[eterm]

I don't understand how you can claim £100m is "not expensive", that's around £3 per tax-payer in the country, for one small aspect of the whole project.

Complaints about "waste" of government overspend went from [10s of thousands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cones_Hotline) in the early 1990s to [millions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome) in the late 90s to billions today.

Wages surely haven't gone up 1000x in that time, £100m is still a large cost, even if it's a drop in the ocean compared to the overall HS2 overspend.

[afavour]

> I don't understand how you can claim £100m is "not expensive", that's around £3 per tax-payer in the country,

I don't really think that's a useful statistic in isolation. Surely any investment is all about the eventual economic benefit? £3 per person to receive £1 is a bad deal. £3 per person to receive £5 is a good deal.

[eterm]

Sure, but It's a 1km concrete structure, what economic benefit do you think it'll deliver in isolation?

Overall HS2 might deliver billions of economic improvement, although current cost benefit analyses suggest it won't deliver much benefit compared to it's runaway costs. Most the ones I can find are already outdated, talking about improvements which will no longer happen or costs which have already been surpassed, and the cost/benefit ratios of those were already shaky.

[adammarples]

The economic benefits of the bat tunnel are zero. It would be a shame if this rare bat lost some habitat but it is not an economic measure.