I don’t see it as ridiculing anyone. It’s criticising the system that created this mess.

Blaming cyclists for something a motorist failed to do seems to be a uniquely North American thing.

I can tell you that it’s also very much a thing in many parts of Europe.

You don’t even need that many people before cars become impractical.

A single train with a single crew can transport more people in a day when travelling at higher speed.

This is running costs. The capital costs are irrelevant.

It’s cheaper to run a high speed service than a low speed one. You can transport more people with the same number of staff and trains because it runs faster. The solution isn’t to run an artificially cheaper low speed service along side, it’s to run the high speed service in a sane way.

The problem isn’t how they’re constructed, it’s how they’re run, and this article is basically just complaining about SNCF without realising it. They run bad timetables and aim for high occupancy rather than transporting more people. Jon Worth has better writing on the topic IMO.