Assume every tax rate except for the “personal allowance” was increased by 1% to fund free train travel. That would mean someone at the median annual income of £38k would pay about £254 extra tax per year ((38000 - 12570) * 0.01)
Would you be in favour of this?
Some numbers for context:
The government raised £17.1 billion in 2024.
The ScotRail revenue for 2024 was £351m (page 17).
So to offset the cost of tickets, the government would have to raise £351m which divided by the 2.46 million people in work would be an average cost of £140 extra per person collected per year, so I believe 1% may be able to pay for it comfortably, and even improve the service, to compensate for the extra demand on free travel.
I would, trains are great, and encouraging people to use them more would snowball the train service into being even better. Almost all the problems with public transport (too infrequent, doesn’t serve all locations) are reduced the more demand there is for it.