Christian Wolmar

I have been hearing reports that the PPP Arbiter for the Tube, Chris Bolt, is minded to rule much nearer TfL's estimate of the cost of the next 7.5 year period than the amount Tube Lines is seeking. If that is the case, then probably Tube Lines would decide that it is not worth the hassle and would walk away from the contract, which would spell the end of the ...

  Superficially, the demise of the National Express East Coast franchise has been a fairly straightforward story. Company overbids, starts losing money, asks for more, gets turned down and walks away. An everyday story of railway folk.  Except it isn't that simple. At every stage, there have been political decisions that have determined the outcome of this saga and which will have longer term repercussions for the industry. And there are a ...

It was always going to be a momentous year. But 2009 has exceeded expectations with far reaching changes that for the most part a new government is going to find hard to reverse. Just listing all the events in the past year would take up much of this column, so I'll just analyse the implications of a few of them. Crucial to many of these developments has been one man, the ...

  As I write this column overlooking the street in Holloway where I live, an old man who lives opposite is taking his grandchild to school. They hop in to his Fiesta, and I know that in about ten minutes the grandfather, with whom I have exchanged friendly words but not yet names, will be back. Then after a cup of tea, he will pop out again to take his bull ...

  At last, a debate about the future of franchising is emerging. The Association of Train Operating Companies has, commendably, issued a package of measures on how it would like franchising to change. This followed hot on the heels of the government's response to the Commons Transport Committee's report on franchising published in the summer which gave some rare pointers to government thinking on the issue.  Briefly, the ATOC plan - which ...

In the depths of last winter, I had to get back home by train and plane from St Moritz via Zurich, after two feet of snow had fallen in the Alpine valleys and a few inches in south-east England. You probably imagine that this story ends with the Swiss train being bang on time. Not so: it was 90 seconds late. The plane was delayed five hours (late arrival of ...