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The High Speed Rail Alliance works to build strong communities across the country by advocating for networks of fast, frequent and affordable trains that will broaden access to economic opportunities and slash carbon emissions.

An exclusive interview with renowned railway historian Christian Wolmar about his latest book “Fast Track: The Extraordinary Story of High-Speed Rail.” The book is a complete history of how high-speed rail changed the world, from the original Japanese Shinkansen to the rapid development of the Chinese network in the 21st century. Wolmar also addresses why two notable countries, the U.K. and the U.S., lag behind their global counterparts in this arena. We discussed the past, present, and future of this incredible technology.

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Our new Prime Minister, ever eager to balance up things between the north and south has, rightly, pointed out that there is a fundamental imbalance. Thanks to Chris Green’s effort, there is a discount card, now called the Network Card, that gives a discount on all train services that used to be run under the auspices of Network SouthEast. Not surprisingly, this is rather a mystery for most rail passengers since the organisation is long defunct and its spread was somewhat patchy which means it is hard to work out which journeys are covered. In fact, NSE stretched out as far as Weymouth in the south west but only reached Huntingdon in the north, not quite getting to Peterborough.

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Now we have the Department for Transport spreading its money again on a scheme for driverless buses in Cambridge. The Greater Cambridge Partnership ‘Connector’ will is operating three electric buses equipped on a looped route connecting a couple of Park & Ride sites with the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. There is the possibility that if the trial goes well, the buses will be able to run on the local guided busway without a driver. However, for the moment, there is no legislation allowing a genuine driverless vehicle on the UK roads so there will be a person sitting in the driving seat able to react to an emergency.

There is much media interest but as Nick Richardson wrote in Passenger Transport magazine, ‘this is a solution seeking a problem’.

The Department for Transport has lots of far more useful schemes it could be spending its money on. There are many innovations that could make bus journeys more pleasant, but cutting out the driver is not one of them.

For a start, it is unlikely that there is any genuine business case for this innovation, or that there will ever be. The cost of putting a driver in a bus that operates, say, 12 hours per day is unlikely to be much above £75,000. And that’s being relatively generous. Contrast that with the extra costs of the equipment needed to make a bus ‘driverless’ such as cameras, sensors and LIDAR, and it is doubtful that the sums add up. Add to that the cost of the team needed to overview the bus service in case anything goes wrong, and the idea definitely costs more than it saves.
But also, think of the negative impact on passengers. Without a driver to ask about destinations or connections, any passenger new to the service may well not risk getting on the bus. There is, too, the old lady factor, as she will have no one to help her or to notice that maybe the door should be left open longer as she stumbles along the bus to get out.

Then there is the little matter of fare collection. Clearly they cannot install a gate as anyone would be able to siddle round it and there is no one to police the behaviour of the passengers. Indeed, what about anti social behaviour and the feeling of safety that having a driver promotes. Driverless buses would become free hotel accommodation for any homeless person who fancies a doze in a – relatively – comfortable seat. There is, too, the question of whether the bus will stop automatically at all bus stops, even if no one is wanting to get on or off, and therefore taking longer than a conventional service.

The test bus journey in Cambridge featured on YouTube suggests that there are problems with the technology as the ride was quite bumpy and people cannot even stand when it is in autonomous mode. Moreover, there was a section of road where it was impossible to use the autonomous mode because it was too narrow for the bus to travel without crossing the central white line.

There are several other driverless bus trials which are running or planned to operate, but no one can answer the fundamental points about fare collection, anti social behaviour, passenger support and a whole lot of other questions, let alone the business case – or rather lack of it.

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And he has a fantastic opportunity to make a big difference, given that Great British Railways is just at the stage where it…

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r Lewes in Sussex on August 13 when the rear three carriages of an eight car train became derailed and detached ending up on their sides down a small embankment. The accident made front page news.

