Christian Wolmar

There is much cause to celebrate in the rail industry. The Olympics were an amazing triumph for public transport and the rail industry in particular. They were advertised as the public transport games and that is exactly what they turned out to be. Fears about transport chaos, got up by the media, proved to be groundless (as I had predicted). There is a wider message to be drawn from this. Public ...

One fact that the Prime Minister is bound to ignore at his  legacy press conference is the role of the public sector in the Olympics.  And I bet he won't celebrate its success, apart from a nod to the military. It is, though, worth stressing that these were the public sector games. They were bid for by the public sector, won by the public sector, organised by the public sector, ...

It is understandable for Bradley Wiggins to enter the debate on cycling helmets given the awful coincidence of a cyclist being killed by an Olympic bus on the day he won his gold medal, but he is quite wrong in demanding they should be made compulsory. This would not only be a deterrent to cycling but also points the blame at the victims of these accidents, rather than those responsible. We ...

The franchising programme represents the greatest risk to the finances of the railways. Deep inside the document setting out the investment plans for the five years from 2014, there was a table setting out the projected revenue from franchising over that period. It received little attention, though Insider noticed it, but its importance cannot be overestimated since it assumes rather baldly that around £300m annually will come from premium payments ...

It must be tempting for the organisers of the London Olympics to do a Jim Callaghan: ‘Chaos, what chaos? ‘ After months of panic and speculation about transport gridlock, the streets and trains of London were functioning with only occasional normal hiccup on the first working day that coincided with the Games. Transport has quickly become the biggest non-story since Harold Camping’s warning that the world would end on May ...

I have, belatedly, sampled the Cycle Superhighway that runs along the A11 through Mile End having gone to Stratford twice in the past week. I must say that the comments from the cycling fraternity (and sorority) made so far have been  far too mild. To say it is a joke is to demean the concept of humour. On the section I cycled between Mile End station and the infamous Bow ...