How can the government expect the UK to be more 'green' by using public transport when it's so expensive?!

The problem is that instead of using transport taxes to fund all the infrastructure they only fund the roads and keep 90% of the tax to squander on the EU and other things that the electorate do not want. At present the rail companies have to fund maintenence of the rails from the fares the level of maintenence has to be much higher, by law, than the government requires for roads thus the difference. Also during the 60's Beeching removed most of the secondary lines so that you now have to travel a longer distance to go between places, just think what would happen is all secondary roads were removed and you had to use motorways and major arterial roads you would have the same problem that the railways have. Also remember that public transport has to stop to pick up others and that will increase the journey times, I would think that if you added up the time during which you were actually moving it would not be much different.