Surely it would be fairly simple to compare the UK with other developed countries?
Are costs similar, in which case so be it. If costs are significantly different, how do THEY do it.
We already know what causes electrification to cost a lot in this country:
- Expensive, scare labour
- Limited opportunities to deploy economies of scale
- Very dated infrastructure
The first is part of the cause of general construction industry inflation, which has been ahead of market-wide inflation since before the current crisis and continues to be so. This could be tackled a bit with long term funding, but as every business in the country doing construction work is facing this element of cost there's nothing much we can do.
The second is endemic to this country and again can only be solved with long term funding which currently isn't forthcoming.
The third is even more difficult to deal with because you have so much to do before you can get to electrification, mainly it comes from immunisation of the signalling and other equipment and creating appropriate clearance. Sometimes immunisation is impractical on near life expiry equipment so it needs to wait until replacement, but resources to install new signalling are also limited and may be required more urgently somewhere else. It may also be highly desirable to look at other non-electrification related work such as renewals, crossing closures or upgrades, permissible speed increases, platform extensions, step free access and junction modifications before designing any electrification because doing them afterwards becomes more difficult. If the route is historic, but a business case for electrification can be made, then at least some of those other upgrades are likely to be needed soon anyway.
The cost challenge has been looking at some of the specifics to see if they can bring down the cost of the overall work by altering the approach, most notably this is being done with clearances. However, this won’t change the game, although it may give greater predictability and a single digit percentage point cost reduction.
There is also some suggestion more recently that common parts have become more expensive as a result of the rising prices of steel and concrete. I don't know what the situation is there or if it is significant but it very well may be. Unfortunately the global prices of important commodities such as these cannot really be influenced by the UK.
If you wanted to look closer at the costs of electrification between Newcraighall and Tweedbank for example you'd probably find them very low compared to some routes in other developed countries, but that's not really much of a useful comparison. Even then, you need to do other work such as remodeling at Portobello Jn and building a second platform at Brunstane if you want to increase the service, so you still need more capital spend than just the wires to make the business case convincing.