Christian Wolmar

The transport situation is so different now than 30 years ago that it suggests transport policy has undertaken a complete revolution. However, but dig below the surface and, in many ways, in terms of policy little has changed with the same dilemmas and issues posing intractable problems for politicians.
Examining the scale of the changes is [...]

I am furious with Gwyneth Dunwoody, the fiercesome chair of the Commons Transport Committee. She has threatened my job by writing a report on passenger rail franchising that is far better than anything I could have written*. In fact, I could just fill this column with extracts from the report, which set out to answer [...]

It was brave of London & Continental to rebrand the Channel Tunnel Rail Link as High Speed One (thankfully not ‘Hi Speed’). The implication, of course, is that there will be more high speed lines whereas this question is very much hanging in the balance and may, in fact, hit the buffers with a resounding [...]

Ironically, the Transport Secretary’s quibbling about a paltry £200m for a new station at Woolwich could be a clue that the government is at last taking Crossrail seriously, argues CHRISTIAN WOLMAR.
WHAT is going on at Crossrail? There has been a very curious stand-off over the past few weeks on the issue of a station that, [...]

Timidity is the enemy of good governance. If anything characterises New Labour’s failings, it is the government’s failure to show courage in the face of potential opposition. Almost daily there are examples of this pusillanimity which creates the sense of an administration in drift.
Take the imposition of a tax on plastic bags, a ‘no-brainer’ [...]

Dow’s dictionary of railway quotations, compiled and edited by Andrew Dow, John Hopkins.
‘A common sheet of paper is enough for love, but a foolscap extra can alone contain a railroad and my ecstasies’. This is one of the earliest train lovers talking, and a rare beast as she was female – the actress Fanny Kemble [...]