Crossrail Cost

[mushroom25]

announced yesterday was a £350m payment (a bail out if you like) to the Crossrail project to enable its completion. when added to the cash already spent or committed, the cost overall is staggering. not to mention the cost to the economy (lost fares, development opportunities) of the recently announced delay of more than 12 months.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/%c2%a3350m-bailout-for-delayed-crossrail-project/ar-BBOVB6w?ocid=ientp
https://www.enr.com/articles/45714-london-crossrail-project-cost-increases-to-202-billion

would this sum have been better spent elsewhere?

[jno]

how? What would be the benefit to anyone if a nearly-finished railway were then simply abandoned?

I'm still waiting with interest to hear how this mess happened, though.

[emmie]

no, lets get this project finished.

[ToraToraTora]

No

[gulliver1]

May as well just Nationalise the railways and be done with.

[emmie]

and go back to no investment, at least with the train companies, money gets invested in the basic infrastructure. I remember the days of old, draughty,
unheated trains, always crowded and smelling of tobacco.
no thanks.

[New Judge]

"May as well just Nationalise the railways and be done with."

Do you remember nationalised railways? The State is not very good at running commercial services and it was particularly not good at running railways.

[dannyk13]

NJ, I doubt that Gulliver is old enough to remember.

[mushroom25]

not sure nationalisation would make any difference to Crossrail. it's being project managed by TfL who are, I believe, a local government body.

[andy-hughes]

The inbuilt difficulty with any major infrastructure project - and HS2 is going suffer from it as well - is that they reach a point where it is simply not economic sense to abandon them as their costs spiral to the moon and back, so the government of the day is obliged to pour even more public money in to cover the shortfall and finish the project.

It has never been any different - HS2 will go exactly the same way.

[mushroom25]

//It has never been any different //

not always. the consortium that built HS1 had something of a chequered history, not helped by the collapse of Railtrack at the turn of the century - nevertheless the line came in on budget, and opened on time.

[Gromit]

Crossrail is a huge project - 73 miles, 41 stations and costing £15 Billion.

Going over budget was inevitable. But the benefit to Londoners when it is finished will be immense.

[Gromit]

HS1 came in on budget - No it didn’t...

// The National Audit Office report shows that the original estimated cost after the renegotiation of £5.2bn was exceeded by 18 per cent in the final bill of £6.2bn. The project has, in fact, according to the NAO cost taxpayers more than £10bn (at 2010 prices) if financing costs and the various other types of support to the original bidder is included. //

HS1 came in on time. - No it didn’t.

// The project was completed in November 2007 which was effectively almost a year late //

[andy-hughes]

I heard another numpty suit on television today referring to the 'Northern Powerhouse' - do these people have any idea how idiotic these meaningless labels sound?

If HS2 is completed, the only thing it will do is not to ensure that London business migrates to the 'Northern Powerhouse', but that northern businesses can more easily migrate to London, which is where the action was, is, and always will be.

The MP for Hull stated that London is not the centre of the universe - which is true, but it is the centre of the economic universe for the UK, has been for centuries, and will continue to be so, as long as it suits the power brokers who live there.


When HS2 was first mooted, I posted on this site that it's build-in failure could be summed up on three words - 'Richard And Judy'.

Remember how their chat show started in Liverpool? But then it moved to London?

Why/ Because the TV company found that it couldn't encourage media stars and celebrities flying in to London, to schlep two hundred miles north to appear on TV there, so they had to re-locate to the capital.

If that applies to a few air-head lovies coming in once a year, how much more do you think it will apply to businessmen who do the journey a few times a month?

[mushroom25]

//HS1 came in on budget - No it didn’t...//
//HS1 came in on time. - No it didn’t. //

I've seen the validated variation orders in both cases.