At this time it is unclear what happened. There are two possible explanations given the subsequent photographs of very buckled sections of track. Either the train passed over a section of buckled rail, or the embankment partially collapsed, leaving the rails unsupported underneath and consequently forced out of alignment by the back of the train. That second explanation is made more likely by the fact that the front coaches did not derail.

There were only two serious – but not life threatening - injuries and 20 minor ones, but nevertheless the media coverage was extensive. I was on half a dozen radio shows and am writing a piece for the Spectator. Yet, a couple of weeks before the Lewes accident the annual road death total slipped out and yet again it has hovered around the 1,600 level mark since Covid and after a sharp reduction in the early 2000s, it has stayed remarkably constant. However this terrible death toll attracts little attention. The government did issue a road safety strategy last year but it was aspirational rather than setting clear targets and ways to reach them.

Rail safety since the turn of the century, by contrast, has improved. From the 90 deaths in the 1960s, the rate has fallen to near zero annually in the last two decades, punctuated only by a couple of accidents with a handful of casualties. This is really quite extraordinary and yet is rarely celebrated. There have been countless new safety measures, including the strengthening of carriages for which passengers on the train at Lewes will be deeply grateful as they largely escaped unscathed.

Perhaps the fuss about rail accidents has been instrumental in reducing that toll but one cannot help that a double standard is operating here. Railways are expected to meet far higher standards than road transport. Yet, there are things that could be done – the wider adoption of 20 mph zones in urban areas, greater enforcement of speed limits through hidden cameras – why should they be yellow ? - and tighter enforcement – only this week a lorry driver who killed a cyclist through careless driving escaped a jail sentence because he had served a month in remand.

At least this is not America where the death toll, barely mentioned in federal government circles, is an astonishing 40,000 annually. But in both countries, the issue needs to be taken far more seriously with a clear agenda of how to reduce the death toll. Otherwise in 20 years, this story will simply never change.

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With all our grumbling about trains – and it is close to a national pastime – it is easy to forget the successes. There is a tale to tell, for example, about high-speed trains, that goes beyond the endless wrangling over HS2.

If you look at the history around the globe, as I have, you find that high-speed trains saved the railways. An industry that was gradually sinking into oblivion, thanks to motorways and aeroplanes, has been revitalised by a technological revolution that means trains travel faster, more safely and more comfortably.

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But a recent article in The Guardian informed me that Bogotá, the capital of Colombia records more cycling trips than any other city in Latin America, with about 900,000 per day. The city authorities are active in promoting this but are now focussed on reducing the gender gap. Only a third of these journeys are undertaken by women and they want to create a situation where parity between the sexes is achieved by the end of the next decade. Closing the gender gap is seen as a key way of creating a more inclusive city and is perceived as essential to achieve the target of becoming carbon neutral by the middle of the century.

The reasons for the gap are interesting. According to The Guardian, about 60 per cent of women respondents to a survey avoided cycling because of concerns about theft or assault, while 40 per cent expressed concerns about being hit by a vehicle. Moreover, a third had never learnt to ride a bike and that is being addressed with free lessons.

But the major challenge is to increase the number of protected bike lanes as it is the perception of risk that is the biggest barrier. Bogotá, a city of 10 million people, already has an impressive sounding 425 miles of bike lanes – and incidentally has a car free day every month to stimulate bike usage – but that is nowhere near enough to ensure safe journeys for a majority of trips. Therefore a big programme of boosting this network is seen as essential to encourage more women on to two wheelers. Bike lanes, are therefore a feminist issue.

This gender gap is a phenomenon in towns and cities across the world where cycling is perceived as dangerous, whether because of fear of assault or, as is more common, worries about safety. In London despite the remarkable improvements in cycling infrastructure in recent years, women still account for only around a third of journeys. I suspect that is because despite the progress that has been made, many journeys still include a section that may be tricky for an unconfident rider to negotiate. That can be a deterrent for making the trip by bike.
On my visit to Paris a couple of years ago, it was noticeable that the improvements were designed to allow for continuous safe journeys, with the issue of difficult junctions being addressed full on – at great cost if necessary. That is not the case in London where concerns about delaying journeys by car at times prevent the best solution from being implemented. Paris, therefore has been rewarded with an estimated 40-45 per cent journeys being made by female riders, a far better record than in my beloved London.

