfect by any means, but the core elements at stake here are clearly established. There's no question that a long delay qualifies for the same rights as a cancellation, for instance.
So whilst there is certainly a paucity of precedent regarding the PRO, and some areas could do with clarification, it's nowhere near as bad as EU261.
However, you are right in that the lower value of compensation/expenses at stake with most PRO claims means that it's less lucrative for "no win, no fee" claims companies. And that is essentially why there is less precedent. The fact that the legislation doesn't require operators to inform passengers of their rights also doesn't help; by contrast, EU261 mandates that airlines provide passengers with a standard text about their rights when there's a cancellation.
These rights will only become as well-known as e.g. the right to use split tickets, when or if the ORR or DfT step in and force the TOCs to live up to their obligations. At the moment neither seems to have any interest in doing so, and the ORR has merely paid lip service to it by adding an obligation to comply with the PRO into operators' Statement of National Regulatory Provisions (i.e. operating licence conditions) but not enforcing it at all. Let alone proactively auditing TOCs to ensure they're doing things correctly.
I think it's also worth adding that the public don't need to necessarily know every detail of every right for them to be practically useful. For instance, I doubt many people know the intracacies of the various PACE Codes of Practice, but the police generally comply with them because they know they can and will be pulled up on it if they don't. It's ultimately about accountability.