Christian Wolmar

Ken Livingstone could not have wished for better publicity than Porsche’s threat to take legal action over the increases to the congestion charge for ‘gas guzzlers’. It is a spectacular own goal by the car company.
Obviously, its bosses thought the issue would will play well with the minority who own the car but most people [...]

The rolling stock plan slipped out by the Department for Transport without any briefing or press conference at the end of last month is a typical example of the ‘pretend capitalism’ through which the rail industry is run. ‘Pretend capitalism’ is the fig leaf for continuing to keep the industry in the private sector when, [...]

Listening to the speaker from the Department for Transport, Jacqui Wilkinson, at the Greater London Assembly’s Driving Change conference on what to do about congestion, I heard a new expression: she said that the Department was ‘modally agnostic’, meaning that it was not bothered about how we get there, just that we do.
This is quite [...]

At last, the mayoral election is hotting up around genuine issues that affect Londoners rather than the antics of the two main candidates whose eccentricities have threatened to turn the hustings into a bumper episode of Celebrity Big Brother.
On the face of it, Ken Livingstone appears to be taking a big electoral risk with his [...]

I’ve been asked to sum up ideas at a conference on congestion and I realise just what a difficult issue it is. Congestion is the result of a combination of economic success and transport policy failure. In a rational world, there would be sufficient incentives to ensure enough people did not jump in their cars [...]

Having travelled through St Pancras International several times since its opening November, I realise that the fulsome praise given to the new station during the launch period, not least by me, needs some reappraisal. Don’t get me wrong – the station is a magnificent achievement and the roof a wonderful sight for people coming to [...]