And of course the Netherlands have more than overcome the gap with female riders being in a majority, making around 55 per cent of the journeys. That is precisely because they know that virtually any journey can be undertaken safely without the risk of being wiped out by a 40 tonne HGV. Most cycling deaths in the Netherlands are the result of people simply falling off their bikes. This universal commitment to road safety also means that older people are far more likely to cycle. Indeed the age group with the largest percentage of female riders are the over 60s – that’s partly because there are more of them, as men tend to die younger, but also it is the result of the emphasis on creating an entirely safe environment. Bogotá, Paris and London are all making progress but they still have a long way to go before women will jump on their bikes without any concerns about safety.

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/womenscycling

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Who says transport is not an important issue? Andy Burnham, highly likely to be our new prime minister made his name by bringing Manchester’s buses into local control and rebranding them as the Bee network. The service has consequently improved and there is no doubt this success helped his vote in the Makerfield by-election he won so convincingly last Thursday.

If he gets into Number 10, he will face having to make decisions over two big infrastructure projects. He has already said that he wants to see the section of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester reinstated after it was scrapped in 2023 by Rishi Sunak. That was, indeed, a terrible mistake as it was the most useful part of this benighted railway and could have been built for far less per mile than the southern section which is becoming the most expensive high speed project in the world. Nevertheless, reinstating would not be cheap and may not even be popular. HS2 is so out of control and has been so enormously over budget that adding to the cost, even for a useful purpose like building it to the north, will undoubtedly face widespread criticism and opposition.

Then we have Heathrow, which last week was given the go ahead to have a third runway. Well, sort of. A consultation paper setting out the government’s policy has been issued which favours a new full length runway at an estimated cost of £33bn and involving the demolition of around 800 and a far wider area blighted by noise.

There is one fundamental problem. A big one. The owners of Heathrow do not have the money to pay for the scheme which would involve, inter alia, moving the M25 and would not be completed until 2035 at the earliest. Already commentators are suggesting this could be another HS2 type debacle and, even though it is intended to be privately financed, indirect public support in terms of building railway and road connections will undoubtedly be required. The airlines, effectively Heathrow’s customers are not happy at the prospect of increased landing charges, and therefore the company may struggle to produce a coherent business case for the new runway.

The bigger question is whether it is either politically feasible to build such an environmentally damaging extension to an airport, which will have a huge and continuing carbon footprint, at a time when sustainability is the watchword. Indeed, it Burnham becomes PM, he will have a difficult decision on this, particularly as he watched the Green vote increase massively in order to win the local Gorton and Denton by-election. Heathrow expansion will undoubtedly cost votes for Labour.

Instead, he could focus on supporting the Active Transport programme for which the government recently promised £4.5 billion. But before we get too excited, this is over several years and includes all kinds of schemes which offer marginal benefit to active transport. Nevertheless, it is a commitment but what is needed is a strategy – a nation wide one – and that is something that Burnham could champion. A new prime minister, with a greater focus on transport, would be very welcome but there are hurdles to overcome, such as winning over the parliamentary party. But so far, he jumped through the first hoop.

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Christian and co-presenter Mark Walker examine what the ministerial appointments and announcements from the new UK Labour Government led by Prime Minister Andy Burnham MP indicate about the direction for transport policy [1:21]. In a discussion recorded live at London's Owl Bookshop with fellow author Andrew Martin, Christian explores some of the issues covered in his latest book, 'Fast Track: The Extraordinary Story of High-Speed Rail' [20:21]. In his final thought from the departure lounge, Christian suggests that Great British Railways might benefit from a snappier marketing brand [60:05].

