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January 2021 Newsletter: it’s not all gloom but….
I have not worn a suit for a year. I hate wearing suits but I am so looking forward now to putting one on. It would mean that business is back to a sort of normal and we are no longer living in this demi-monde of the pandemic. It would mean that I would stop looking at office meetings on TV shows and think about how that used to...
The real reason behind opposition to Low Traffic Neighborhoods
By Pearl Ahrens and Christian Wolmar Last month, 322 people, from London and across the world, wrote in to the council of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to object to a series of plastic bollards on Kensington High Street that created a cycle lane. Even though their introduction a month earlier had not increased congestion nor reduced parking, and in truth the bollards hadn’t affected their daily...
Times review of Cathedrals of Steam
Review by Richard Godwin London has 14 railway termini, more than any other city in the world. It has no Grand Central station like New York, nothing the Germans would call a Hauptbahnhof. It has no significant mainline stations that aren’t termini either and no line circling the city, like Paris’s Petite Ceinture. If you’re travelling from Manchester to Southampton, or Bristol to Norwich, say, you must change trains...
December newsletter: deja vu all over again
This is the newsletter that goes out to subscribers every month. If you want to subscribe click here There’s rather a lot of déjà vu around. On the railways, the franchise system has collapsed and the government is desperately trying to cobble together a new structure, but seems to have stalled and has not yet published the Williams report which is now more than a year overdue. We...
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HS2 likes to keep things secret
With £20bn already swallowed up and an estimated £80bn more needed, HS2 is good at disposing of large sums of taxpayers’ money. However, it is not so good at letting people know exactly who is spending that money and on what. New Civil Engineer revealed last week a staggeringly long list of 291 organisations, companies and public bodies which were required – often under duress – by government–owned HS2...
Latest headlines
January 2021 Newsletter: it’s not all gloom but….
The real reason behind opposition to Low Traffic Neighborhoods
Times review of Cathedrals of Steam
December newsletter: deja vu all over again
HS2 likes to keep things secret
Rail 920: ORR focus on little used stations is an own goal
Working together, a concept lost in the private free for all
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About Christian Wolmar
Christian Wolmar is an award winning writer and broadcaster specialising in transport and is the author of a series of books on railway history. He was Labour's candidate for the 2016 Richmond Park & North Kingston by-election and also ran to be Labour's candidate in the last London mayoral election. Read more >>
Read all about it in my new book Cathedrals of Steam available via my website or at all good bookstores twitter.com/stejormur/stat…
