Christian Wolmar

The shortlist for the new Southern franchise, which includes Gatwick Express, has been issued featuring the usual suspects including Stagecoach and Govia,. It will be the shortest ever franchise to be let, just five years and ten months because its ending is timed to coincide with the completion of the First Capital Connect contract, in [...]

I committed the sin of flying on Ryanair last week to go to Italy and back, eschewing the long overnight train ride which has twice, recently, proved to be several hours longer than scheduled.
Amazingly, some aspects of the Ryanair experience have improved immeasurably since I last took to the air with the company (although actually [...]

A memo from an unknown civil servant in the Department for Transport’s Rail Group has inadvertently found its way into my inbox. Unfortunately, it is unsigned but it is clearly from a very senior source.
MEMORANDUM
To: Geoff Hoon and Lord Adonis
Subject: Railways
Priority: Urgent
You have asked me to provide an immediate briefing on issues facing the railways [...]

Sometimes, you just could not make it up. First item on the Radio 4 9pm news was Ed Milliband’s announcement that Britain is to up its greenhouse gas emissions target so that it will be to reduce them by 80 per cent, rather than 60 per cent, by 2050. Great stuff, a tough target and [...]

I have been meaning to write a substantial piece linking the banking collapse with rail privatisation for some time and will certainly do so in the next couple of weeks. But meanwhile, enjoy this titbit: that ever so very clever fool, Sir Steve Robson, who at the Treasury designed the structure for both rail privatisation [...]

Transport secretaries are like shooting stars, flaring briefly in the sky and disappearing forever. Occasionally they leave behind a legacy, but more often their tenure is so brief that their impact is soon forgotten.
It would be simplistic and dishonest to suggest that Ruth Kelly made no difference in her brief tenure because there are a [...]