Turkey is, too, the site of the longest redundant tunnel, a ten kilometre effort that could not be used as it was built to the wrong gauge and remains, to this day, unused. There are several other examples of sections of line that have never been used or needed to be bypassed, but the most remarkable failures were on projects based on alternatives to conventional rail.

It is little known that the development of high speed rail could have been stymied and the very concept might have been abandoned in favour of alternatives, notably some variant of maglev. Indeed Japan’s scheme, built 17 years before France built its first line, might have been not just the world’s first, but a unique project without parallel elsewhere.

I discovered a pattern with a similar process unfolding across several countries. The first of these attempts to use an alternative to conventional steel wheel on steel rail was, surprisingly perhaps given its pioneer status, in France. Thanks to a canny entrepreneur called Jean Bertin, the French TGV very nearly did not happen. As in the UK, France had seen a brutal paring back of the rail system and no new lines had opened since 1928. Beeching was running rife in the UK at the time and everywhere in the world the railways seem to be in retreat while motorway and aeroplanes were starting to become the norm for medium and long distance travel.. Perhaps trains had had their day.

Bertin a canny and pioneering engineer proposed an alternative, a magnetic levitation system whose modernity seemed more in tune with the age of Sputnik and fanciful ideas promoted in comics and magazines such as flying cars and jet-propelled back packs that would make even walking redundant. I quote Arthur C Clarke, the great British scifi author who wrote the script for 2001, A Space Odyssey saying: ‘the history of the railways, which have given great service to humanity for a century and a half is now entering its final chapter’.

The best description of Bertin’s invention was ‘hovertrain’, which used nascent hovercraft technology to raise itself and then, initially, railway technology, and later rockets, to propel itself forward. After building a short test track with a small scale model, in 1966 Bertin, with the help of government funding ironically much of which went through SNCF, the French state owned railway, unveiled a 7km long elevated test track rather cheekily built on part of an abandoned railway line between Paris and Chartres. Within days of the launch, the sleek coaches were thundering along at 345 kph encouraging him to build a second set of coaches which reached a speed of 422 kph in January 1969.

Bertin was on a roll. His Aérotrain would be the land equivalent of Concorde, which was in development at the time. Ideas for new lines were popping up everywhere as visitors flocked to the site of the test track. The Common Market, as it was then called, proposed a line linking Luxembourg with Brussels. A new longer test track was built near Orléans and the French government agreed to fund a line linking the two main Paris airports with the centre of the city.

But then the whole scheme fell apart. The track proved more expensive to build and land for it was difficult to find. Putting a rocket on the back of the trains certainly gave them the required speed but made noise that was, euh, like a rocket. There were technical issues to and the lack of connection with the existing rail network would prove inconvenient. President Pompidou died and was replaced by the less enthusiastic Giscard d’Estaing who pulled the plug and gave, instead the go ahead to the Paris Lyon TGV line. All that is left of Bertin’s dream are a few rotting concrete pillars, a fate that HS2 has only narrowly escaped. But maglev did not go away and Germany went through the same debate over whether it was a better technology than conventional rail.

In the early 1970s, the German government began to take an interest in the technology and was initially so enthusiastic about the idea that it committed some £500m to support the construction of a test track and prototype vehicles. The scheme for a 300 km line between Hamburg and Berlin was included in the government’s transportation plan with a start date of 1994 for completion in 2005. The two cities would be linked in just 55mins with the Transrapid, as it was called, running at 450 kph.

But then, just as in France, reality set in. Building new stations in city centres and tracks in the suburbs was proving too difficult and consequently stations would have to be on the outskirts, necessitating a change of mode. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bahn had embarked on its ICE – InterCity Express – scheme to link the nation’s major towns with a 2,500 mile network. With opposition to Transrapid mounting, the government decided to go for its mix of high speed lines interspersed with upgrades of existing routes that characterise ICE and abandoned maglev development, Its fate was sealed by a disaster on its test track in September 2006 which highlighted the risks of running relatively light vehicles – a requirement given they have to be levitated – at high speeds. A maintenance vehicle had been left on the tracks and a test train smashed into it killing 23 of the scientists and other project staff on board. Ironically, though the technology was sold to China and used on its maglev service between Shanghai suburbs and the airport.

