Christian Wolmar

It’s fortunate that Patrick McLoughlin appears utterly unflappable because there has been an awful lot to flap about in the Department of Transport since he took over as Transport Secretary in the autumn reshuffle. If he expected a quiet time after seven years in the Westminster maelstrom as the Tories’ chief whip, he was sorely mistaken. Within days of taking office, he found himself having to deal with the West Coast ...

If Patrick McLoughlin thought that escaping the bear pit of the whips office to the post of Secretary of State for Transport was a passport to a peaceful life, he will swiftly have been brought back down to earth. Within days of taking office he was plunged into the worst crisis in the Department since the collapse of Railtrack a decade ago with the withdrawal of the West Coast franchise ...

Transport has largely been kept out of the news since Stephen Byers’ tenure as Transport Secretary ended five years ago. On the railways, which were seemingly never out of the news in the early part of this decade, delays have been falling and safety fears have been allayed by a record breaking period without a major accident. On the roads, while congestion has increased steadily but largely imperceptibly and road ...

It’s not only in the south east that rail is booming. The three northernmost franchises in England, Transpennine, Northern and Merseyrail are all experiencing phenomenal growth, helped by relatively low fares and the healthy economy. Indeed, growth rates in the north are higher than in the south, with Transpennine experiencing an amazing 40 per cent increase in just three years. For a long time there has, however, been a widespread feeling ...

The transport situation is so different now than 30 years ago that it suggests transport policy has undertaken a complete revolution. However, but dig below the surface and, in many ways, in terms of policy little has changed with the same dilemmas and issues posing intractable problems for politicians. Examining the scale of the changes is quite easy. They are characterised by, in particular, privatisation, but also deregulation and globalisation, influences ...

In the first few years after the privatisation of the railways, rail safety became a major issue that was rarely off the front pages of newspapers. This had been stimulated by a series of high-profile crashes in a five-year period starting with Southall in September 1997 and continuing with Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield, through to Potters Bar in May 2002. Leaving aside Selby, which was caused by a Land Rover ...