It looks like it will take circa 3 years from start to introduce one new platform in a place which needed no additional substations etc as far as I know, is virtually flat and used to have platforms which were already owned by NR. So the work required was to build a platform (mainly away from running rails in service) install a couple of points, add 200m of overhead wiring and adjust signalling. One can't even begin to guess at the costs involved for this tiny enhancement. This is surely the most abject failure to control costs and timescales ever. God help us if HS2 ever materialises if the costs and timescales are in any way proportional. £100bn will just about sort out Euston on that basis.
There surely needs to be a serious look at the costs and timescales of every aspect of this project.
Here is an intemperate, ill-thought-out but heartfelt aagument that somehow "we" (me, you, DarloRich and other NR people) need to look again at the costs which the public purse is forced to endure in the Brave New World of privatised railways.
Saltaire Station reopening in 1984. Not accessible. Built of balsa wood. £60,000. Useful and used by nearly a million passengers a year.
Leeds Platform Zero. 2020 (let's be optimistic). Another contribution to a UK railway system which has actually opened nothing significant since the Borders Railway and where new infrastructure costs half a billion pounds for each new station, cf. Elizabeth Line. That is Weimar Republic levels of railway cost inflation in an era of overall low inflation. It means that almost ANY proposal to give rail access to new segments of the UK population is poo-pooed on this forum by knowledgable experts as "totally unthinkable, old chap".
Leeds First circa 2002: five new platforms, throat expansion from four lines to six, decent (but immediately overcrowded) station. Huge contribution to the attractiveness of Leeds city centre. £250m.
Leeds minor improvements, one new platform, almost no new capacity, circa 2020, £250m.
VFM comparison with 2002: you decide.
It is time to get ANGRY at the fact that the UK railway system outside London is essentially static in size, with zero infrastructure expansion. "Sorry, old chap, but nothing can be done beyond marginal PPM improvement."
"The system as bequeathed us by BR in 1988 is the best that can be done. We're not even sure we can do HS2, so we'll spend a few billions defending a paper project that may never move a single passenger."
While spending a few more billions on care and maintenance of the existing railway, which "God Has told Us is the Right Size".
Too much wine. I live half my time in France, where railways do get built and where railways even get reopened.
It really is time to get angry. Please, before reacting to my obvious stupidity, reflect as to how stupidly inflated costs can be pushed down?