Now big maglev schemes are being developed in both Japan – where the scheme has all the hallmarks and cost overruns of HS2 – and China but I suspect it will only ever be a niche market. Elon Musk’s idea of running maglev in a tube and calling it hyperloop was a nonsense, with the capital costs being far too high to ever sustain a service that would have been run by 30 seater trains at best. He actually only promoted it to damage the California high speed rail project which sadly has needed no external threat to turn into a white elephant. Ironically, the first maglev system in operation in the world was a shuttle within Birmingham airport, that ran from 1984 to 1995 at a modest 22 mph.

High speed rail has enabled the railways not just to survive in the 21^st century, but to thrive, giving an old technology a new lease of life. That, in these grim times and in the face of the ever mounting problems of HS2, is worth celebrating.

Heathrow no longer needs its express

It is time to say goodbye to the Heathrow Express. It is a ridiculously expensive way to get between the airport and Paddington, and only thrives because of ignorance. Tourists arriving often sleepy as a result of long haul flights are not in a state to assess the various prices and usefulness of the three different train services on offer at the airport – Heathrow Express, Elizabeth Line and the Tube.

The very name Heathrow Express gives the premium rail service and advantage and as there is no clear signage in the airport setting out what might be the best and most economic way to get into the centre. Of course the Elizabeth line is slower and the Piccadilly even more so, but often it might be more convenient as well as cheaper to take these alternatives given that Paddington is not the most accessible station.

Heathrow Express’s contract with Great Western Railway runs out in June 2028 soon after the establishment of Great British Railways, and that would be an opportune moment to kiss it goodbye. Certainly a new contract would be a big mistake since its train paths and two platforms at Paddington would be much better put to use to serve the Southern access route that has long been mooted but stymied by government inaction. Most of the money would come from the private sector and would make Heathrow into a through station, for which passive provision has been provided.

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On the one hand, there is this magnificent freight network, carrying some 40 per cent of goods across the nation, a higher proportion than in any other country. There are seven huge freight companies, dubbed Class 1 which carry out the bulk of this work but there are also a dozen or so large concerns and even a couple of hundred ‘mon and pop’ companies that probably have a short line and work for a single carrier.

In contrast, the situation for passenger trains is dire. Yes, Amtrak is introducing new rolling stock for the Northeast corridor and hopes that this will reduce journey times and attract more customers. But this is America’s only major passenger network, apart from a few interregional lines in states such as Illinois and California. In the book I have just published, Fast Track, I tell the story of how Lyndon B Johnson dreamt of a high speed network of trains for the US, based on the same concept as the Japanese Shinkansen which opened in 1964. He even passed legislation allowing this and provided some seed funding, but once Reagan took over and passenger numbers continued to decline, the impetus was lost and it never happened.

Despite the speeding up of services in the Northeast, the US cannot lay claim to having a high speed railway. The trains do not run fast enough and do not have dedicated track. Brightline which opened in 2018 in Florida is relatively slow and shares part of its track with freight services. And it has a particularly poor safety record because of the number of road and pedestrian crossings.

America’s big hope for a high speed line is, of course, the California high speed project, but that is mired in delays and cost overruns to such an extent that it looks like that only the section between Merced and Bakersfield will be completed any time soon. And will be little used.

This all begs the bigger question. As America looks at China which has built its astonishing high speed rail network in under 20 years, there must be a tinge of jealousy. Domestic flights are such a hassle compared with city centre to city centre rail travel but sadly Johnson’s dream will never be realised.

