Using Item A and Figure 5, calculate the estimated total cost per kilometre of HS2. Give your answer to the nearest £.
How to approach this question
1. Sum all the costs listed in Figure 5 to find the total estimated building cost in £ billions. 2. Convert this figure into pounds (multiply by 1,000,000,000). 3. Find the total length of the route in kilometres from Item A. 4. Divide the total cost in pounds by the total kilometres. 5. Round your final answer to the nearest pound.
Full Answer
The calculation requires two pieces of information from the source material. First, the total cost is found by summing the components in Figure 5: £18.9bn + £35.2bn + £28.3bn + £11.4bn + £25.1bn = £118.9bn. Second, the total distance is given in Item A as 530 km. To find the cost per kilometre, we divide the total cost by the distance: £118,900,000,000 / 530 km = £224,339,622.6415... Rounding to the nearest pound gives £224,339,623.
Common mistakes
Making an error when summing the costs. Forgetting to convert billions to pounds, leading to a very small answer. Calculation errors.
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