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Well, they seem to want to save that until the Railways Bill has been passed, which I suspect is partly because it's closer to the general election.

The problem with the "Big Four" or "BR plc" models, of course, is what happens to the unprofitable lines?

This, of course, is what the term "bionic duckweed" was invented to describe, in response to the Blair government being sceptical of electrification on the grounds that hydrogen trains would be coming soon. In the event, of course, hydrogen trains have not proven to be especially practical.

Making plans based on what you might have - remember that these supposed super-accelerating high speed trains do not exist and as far as I am aware have not been proposed by any serious manufacturer or operator - is generally a bad idea compared to making plans based on what you'll definitely have.

I heard some people claim that these would create aerodynamic drag which would cancel out any energy gained from the turbine in increased power usage by the train. Evidently not if they're already used.

Blatantly in hock to the house builders, or blatantly in hock to the fact that no government has met its house building targets for a long time?

The problem is that the country urgently needs more housing and infrastructure. We can't keep saying no to anything. It would be helpful if those opposed to housing developments could suggest alternative locations...

Well my point was less about the magnitude of the difference and more pointing out that the difference is clearly there even once you control for things like stations. Yes, I agree with this. Unfortunately especially when it comes to nuclear you see a lot of "can you believe they're spending £X...

So you are saying that the older figure should be used as it's the most recent figure given by the government? Is there any reason to doubt the New Civil Engineer figure? My point was not that the stations are necessarily comparable, but that even once every station is taken out the cost per km...

On the other hand, urban transit projects in continental Europe tend to cost less than those in the UK, so low density can't explain everything. Japanese tunnels are to drive a straight line through mountainous terrain, not to avoid NIMBYism. You could perhaps place the use of viaducts for...

I think you're underestimating how many people in Japan live outside the major cities, and how using passenger-km also makes longer journeys impact the data more (it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that journeys in rural areas, where the car has the highest modal share, will be longer than...

These numbers are for the entire country including rural areas, so it's not a reasonable comparison. My purpose with starting this thread was to ask what would be necessary for places like Birmingham and Manchester to have similar rail modal share to London, not what would be necessary for the...

The removal of unnecessary infrastructure often incurs costs as well though - there's a reason why the Surplus Capacity Grants were necessary.

That's a 2024 estimate that predates Mark Wild taking over though, since you say the preliminary report has been superseded do you have the latest estimate? That would still leave HS2 as more expensive than pretty much any other HSR line, despite most of the lines building new stations etc...

This would seem to be evidence that the vast majority of HS2's high costs can't be blamed on Euston though, because the difference is much higher than 33 million per km.

I couldn't find anything in the New Civil Engineer article about it including rolling stock. Do you have access to the report they're talking about?

With this I suspect both the loss of institutional knowledge during privatisation and the almost total lack of electrification during the second half of the 1990s and the entirety of the 2000s played a major role.

I can confirm that in some cases the Transit Costs Project's HSR database does include rolling stock costs; for example, the Korean Honam HSR's listed cost ($74m per km) does include rolling stock, as confirmed by the source given...

Can you provide a source for this? I'm sure the Transit Costs Project, where the data comes from, would be happy to have more accurate data.

It comes from this New Civil Engineer article published in May 2025: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hs2-completion-date-pushed-to-late-2030s-as-anticipated-final-cost-continues-to-rise-15-05-2025/ £81bn in 2019 pounds equals $140bn in 2023 dollars (the per kilometre figures are in...