Well, it'll be "useful" to the (relatively low number of) people who use it. But then you could argue that Breich was "useful" to the one bloke who used it (prior to the hourly service).
But the population density around Reston *is* low, and spread amongst many small places (rather than there being one nearby town that could potentially sustain a bus service to connect with trains at Reston - e.g. ten thousand people at Haddington might make a bus to Drem feasible but the entire population of Eyemouth/ Duns/ Cockburnspath/ Grantshouse etc is still lower than Haddington, but spread of a wide area)...
...so this means that pretty much anyone in Berwickshire wanting to use the train service would need access to a car - so this is really just about people driving from their wee village to Reston versus them driving to Dunbar instead.
I can't see Ray Liota investing in a station at Reston.
Drem iOS a long established station, just a few miles from the ten thousand people of Haddington, so there's some kind of established demand.
If we lived in a world where there was no Drem station, I might argue against it as a waste of capacity on the main line (or at least insist that the station be put onto the North Berwick branch, north east of the junction)
If a station at Reston gets near the hundred thousand annual journeys Drem has then I'd be rather surprised.
These figures are generally skewed by three re-openings which had poor forecasts made before opening:
- Alloa: The line was going to re-open for freight, to get it off the Forth Bridge, so the price of putting these long noisy services through Alloa was a station there - so little research needed to be carried out - it wasn't built because they expected a high enough number of passengers to pass the "business case" threshold - it was going to get built anyway
- Tweedbank: The price hat the LibDems extracted from Labour for forming a coalition twenty years ago - again, a line built for other reasons than an amazing business case - Tweedbank wasn't about the cost/benefit ratio, it was about the politics. So, why carry out a thorough analysis of the business case, when the line is being built regardless? Regardless, it's still not profitable, so even if the numbers are better than the cursory surveys that were carried out, it still loses money. If Tweedbank was being assessed on business case against the likes of Methil/ Penicuik or Newcraighall to just Gorebridge then it'd never have got the go ahead - it was a purely political move (and therefore the business case didn't matter - the LibDems wanted a line into what was their heartland at the time - can't blame them - but also can't pretend that the line was built because there was an expectation good passenger numbers)
- Ebbw Vale: The line was built with the plan to run an hourly service to Newport. Figures were based upon that. However, the service was one to (the much bigger attraction of) Cardiff instead. So the fact that passenger numbers were higher is more about the fact that more people want to travel to Cardiff than to Newport. Plus, the steelworks closed down, meaning a large number of Ebbw Vale people now had to leave the town if they wanted work, which is going to have a massive impact upon demand for a train service.
In contrast, what about the initial Newcraighall re-opening? Larkhall? Anniesland? Airdrie to Bathgate? Nobody ever shouts about those lines being great examples of re-openings. (and plenty more further south - Robin Hood, Corby etc)