You failed to mention the competitive advantage of the shortest turn up and go overall journey time.
I can think of several cases where including the average wait for a low frequency train, completely negates the faster journey time over a more frequent bus service, even when it's a standard all stops double decker.
This is no more obvious than on sparsely served rural rail lines, where with some stations not served by every train, you can possibly be waiting maybe 2 hours, so on average an hour, but where decent A roads and with far more decent sized villages that can be served with central stops, are allowing buses to be run at a frequency as good as 15 minutes.
It's so stark, it's as if Beeching never even happened, and the railway is still the absurd, anachronistic, throwback mode from a different era, where you expect to be sharing a carriage with milk churns or even livestock, and closure is expected any day now.
The fact the train is often the budget option too, preferred by commuters and shoppers but not travellers or tourists, is just absurd as well.
