Christian Wolmar

It was not only the bankers who have been grilled recently by commons select committees. A few days before the now infamous four appeared at the Treasury Select Committee, a group of train operators faced questioning over fares rises and cuts in services from the Transport Committee.
Both occasions had a rather unsatisfactory result – though, [...]

There’s no shortage of things happening on the railways. If it is not snow on the tracks, it’s high fares, plans for high speed trains or franchises getting into trouble. Today I did interviews on two different subjects for separate channels at ITN, the government’s insistence that the train operators have to stick to the [...]

Tim O’Toole’s departure is not only a great loss for Londoners but a serious blow to Boris Johnson. His departure increases the likelihood of strikes, makes it more difficult to solve the Tube’s financial problems and leaves the system rudderless at a perilous time.
Mr O’Toole might not have solved all the problems London Underground faced [...]

Remember the Tories. They used to run the country under an iron lady by the name of Thatcher and a philanderer called Major but it seems so long ago that we have almost completely forgotten them. That is not surprising because, in terms of rail policy, they have rarely surfaced except for a brief period [...]

It was predictable that the transport industry would be the Aunt Sally for the media during the recent ridiculously-termed ‘snow events’. And it was equally predictable that the industry has for the most part been very poor at defending itself.
That is not to say that the industry responded magnificently. Quite the opposite. There were [...]

National Express is in far deeper trouble with its East Coast franchise than even I thought. Sources within the industry suggest that as much as 30 per cent of its first class business has disappeared and since the company will have to fork out £50m in premium payments in the year starting in April, compared [...]