Ipswich Chord rail link opens for Felixstowe freight
 

A new £59m railway giving the Port of Felixstowe a direct link to the Midlands is opening to freight.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-26790530

Until now freight trains have had to travel in to Ipswich and then out again, adding a hour to journeys.

So that's about £80 million a mile. I know that there are many differences between the two, but just out of curiousity I wonder how that compares with the cost of building a mile of motorway. Also how it compares with European rail costs.

Anybody got any figures ?

TIA, BW

Just had a Google, a BBC report of 27/6/11 states that the average cost of a motorway is £30m per mile; but the M74 extension in Glasgow cost £138m per mile and this is not the most expensive. Bridges and tunnels jack the costs up considerably.
I recall our teacher asking us, in the early 1950’s to state what were the advantages of railways compared to roads. Someone said railways would be cheaper to build, I thought he had a point, after all you only needed to drop a couple of rails down. The teacher didn’t agree.
Some years ago I was talking to a mechanic for a road haulage company that had a large fleet of container lorries travelling from the Midlands to Felixstowe daily, more or less nonstop, they were covering over 150,000 miles a year per vehicle. If they are still going, perhaps these will now go by rail.

How can this amount of money be justified when Network Rail have been complaining about having to spend around £5m on the Dawlish repair? They say they cannot afford the cash needed for the second line through Devon at £400m although it is needed to allow full weatherproof (e.g. "Global warming") access to Devon and Cornwall.