I think it all depends on the length of the journey. I think that rail is better when it comes to travel for over several hours, when you can go to the buffett and get some great food, and enjoy the sights as you travel, also I was lucky on the flight since the seat opposite me was empty, I am sure some people on here might have had the problem of being sat next to not so pleasant passengers on trains or planes. On trains you can move to a different seat (well unless you have a value advanced ticket
).
Though I think the ideas raise a couple of issues about the current railway network. All of this talk of taking out shops and buffetts, and having less seats is going to make the railways more unpleasant for travel, all for the need to speed up services to make better competitors against air travel.
In my opinion this should not be the case. Aircrafts go at 600mph and railways won;t ever reached speeds like this any time soon, I think they railways are good for the fact that you can have a pleasurable, relaxing journey which is enjoyable for several hours. I just hope the railways keeps this and does not go in favour of trying to fill every seat (and standing passengers) and have no catering in an attempt to speed up journey times.