Christian Wolmar

The state of the Great Western Railway must have Brunel spinning in his grave. It is the operational issues that brought the railway into the national headlines over the past couple of weeks but there are fundamental problems with the infrastructure that have to be sorted out over the next few years if the line is not to deteriorate under the stress of the demands from the extra passengers flooding ...

Commuters in the South East can be excused for feeling bemused at the coverage given to passengers in Bristol complaining about their rotten train service this week. Westcountry travellers' problems pale beside those experienced regularly by many travelling by train into London, as underlined by this newspaper's survey. And unlike the Bristol travellers, commuters in the South East have faced these problems of overcrowding and having to stand on long ...

The railway needs a wider vision of its role in facing the challenges of the 21st century if it is not to become an irrelevance, warns CHRISTIAN WOLMAR THERE was a bigger furore than usual about the rise in rail fares this year. Partly that was because it was a slow news day, but there was, too, genuine incomprehension about the extent of the rises. It was instructive that the unregulated ...

The Eddington report has effectively killed off hopes of 'High Speed 2', claims CHRISTIAN WOLMAR， so the industry should concentrate on pressing for a new freight route instead. Meanwhile, Mystic Wolmar tries to redeem himself with five predictions for next year. The north south high speed line is dead. And good riddance. Don’t be fooled by the notion that the Eddington report left open the option to reconsider the idea once ...

The most intractable problem in urban transport is how to deal with non-radial journeys. This was apparent at the West London Transport Strategy conference which I chaired earlier this month. Six West London boroughs have got together to try to develop a strategy for the sub-region which cuts across borough boundaries and the conference showed just how difficult it was. Transport politics in West London is dominated by the issue of ...

We love to moan about the awfulness of our transport system. The roads are full, the trains are late, and the planes don’t take off because of a little bit of fog. But is it really that bad? The Treasury commissioned Sir Rod Eddington, the former head of British Airways to look into Britain’s long term transport needs and when he reported in December his findings were surprisingly positive. He found ...