It was always planned to be built in small stages.... Why would anyone think they would start a 105 mile project all at once?? That's insane
This is like looking at a 50 story building after just the first few floors are built and saying "well is fallen short by 47 floors, guess it's a big flop"
Yes but you seem to be mixing up 2 parts of their statements ... The one you linked is paywalled so I'm not sure if it's what's saying it, but if you look at their original statement, the scale back and the 2.4km were two seperate parts
They expect 2.4km to be completed by 2030
They scaled back the total excepted population from 1.5m to 300k
That means the total excepted length should still be much longer than 2.4km because I believe it's still expected to connect to the airport which is over 10km from the current stage