CHRISTIAN WOLMAR NEWSLETTER-APRIL 2012 12TH APRIL 2012

Dear subscriber,

The quietest month for ages. What a relief. Transport policyhas taken a breather, though I still wrote a couple of pieces for nationalpapers and did a few broadcasts during March.The exception, of course, is London where transport is a hot political issue in the mayoral elections, though neither candidate is offering anything really exciting or new. Same old, same old. Shame, as it is the one election that should have transport as its focus, but there seems to have been more attention on tax returns. Yawn.

 I visitedthe Olympics transport control centre at Transport for London's Southwark offices, and was impressedwith the amount of preparation that has gone into dealing with the crowds.Their smooth flow is dependent on lots of us Londoners disappearing from thecapital, or at least not making our usual journeys. I have long suspected that therehas been a lot of crying ‘wolf’ but looking at the detailed predictions ofovercrowded stations and pinchpoints, I suspect there will be a few hairy moments.And I bet they will be caused either by security scares or overzealous securitychecks – remember the chaotic handling of the Millennium launch.
 In one of thosebizarre coincidences, I went three times to Europe last month, twice in a weekon different matters to Brussels after not having been across the Channel – or underit – for several months. Friends asked me why I did not stay over in Brusselsbut frankly it is almost as easy – and rather more pleasant as the trains arenicer – than going to say Manchester and the Eurostar service is very reliable.There is, though, irritatingly, no lunchtime train back from Brussels,something that has delayed me before – so hint to Eurostar! The Brussels trainsin the week running up to the Easter hols were, actually, quite well loaded, butnowhere near full.
 On the books front,my new one , The Great Railway Revolution, the epic tale of the Americanrailroad, will be launched at Daunt’s Holland Park bookshop on May 14th. If you want an invite, email via the website (or my email which, to avoid attractingspam from this message, is my name with a dot in the middle @gmail.com) and Iwill pass you name onto the publishers.
 I will be also givinga launch lecture at Railfest in York on June 8th on the book – I willpost details on my website as soon as I get them, but it will be an eveningevent, preceded by a book signing earlier in the day.
 There’s all the usualadditions and a few more. There’s now 987 posts on the site, not includingcomments, so the 1,000 mark will be reached within a couple of months. In Surveyor,I looked at the proposals for using the private sector to try to pay for roadsinvestment, but the decision to exclude road pricing effectively rules out anyreal chance of making that happen.
 My first Rail column covered  the CommandPaper, which went very little of the way to solving the basic issuesconfronting the industry, a subject I also wrote about on the day in the Indy. My other Rail column covered risk,a subject politicians never seem to understand.
 I wrote, again, aboutdriverless trains in the Standardand in TheTimes about the shortcomings of transport policy – or really, the total lackof it.
 Thanks to my newwebmasters, Primary Image, events are now being updated on the site, and beingshown both on the home page and in the public speaking section. Next month, forexample, I am chairing an academic conference in Italy on urban accessibility.

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