I think it comes down to a fundamental dislike of railways in America despite the fact that the freight network is such a vital artery. This suspicion of railways was well illustrated by the imposition of a safety system to prevent train drivers passing signals at danger. This was installed in the 2010s at a cost of $11 bn dollars after a single accident in Los Angeles where driver inattention cost 25 lives. This expenditure is out of proportion to the risks of a railway accident especially as there are so few passenger trains. Yet the industry had to bear this burden because of federal legislation. In contrast more than 100 people are killed on American roads every day, and very little is done to improve the overall safety of the system.

Despite writing the history of US railways and many articles on them, I still can’t quite fathom why passenger rail has been so neglected in America though I recognise it is a combination of love of cars, a dislike of community forms of transport, the power of the freight companies, the hostility of airlines and the inconsistency of government support for any new schemes. Despite all this, the depth of opposition to the railways is surprising but sadly I think insurmountable.

The irony is, of course, that there are many people who love railroads in the US. One only has to look at the popularity of the touring Union Pacific’s Big Boy No 4014 which has been attracting huge crowds throughout its travels around the US to mark the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There are too many new light rail and suburban services popping up in states and cities that are supportive of the railways and the US now has 40 such systems across the country. But it is translating that popularity into political capital that is so difficult. Any proposed scheme will quickly attract detractors and critics, usually but not always from Republicans.

Another fundamental problem is the length of time that it takes to see through a successful scheme. So presidents favourable to rail such as Johnson, Obama and Biden put forward projects but these are then either killed off at a state level or do not have sufficient time to bear fruit within their terms of office. Getting the sustained long term support for rail improvements that are necessary for their ultimate success is always an uphill battle.

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It is a fab story, taking in the early attempts to speed up trains including the various races held at the end of the 19^th century and the 1930s. But the bulk of the book is devoted to modern high speed rail, a story that started in Japan more than 60 years ago and one that continues to provide huge amount of media coverage. Indeed, high speed rail is rarely out of the news, whether it is the launch of a new magnificent railway, inevitably after a long gestation period and probably a budget overrun but by then who cares, or whether it is a debacle like HS2 or the California high speed rail project. There is even coverage of the fortunately very few accidents including the one in Spain this year that was the first high speed collision between two trains.

I devote a chapter to the struggles in the UK and US on their high speed lines but much of the book focusses positive, the amazing achievements of the various countries who have joined the high speed club, ranging from the earliest lines in Japan and France, to the biggest success stories, Spain and China.

On the way there are diversions to South Korea and Taiwan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia and lots of other places too. It was a fun story to write and research, which included trips to Japan and China, and there is no shortage of stories, such as the salamander who almost stopped a line being built and the jailing of the man who did the most to get China’ amazing network started.

My book launch party will be Thurs 30th July in London and I have signed copies of Fast Track available for £22 plus £4 postage. (The retail price will be £30.) Email me at christian.wolmar@gmail.com for a discounted signed copy.

China has 48,000kms of high-speed train lines, about 70 per cent of the global total, with plans for many more. There are up to 10,000 daily services in operation, using 4,380 eight-coach trains – almost two-thirds of the world’s 250kmph-plus rolling stock – and welcoming about 10 million people on average every day.

The country’s development of high-speed rail has been rapid even by Chinese standards. The first line opened in 2008, which means that more than 7km of track a day have been completed since then. To put that in perspective, in less than two decades, China has built a system three times the size of Britain’s entire rail network, which was constructed painstakingly over the course of 70 years in the 19^th century. It is tempting, if cruel, to remind British readers that work on the 225km HS2 line between London and Birmingham started in 2019 and may (or may not) be completed by 2036 or 2039.

I spent a week touring the Chinese high-speed system XXXXX, as research for my new book, visiting two of the three main factories and talking to a wide range of officials and managers. Access was relatively open, though precise questions were often answered vaguely and there were clearly no-go areas.

