It's almost two years since the last Eurostar crawled out from beneath the Nicholas Grimshaw-designed Waterloo terminal, yet the platforms remain unused and unloved. Earlier reports had the cost of keeping the five platforms mothballed was £500,000, but it now appears that was an understatement, and the annual figure is closer to £2 million.
The cost has exercised Lord Adonis, the Transport secretary, to call for "early recommendations" on the platforms' future. But Waterloo wasn't included in Network Rail's five-year modernisation plan, and the Eurostar platforms will continue as pigeon paradise until 2013 at the earliest. For a station that already serves the most crowded train in London, it's a shameful waste.
Network Rail say converting the platforms and the tracks running into them would cost £54 million, something the Government will struggle to produce at the moment. Yet the move to St Pancras was known for years in advance; in happier economic times, it's surprising that a contingency plan for the Eurostar platforms wasn't signed off.
