Christian Wolmar

The redoubling of the line between Swindon and Kemble should be one of those no-brainer schemes at the top of the list of priorities for Network Rail. It is a 14 mile stretch of track on the Great Western line between London and Gloucester which was singled in the 1970s under British Rail’s ludicrous penny pinching scheme of removing capacity from the rail network. The legacy is awful. It takes trains ...

THIS was supposed to be the weekend that Network Rail made up for its disastrous performance of Christmas. Instead, once again, Liverpool Street is effectively closed thanks to engineering overruns, with thousands of commuters forced to make other arrangements. And it is not about to get any better: travellers can expect further disruption, especially on the West ...

Staying in a small town 10 kms from Groningen, I borrowed my host's bike and rode in to town to see how it managed to become the place with the greatest modal share of cycling in Holland. I had been there five years ago and discovered that it was not just happenstance,but a deliberate result of keeping cars out of the city. Riding in, it was noticeable how car traffic thinned ...

Transport should be the biggest issue in the mayoral election. Not only is it an issue that affects every Londoner almost daily, but it is the policy area over which the mayor has greatest control. Yet, while we have seen rows over allegations of corruption in City Hall and spats over Boris’s long forgotten dealings with the fraudster Darius Guppy, transport issues have yet to set the campaign alight. Partly, this ...

It was Dostoyevsky week in the rail industry at the end of February when two companies, Network Rail and First Great Western found themselves punished for their crimes by their respective regulators. The events of that momentous week illustrate both the contrasting way that the different parts of the industry are regulated and the failings of those systems. Let’s start with FGW. To some extent this came out of the blue. ...

I am in Holland for a ten day speaking tour to local groups of the Anglo-Dutch friendship society and I plan to post regular items on the blog on my thoughts. Whenever I go to Europe and spend a bit of time there, it amazes me just how different each society is from Britain, and indeed from each other. I hope that the growing dominance of the European union does ...