China’s rail network is an integral part of its strategy to develop into a technological powerhouse. This being the People’s Republic, the economics are opaque. The rail operating company, the rolling stock manufacturers and the builders of the lines are all state-owned enterprises. The latest accounts show a small profit but the amount of subsidy, hidden through transfer pricing, is difficult to establish. Precise sums are hard to come by but the official cost of building the railway is estimated to be between 100m and 200m Chinese yuan per kilometre (£11m to £22m) – meaning the overall cost is about 10,000 billion yuan, or £1,000 billion.

Still, it is clear that today China leads the world, by some distance, in building high-speed lines cheaply and running them economically. And with 25 countries already using high speed rail, and others seeking to join them, the companies behind the Chinese system are in a position to dominate other markets as well as their own.

China came late to the idea of railways, only opening the first line in 1876, and tearing this up the following year because of a dispute between the Qing government and the British trading firm that oversaw construction. By 1895, a mere 18 miles had been built, by which time most European countries had almost completed networks covering tens of thousands of miles.

Even after a national system was created in the early and mid 20^th century, it was thinly spread and was not an integral part of the nation’s infrastructure. As for high-speed railways, the Chinese started building them four decades after Japan, which opened its first dedicated line in 1964, and a quarter-century after the French.

The early lines were built with the aid of foreign technology after contracts were signed with four of the world’s leading train manufacturers – Bombardier and Alstom (which have subsequently merged), Siemens and Kawasaki – in the early 2000s. The pioneering minister for railways, Liu Zhijun, had realised that China needed the knowledge from these companies to be able to catch up and maximised the amount of technology transfer, in line with the Chinese government’s policy, which required foreign investors to share their knowhow with local firms. The main beneficiaries were the two Chinese state-owned enterprises that subsequently merged to become the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC).

The factories that build the trains are on a scale to match the high-speed network. The first thing that strikes visitors to the huge complex at Changchun in northern China is the silence. There are no oil stains or dirty rags on the pristine concrete floor and in the factory, where the wheelsets are produced, every worker is permanently tagged so that the managers know precisely where they are and what they are doing.

Changchun is the biggest of the three principal factories of the CRRC, employing 20,000 people at this site to produce not just high-speed trains but a range of different types of rolling stock for underground and tram lines to suburban and regional train services.

The approach is extremely methodical. Several key aims are prioritised, such as reducing the weight of the trains through the use of different materials, reducing the amount of energy required and limiting the amount of noise and vibration.

Travelling on the trains was a revelation. The high speed network is totally separate, with a different signalling system which prevents any running on the conventional tracks. As if to emphasise this, large sections of the high-speed line are on concrete arched stilts a dozen feet above the ground. Elevating the line is initially more expensive, but maintenance is cheaper in the future as the track will deteriorate less than when laid on the uneven ground.

The current set of trains can run at 350kmph but are generally confined to 300kmph as a cruising speed. This is similar to the French TGVs and the Eurostar, which run at about 300-320kmph. CRRC is now working on a 400kmph version, which it is hoped will be introduced next year. The fastest domestic train in the UK, the Southeastern Javelin, runs at about 225kmph.

There is no random hopping on a train in China. Security is tight with luggage screened before you enter the station. All seats are pre-booked online and there are no tickets, just receipts.

I was told that people who have run up debts or who have misbehaved on a previous journey are banned, as presumably are those the state might want to prevent from travelling.

Passengers are not allowed down to the high-speed platforms until about 20 minutes before departure time and they pass through automatic gates using their ID cards as identification. Foreigners have to use their passports and pass through a gate where the documents are checked manually.

My first high-speed rail journey was between Beijing and Qingdao, home of the famous Tsingtao brewery, a distance of almost 700km. I travelled business class for a whopping £125, compared to £35 for standard class. First class was £61 but only offered slightly wider seats, whereas in business class you have an enormous amount of space, enough to extend your seat as if you were in a luxury cinema. It was like flying first class and the service was very attentive, though the meal was pretty unexciting – a pre-packaged and reheated stew of ribs and vegetables, with a pot-noodle type soup as an accompaniment.

