Friday, January 21, 2022
A bridge too far
I have posted a couple of times about Boris Johnson's rather bonkers idea of a white elephant bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland, most recently, here. The latest news on this though is not good for taxpayers.
The Guardian reports that nearly £900,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on a study commissioned by the Prime Minister that found it would be too expensive to build a bridge or tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The paper says that the research into the feasibility of a fixed link cost £896,681:
The Network Rail chair, Sir Peter Hendy, led the investigation, which found that a bridge would cost £335bn, while a tunnel would require a budget of about £209bn.
His report concluded that the project “would be impossible to justify” as “the benefits could not possibly outweigh the costs”.
In addition to the huge expense, the inquiry also noted that the necessary work would be incredibly challenging.
The report described how Beaufort’s dyke – an underwater trench on the most direct route between Scotland and Northern Ireland – would need to be “carefully surveyed” due to 1m tonnes of unexploded munitions being dumped there between the first world war and the 1970s.
Of course this is small change compared to the £135 million that was written off by the Welsh Government on the M4 relief road, a project that was never likely to be built in my opinion. It just goes to show that the whims of politicians can be as expensive as their mistakes.
The Guardian reports that nearly £900,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on a study commissioned by the Prime Minister that found it would be too expensive to build a bridge or tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The paper says that the research into the feasibility of a fixed link cost £896,681:
The Network Rail chair, Sir Peter Hendy, led the investigation, which found that a bridge would cost £335bn, while a tunnel would require a budget of about £209bn.
His report concluded that the project “would be impossible to justify” as “the benefits could not possibly outweigh the costs”.
In addition to the huge expense, the inquiry also noted that the necessary work would be incredibly challenging.
The report described how Beaufort’s dyke – an underwater trench on the most direct route between Scotland and Northern Ireland – would need to be “carefully surveyed” due to 1m tonnes of unexploded munitions being dumped there between the first world war and the 1970s.
Of course this is small change compared to the £135 million that was written off by the Welsh Government on the M4 relief road, a project that was never likely to be built in my opinion. It just goes to show that the whims of politicians can be as expensive as their mistakes.
