This is a significant portion of the cost, huge amounts of 'green tunnels' and cuttings are being created where they are not needed.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed...
Assuming not.... No. The premium cost on the project related to its running speed is not significant. Planning and engineering a brand new 125mph railway doesn't cost much less than planning and engineering a brand new 250mph railway.
Or does a 75mph freight railway cost as much as a 250mph passenger railway?
A reminder that the cost of the project, even unfinished, with none of the benefits of the lines to Manchester and Leeds, is of the same order as NASA's current moonshot budget.
Do you really think that hasn’t already been tried. We’ve already spent billions upgrading the WCML, and endured decades of disruption (where do think the meme about bus replacement services comes from?).
There’s simply no getting away from the fact that the WCML is a hodgepodge of some of the world’s earliest rail lines glued together. Rail lines that when originally designed, steam was still the high technology, it would have been utterly inconceivable for the original builders to imagine 200mph electric trains then. The design of the WCML, from its alignment, radius of bends, size of tunnels, heights of bridges etc all reflect the century it was originally built in, which is over 200 years ago (the core part of the WCML