Christian Wolmar

I was on BBC breakfast today as they had picked up on an item in the Daily Mail bemoaning the frequency of announcements on trains. It was an easy target. There are, as I have mentioned before, far too many announcements. The worst, of course, are the automatic ones warning you to take your luggage with you and to read the safety notices. On stations, it can be even worse. At ...

Just been on LBC where Nick Ferrari was particularly exercised about the number of roadworks affecting the capital. He has a point - though his antipathy to bus lanes is misplaced - because there does seem to be more works than ever before.  That's because of the mains replacement by Thames Water, Crossrail, various cable companies and so on. The problem is the lack of coordination and the way that holes ...

Senior figures in the railways often acknowledge that there are failings in the way the industry is structured and accept that there is a need for change. But they always argue that this must be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary because of the upheavals caused by trying to change things too quickly. They did not, however, reckon on Lord Adonis. While he may not want to admit that he has rocked the ...

The fundamental question that governments, both local and national, are never able to answer is whether they want more transport or less of it. Remember Prescott's promise in his ten year plan published in 2000 that rail journeys would increase by 50 per cent over the next decade. Well, that's one politician's target that has been met but so what. Its effect on road congestion is imperceptible and while the ...

I have always found it extraordinary that people on big salaries who get sacked for incompetence or resign after making a fundamental error, always seem to be rewarded with another job, often at much the same salary. The obvious example is football managers. Most clubs are run by retreads, people who have been found wanting elsewhere and yet somehow fetch up elsewhere few months later at another one, ready to ...

Birmingham is the heart of the rail network but it has never had a station worthy of its position. When the London & Birmingham and the Grand Junction which connected the city with the north were completed in the 1830s, they terminated at separate stations connected by expensive Hackney cabs and it seems that history is about to repeat itself if a high speed line is built into the city. It ...