In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:

Basil Jet wrote:

According to this the new Lea Bridge station will cost £6.5 million.

The Lea Bridge station is a reopening, using the existing platforms. A
better comparison might be the all-new station at Southend Airport,
which cost £16m in 2011.

These prices are insane. How could reinstating Lea Bridge station on
land which is presumably still owned by the railway cost as much as
buying 14 average London houses and the land they stand on? Southend
Airport station is quite nice with its enclosed footbridge and lifts on
both sides, but how could it cost as much as 78 average Southend houses
and the land they stand on? Somebody is getting very rich here, and I
bet it isn't the men with bricks in their hands.

Yes, I know, these prices are astonishing, if routine these days. It's why
NR brought in modular stations, and Chiiltern decided to build Warwick
Parkway itself, for much less than NR said it would cost:
"The managing director of Chiltern Trains, on BBC's Panorama, had asked
Network Rail to quote for a new station for Warwick Parkway. Network Rail
said it would cost £13 million. The managing director thought this was a
lot of money. He went to the train companies and the station was built for
£5.5 million."

From:

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.u...-new-stations/
story-15077024-detail/story.html#ixzz37EvFsA00

I don't know if TfL is any more efficient at building new stations than
NR. I think one aspect that's particularly expensive in this country is to
build new stations on in-service lines, so the two all-new stations on the
Croxley line should be cheaper than they would be if the line were already
in use.

In the case of the new Cambridge Science Park station, by Chesterton
Junction north of Cambridge, the County Council planned for Network Rail not
to build the station and to fund it by its own borrowing. But they have
concluded that a better deal can be got by NR building it and adding it to
its regulated asset base.

--
Colin Rosenstiel