«The biggest unknown is the project’s pricetag. A third runway at Heathrow would be one of the most expensive private sector infrastructure projects in the UK. The estimated cost was £14bn in 2014, but that number would now be far higher.»
Remarkable, really. That £14bn is almost twice as high as the total costs of the Brenner tunnel (two parallel 55km railway tunnels, €8bn in 2017 money) and this for <1km of motorway reconstruction, buying and demolishing 750 homes and building runways/taxiways. An average of £3m per home is still only £2bn, how do they plan to spend much more than £10bn?
This sort of extravagant cost should really be questioned rather than accepted as fact. As you highlight, even with very generous assumptions it is very difficult to understand how they came up with such huge number.
Remarkable, really. That £14bn is almost twice as high as the total costs of the Brenner tunnel (two parallel 55km railway tunnels, €8bn in 2017 money) and this for <1km of motorway reconstruction, buying and demolishing 750 homes and building runways/taxiways. An average of £3m per home is still only £2bn, how do they plan to spend much more than £10bn?
BTW, https://archive.is/2025.01.28-051843/https://www.ft.com/cont...