Christian Wolmar

The cash crisis facing the railways has been baldly exposed by yesterday's announcement from Tom Winsor, the rail regulator, that Network Rail should drastically cut back spending. This has not only sent shivers down the spines of passengers, already fed up with a declining service - it also raises a fundamental question about who runs the railways. Britain's railways have been a state of limbo following the effective renationalisation of Railtrack ...

If anyone is put on trial for the Hatfield disaster, Christian Wolmar wonders whether it should be the mandarins and ministers who devised the mistaken model of privatisation that made the tragedy inevitable. When, sixteen years ago, as a news reporter, I wrote about the capsizing in Zeebrugge of the Herald of Free Enterprise, I remember feeling that the skipper on the deck, the bo’sun in charge of the doors ...

First we had John Prescott announcing a couple of weeks ago that 200,000 homes were to be built in the region, though he omitted to say when and where. And now we have Transport Secretary Alistair Darling's promise of a new runway near you, set out in the consultation paper on airport policy published this week. The airport paper is a quite remarkable document in its complete lack of ...

When Letchworth Garden City was founded a century ago, the first inhabitants voted overwhelmingly for keeping the place ‘dry’. Sure, there was a pub, the Skittles Inn, but it did not serve any alcohol. Regular votes were held over the years but it was not until 1957 that drinkers finally had their way, voting by a three to one majority to be allowed to consume something other than the sickly ...

With the removal of Connex from the South Eastern franchise, the 'softly softly' renationalisation of the railway continues. But why, asks Christian Wolmar, are Richard Bowker and Alistair Darling so afraid of admitting it? The past fortnight has been a heady one in the railways. As predicted in this column, there is a crisis in the railways unfolding before our eyes and the year 2003 will go down as a watershed ...

Slowly, indeed about as fast as the traffic flows in our towns and cities, the government’s appalling record on transport is becoming a source of embarrassment to Labour. The criticism over the weekend from the government-created but independent Commission for Integrated Transport is a damning indictment of six years of failure. According to the Commission, whatever mode of transport you consider, the situation seems to be chaotic. The roads are full ...