Christian Wolmar

The plan to build a high speed rail network across Britain is the largest ever single infrastructure project this country has ever seen. In cost terms, at £32.7bn, it dwarfs predecessors such as the Channel Tunnel or the Olympics and is on the scale of, say, the Pyramids or the Panama Canal. While it is, therefore, hardly surprising that the project generates considerable controversy, it is astonishing that the basis ...

A few weeks ago I wrote in my Rail column (http://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2011/08/rail-676-dishonest-arguments-by-both-pro-and-anti-hs2/)  about the dishonest arguments being pushed by both sides in the debate over HSR. While the antis had certainly been a bit dishonest with the evidence from surveys, by far the most outlandish claim was from the Campaign for High Speed Rail which claimed that the line would create 1m new jobs. As I wrote at the time, this was ...

  I love railways. It was only the discovery of girls that lured me away from hanging around on station platforms, notebook in hand, in my teens, and I still love the feeling of settling down to a long train journey, book on my lap. But despite that I am adamantly opposed to the idea of a new north high-speed line that is the subject of a consultation paper being published ...

Building a high-speed rail line between London and the North of England was one of the few policy areas on which all three of the main political parties agreed during the recent UK election campaign. That was a complete turnaround from the previous election when the subject was barely mentioned and none of the parties were supportive. Perhaps British politicians now realise the UK is lagging behind the rest of ...

I have just returned from a brief trip to Spain which is soon to become the European country with greatest length of high speed line. That is an amazing achievement given that it was a relatively late starter with the first line, between Madrid and Sevilla,  opening only in 1992 and that was followed by a lengthy hiatus.  The scale of ambition in Spain is quite remarkable. The Spanish are building ...

  If, as has been suggested to me, the minimum cost of a high speed line between London and Scotland will be in the order of £50billion or more, the case for building it will have to be exceptionally strong, especially given the current pressure on the public purse.  Such a sum would involve doubling the level of spending by Network Rail for a period of ten years. The fundamental question, therefore, ...