Christian Wolmar

The biggest cycle hire docking station opened today at Waterloo, with 126 spaces. It will presumably be used by lots of commuters although the scheme is not aimed at them because, oddly, the demand would be too great. Looking at the figures, the scheme is both enormously successful and a financial disaster. There have been over two million 'rides' so far, and barely a handful of accidents. The hire-bikes are buzzing ...

So farewell Stewart Stephenson, a man few people had heard of until it snowed and he found himself, as transport minister in Scotland, at the sharp end. He mainly resigned not for the fact that Scotland came to a standstill last week, but rather because he made injudicious remarks about how the response had been first class.  While we are, indeed, the laughing stock in places like Finland and Switzerland over ...

Porthmadog on the North Wales Coast is about to achieve a world first, having no fewer than three narrow gauge railways open for business. Already it is the terminus of the Ffestiniog Railway and early next year, it will be connected to the Welsh Highland Railway, creating the possibility of a 40 mile trip from Caernarvon to Blaenau Ffestiniog. . The grandly named Welsh Highland Railway is actually a collection ...

Two weeks ago I went to Ireland to speak at a meeting against what seemed like a crazy road scheme, a 50 mile dual carriageway through County Tyrone in Northern Ireland but it links two parts of the Republic, Donegal and Dublin. It is half funded by the Republic, to the tune of £400m, with the rest coming from Westminster. I have written about it in the forthcoming Transport Times and everything ...

There is widespread consensus within both the industry and political circles that the excessive cost of the rail industry is by far the railways’ most serious problem. This issue is rising rapidly up the political agenda having been highlighted in Radio 4’s File on Four recent programme The Great Train Robbery? (sigh, could they not find a better title?) and being the subject of a recent report the Commons Public ...

  Paul Atterbury, Life Along the Line, David & Charles, 256pp There are stunning pictures in this large coffee table size book evoking the age when railways were the main form of transport. But that’s all. They are presented in a higgedly-piggedly way, with pictures from the the 19th century juxtaposed with those from the 1960s on the same page. Ostensibly, they are structured into regions and then subdivided into sections such ...