By GB News (World News) | Created at 2026-09-28 10:20:55 | Updated at 2026-09-28 11:21:30
1 hour ago
A railway bridge built over a two-lane road in Oxford has finally completed after three years of delay, not before costing more to construct than major landmarks and engineering feats such as the Titanic, Eiffel Tower and London Eye.
Botley Road finally reopened earlier this month, three-and-a-half years after Network Rail closed it to allow work on a major redevelopment of Oxford railway station.
The staggering £237.4million scheme was originally expected to cost £161million, with construction commencing in April 2023 in hopes of completion by October 2024.
Instead, the project was hit by repeated delays and an eye-watering 47 per cent increase in its budget.
GB News analysis has compared the length of time and money involved in the project with some of the most iconic engineering feats, revealing the scale of development capable with the same budget and labour hours.
The Titanic, which sailed and sank in 1912, took close to three years to build, at a modern equivalent cost of approximately £170million.
The enormous transatlantic vessel was not only completed in a similar time frame to the relatively trivial overhead railway bridge in Oxford, but also came in some £70million shorter in total cost.
Similarly, Paris' iconic Eiffel Tower cost roughly £60million by today's standards when adjusted for inflation and was completed in 1889 within a shorter timeframe of two years, two months and five days.
Meanwhile, the London Eye was completed in just 14 months before the turn of the century, at a cost equivalent to about £150 million today - hardly two-thirds of the cost of Oxford's railway bridge.
Oxford Conservative councillor Liam Walker noted how the 1,258 day closure saw the tenure of three respective prime ministers in office, and that students could have started and completed a three-year university degree while Botley Road was closed.
He said: " It’s no wonder we have major infrastructure challenges in this country when project budgets are allowed to balloon and we see delay after delay.
"We need to get much better at delivering major infrastructure on time and with proper control of taxpayers’ money."
In terms of project timelines, the iconic Empire State Building in New York City took little more than a year to go from mere blueprints to fully operational - dwarfing the three years taken at Oxford station.
The Millennium Bridge across the Thames also only took around 14 months to construct, with its original £18million price tag equivalent to roughly £36million today.
The original London Underground, meanwhile, took 35 months to construct, and cost around £130million in today's money.
Richard Holden, Shadow Transport Secretary, said Oxford had spent years dealing with disruption caused by an "over-budget" project, which he argued had delivered little benefit to motorists and passengers.
Major landmarks and engineering feats such as the Titanic, Eiffel Tower, London Eye and Empire State Building were all completed in a shorter timeframe
PA/GETTY/REUTERS
Network Rail first announced the closure of Botley Road in 2022, as part of its plans to redevelop Oxford station - delayed before construction began while an impact assessment was carried out.
Further problems emerged after work got under way. In September 2023, Network Rail said the road would remain closed until October 2024, because of what it called a "series of unique engineering challenges".
Among the discoveries were a Victorian arch beneath the railway and a Second World War-era grenade, seeing the revised deadline being missed once again.
An additional completion target of August 2026 was also missed. As a result, some elements of the wider station redevelopment have been deferred.
A Network rail spokesman said the company understood residents' frustration, and apologised for the length of the closure - yet they stressed the issues had to be dealt with safely before the project could be completed.
With Botley Road now open, Network Rail said it expected the reopening to improve movement around Oxford, while allowing the longer-term benefits of the station redevelopment to be realised.
Ameer Kotecha, chief executive of the Centre for Government Reform, argued that more people with practical experience of delivering large projects should be recruited into senior government and Civil Service roles.
He said those brought in from the private sector should be able to select their own teams, and be held to realistic budgets and deadlines.
