Christian Wolmar

At the beginning of 2011 I wrote that it would be a momentous year. I’m not sure that it has actually quite lived up to that billing. Although there’s been no shortage of drama and excitement, the weakness of the McNulty report, hijacked by a minister who delved deep into the detail of what interested him – and railway finances certainly did – means that in essence it is ‘steady ...

Local people in Victorian times were generally delighted when the railway arrived to connect them with the outside world, bringing untold benefits. Unfortunately, before they could get the trains, they got the navvies who built it and who could prove very disruptive to local life. The navvies – an abbreviation of navigator as they were the direct descendants of the men who built the canals - were a special breed of ...

One of the most curious aspects of the Autumn Statement was the fact that of the promised rail improvements, the first in the list is the Northern Line Extension from Kennington to Battersea. This is odd for two reasons. First, the scheme is supposed to be funded entirely by the private sector and therefore in a sense is nothing to do with Osborne’s statement. However, in fact, the developers have never ...

In his autumn statement, George Osborne attempted to play the Keynesian card, though never mentioning the great man’s name. Keynesian economics argues that at times of economic recession, investment should be made in long term infrastructure in order to create employment. Thus in the 1930s, London Transport enjoyed a heyday with extensions of lines, new rolling stock and refurbished stations and there were countless road and rail schemes. Inevitably, and rather ...

The 'research' carried out to justify opposition to Westminster's new night time parking restrictions has got me so enraged that I can barely articulate my contempt for it. It is a quite disgraceful use of supposedly 'independent' research to back up a conclusion which had already been made long before any work was carried out.  And the Standard has not only splashed it all over its front page, but also, ...

Justine Greening has kept a very low profile since being thrust unexpectedly into the transport secretary’s job in October. That’s hardly surprising given the complexity of the role and the breadth of the agenda left by her predecessor, Philip Hammond, who, despite his reputation as a ‘safe pair of hands’, ducked making many key decisions and made others for which she will not thank him. Rail tends to occupy much of ...