Christian Wolmar

I owe you an apology. A sincere one. It is now a exactly a decade years since you published the 10 year Transport Strategy, a document that we rubbished at the time, but was far better than anything produced by your predecessors. It promised a 50 per cent increase in passenger kilometres, 25 trams schemes and a 10 per cent rise in bus passengers. Actually none of these targets has ...

The Tories left you with a slightly muddled legacy with the railways. How do you think you've coped in dealing with that? I don't want to sound complacent but I do think we're in a better place than we would have ever have imagined at the time of privatisation. We've got demand going up at a record level, we've got the youngest railway carriage fleet in Europe, we've got record level ...

The speed with which environmental issues have been wiped off the political agenda in the face of the rising fuel and energy prices may have been predictable but is nonetheless remarkable. The public is caught between Gordon Brown almost dropping on one knee to beg the Saudis to increase production and opposition spokesmen cashing in on the government’s discomfort without offering any alternative whatsoever. No one cynicism about politicians is ...

A 'security expert' has advised Boris Johnson that he should not bicycle to work because he is a likely terrorist target. What bunkum. Every time that public figures change their behaviour in the face of such advice, the terrorists score a little victory. Of course some crazed terrorist or just plain madman - like the killer of John Lennon - could decided to hang outside Johnson's home and kill him. ...

My programme for BBC TV Wales on First Great Western was screened last night (available on BBC iplayer till next Tuesday - just put 'week in week out' in the search engine) and contained that famous clip from Tony Blair when he told the Labour Party conference that there would be a publicly owned, publicly accountable railway under Labour and that no one would be able to profit from the ...

There was an awful predictability about the response from Network Rail to the Office of Rail Regulation’s determination on the 2008 Periodic Review. Even before the press briefing by ORR Network Rail had already issued a press release saying there was not enough money to do what it wanted. Well, Ian Coucher, Network Rail’s boss, was hardly ever going to say that there was too much money available. Certainly, in the ...