Christian Wolmar

Justine Greening's idea of going along to the Network Rail members meeting to cast her vote against the bosses' bonuses exposes the ridiculous nature of the structure of the industry. Here is the person representing the interests of the government, which puts £4bn subsidy into the industry, casting her vote which has the same weight as Les from Dorking and Doris from Droitwich who happen to be members because they ...

Looking at Monday's Panorama programme again was a dispiriting experience. It had all the faults of modern TV documentaries with much emphasis on personal stories and nice pictures but very little substance. The message was incredibly muddled and anyone not versed in the issues would have struggled to understand what on earth was going on. It failed to explain propely the background, merely allowing numerous passengers to moan rather, as ...

One of the big mysteries of yesterday's HS2 announcement was how the Department had pulled off the trick of adding in five miles of extra tunnelling and yet seemingly the cost of the project has remained the same. Pressed on this point on Newsnight, Norman Baker was vague saying there was an extra cost,but he was very unspecific and was not pressed by the other participants in the discussion. However, buried ...

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 ...

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's attempt to soften the impact of the rail fares rise by reducing it to 1 per cent above inflation rather than 3 shows good intent but a failure to realise the practicalities of a very complex and at times antiquated industry. The story appeared in two newspapers this morning, the Indy and the Times, suggesting its source was a briefing rather than pure journalistic wishful thinking. There was even ...