Railway stations are often located in less than central locations in other countries as well, hence why buses end up having to serve both the railway station and the town centre. This can be an advantage as it means that it is easier to construct a bus station at the railway station.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it partly depends on the geography
For example, thirty years ago, in the days before the Supertram was built (and before some of the Hospital facilities moved from the Hallamshire to the Northern General) the most frequent bus service in Sheffield used to be the 60 which linked the train station to the city centre to the main University area and main hospital - buses were every minute or minute and a half at peak times...
...the University and Hospital areas are on the western side of the city centre, the train station was on the eastern side. So the 60 was effectively linking Train Station - High Street - University - Hospital (and then into the suburbs beyond). But to get services from other parts of Sheffield to provide that train station link (e.g. to the Northern General), you'd have to divert them away from the High Street area to serve the station instead (or create awkward loops so that they served both, but that would mean a lot more buses clogging up the city centre streets)
In the case of Salisbury, it looks easy enough to get services from the east to extend beyond the centre to the train station (which is on the west of the centre) or for services from the west to divert via the train station on their way to the centre (though I don't think that any of them actually do - there was only a Park & Ride service that served the station last time I was there, as far as I can remember anyhow).
North/South services are a bit trickier, given that you'd need to decide whether to omit some of the current route through central Salisbury to serve the station, or try to serve both (thus increasing the PVR)
Same goes in a number of places with peripheral train stations - Bristol/ Leicester/ Derby - How many routes are there where a station link/extension/ diversion would be commercially viable? How many existing passengers do you disrupt/delay for the sake of new passengers who'd be wanting to connect to trains? Is it worth diverting/extending dozens of buses per hour past a train station with only a couple of trains per hour in each direction?
That's the problem with discussions on here - the bus industry is treated like a slave of the railway, expected to spring into action at any moment - e.g. the threads about railway disruption where enthusiasts bemoan the fact that it took an hour for a dozen "rail replacement" coaches to be pressed into service following a problem on the line - there was a thread yesterday where people were complaining about Northern not getting a coach operator to find staff/vehicles to cover the fact that there weren't enough rail staff to run anything between Barrow and Carlisle (even though the reasons for the lack of rail staff - some off due to Covid and others unwilling to do overtime when there was a big football match on) are obviously going to be the same with any bus drivers!
People on here just expect buses and bus drivers and bus operators to jump into line, to run all of their services based on what the railway wants/needs - all routes should be diverted to serve train stations, all passengers should be forced to change onto trains at the nearest station because we cannot abide any other form of transportation competing with precious trains...
If Victorian speculators built a train station a good mile away from the town/city centre then that's how things are - we need some kind of sensible policy of how to manage the different demands - but this carte blanche approach of "buses should submit to trains" often found on the Forum really isn't helpful
Isn't railway induced property development a thing here? The existence of a railway station, built on the edge of a town, induces property development by the demand of commuters when the property price in the city itself is at a premium, and eventually displaces the original town centre as the new economic centre of the town, especially on the key routes linking London which attracts commuter buying properties as near to the station as possible when London prices are not affordable to them
In theory, but then you get a lot of pushback on here where stations are suggested in brand new locations, since people are wedded to travel patterns that have existed for a hundred years - e.g. the idea of an East Midlands stop on HS2 being at Toton rather than where the nineteenth century stations in Derby/Nottingham were sited
'Loss making' is an interesting concept! Government policy heavily affects it. Eg if the Government decided that electricity / fuel was to be free for rail operators due to the environmental benefit, then various lines would likely cease to be loss making. Equally, a per mile environmental levy on car / lorry use used to directly level up a situation lorries benefit from roads paid for largely by car owners, but rail has to bear all costs as it is an exclusive user of its infrastructure.
If zero cost for fuel is recorded in rail company accounts, they would be markedly improved. Whilst the cost is of course still incurred it would appear elsewhere in Government accounts, it being covered by an environmental levy.
My understanding is that TOCs already get heavily discounted fuel (red diesel?) - which is hidden away as a subsidy rather than ebbing explicit like the way that bus operators get documented rebates (BSOG?), so I can't see it making a huge difference in terms of the franchises with the forty pence per passenger mile subsidies
But it does feel a bit like working backwards from "heavy rail must be the answer" to try to skew things to ensure that your preferred form of transport is competitive.
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