Christian Wolmar

When Douglas Alexander was transport secretary and Sea Containers abandoned its GNER contract, he told me that the occasional failure of a franchise showed that the system was working well. It was a sign that the government had got it right as bidders took risks in order to win franchises and sometimes got it wrong. I could not disagree more. The rail industry is based on long term investment, huge fixed ...

Having a right wing government with fascists as part of the coalition does not seem to have helped Italian railways this time. Having just spent a couple of weeks there picking up and dropping off people from railway stations, their universal feedback was that the trains were always ten minutes late - or indeed more - except in the one instance when my friend Liam was trying to make a ...