Christian Wolmar

Gosh, how things can change so quickly. Rail policy requires long term strategic thinking and the commitment of governments to carry it through. That’s how Japan and France built the world’s most extensive high speed rail networks and it is the strategy being followed by
Spain and China which will overtake them in the next [...]

There is a massive game of poker going on between the train operators and the government and so far neither is playing their hand very well. The operators are clearly in disarray. While ATOC’s insistence that they did not beg for more money when they went to see Geoff Hoon last week, it is clear [...]

Yesterday’s meeting between the train operators and transport ministers was the first in what is set to be an elaborate game of cat and mouse played out against the backdrop of the recession.
 Railways always do badly at times of economic downturns because they have fixed assets and costs while passenger numbers normally fall sharply [...]

Lord Adonis rather lets the cat out of his bag by accepting that a High Speed rail connection to Heathrow would do little to reduce the number of flights from the airport. This is commendably honest but rather undermines the case put forward by his boss, Geoff Hoon, for the railway as a green alternative [...]

 
Every January, the new year opens with bad news about the railways. The rise in fares which are imposed in time to greet people renewing their season tickets at the start of the year is usually compounded by tales of rail chaos, either induced by the weather or by management incompetence.
 Last year it was certainly [...]

The decision to go ahead with the third runway at Heathrow makes no sense on any criterion. The business case is thin in the extreme. Most passengers are leisure travellers and in any case over a third are transit. All these businesses which support it should examine the proposal using their own economic models. If [...]