Each of the several journeys I took, which all lasted several hours, went without a hitch, with trains on time and very little fuss. There was never a jolt or any vibration.

China plans to have 70,000km of high-speed rail by 2035, which may be optimistic given that it represents an increase on an already breathtaking pace, but there is little doubt, barring either an economic or technical catastrophe, that this will eventually be achieved.

It is easy to argue that this has only been possible because China is an authoritarian regime. Of course, the power of the state, able to marshal resources, grab whatever land it needs and direct funds towards a policy it has prioritised has no parallel in western democracies except in wartime. However, that does not mean there are no lessons to be learned. The ability of the Chinese to plan such a project, to manage it across the board, to develop the supply chains, to harness the skills of the workforce and to provide the finance does offer an example to follow.

But a coherent response is vital. In 2019, the European Commission rejected a merger between Siemens and Alstom, Europe’s two largest train manufacturing companies, specifically because it was worried about competition in the high-speed train market. The proposed merger had been a direct response to the fear of being outgunned by the Chinese, and an attempt to create a company that could compete. Perhaps a rethink is needed.

Fast Track:The Extraordinary Story of High Speed Rail by Christian Wolmar (Penguin Michael Joseph) is out on 23^rd July Signed copies of Fast Track are also available for £22 plus £4 postage. (The retail price will be £30.) email me for copy christian.wolmar@gmail.com

I have no idea about the latter. It’s very difficult to calculate given the policy may well attract lots of extra bus passengers and therefore gain revenue as well as cost it. The sum of £400m has been bounded about, but nobody quite knows how that is arrived at.

But fundamentally, it is the wrong question. Very fundamentally. We need, as a society, to provide more bus services and attract more people onto them. Buses are good for the environment, taking cars off roads. They are good for employment giving access to city centres and other locations with jobs such as industrial estates for people without cars. They are good for older people, who may not be able to drive or prefer using buses because it gives them a bit of exercise.

However, these types of benefits are not captured by the superficial analysis implied by the question of ‘what will it cost?’ . It’s worth noting, too, that in many areas the cost of bus services to overstretched local authorities have mean they have been pared back to a bare minimum and therefore the £2 maximum will not help local people since there is no bus available.

The big con of the neoliberal economics that has dominated political thinking since the days of of Thatcher and Reagan is that the government is like a household and everything has to be accounted and paid for. But government is not like that. It can borrow money cheaply, actually create money by printing it (within reason to stop inflation running away) and its size means that there is no way of knowing precisely how much money will be available in, say, a month or a year’s time.

This type of narrow thinking means that governments now have to say ridiculous things like the bus fare cap will be paid for by money saved from the overseas aid budget, which Burnham has said. This is economic nonsense. The government’s overall budget is around £1,350 billion annually. A few hundred million spent on supporting bus passengers is small change. Who knows what money will be available in a year’s time. Moreover, this type of narrow accounting does not consider the benefits outlined above such as making jobs more accessible. Nor will it take account of the fact that more people will use buses, therefore increasing the revenue – perhaps by not as much as the cost, but ultimately does that matter?

So the very premise of the BBC researcher ensures that the coverage will focus narrowly on cost rather than looking at the wider benefits. And therefore that will fail to get across the real value of increasing spending on buses.

This goes well beyond transport. I was struck by an article by the black Tory peer. Tony Sewell, in The Times the other day highlighting the lack of fathers and father figures experienced by lots of young men. He mentions how important youth workers can be in this respect and yet he supports a political party that cut back youth work drastically in its austerity policies of the 2010s. All the present Tory party bang on about today is the fact that there is too much government spending and this type of thinking dominates the agenda of news outlets such as the BBC. We need a new type of economics and a media which understands the value of services, rather than merely emphasising the cost.

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Modern technology and better training have contributed to this improvement, but there is no guarantee that this trend will continue. Indeed, Office of Road and Rail figures show some worrying trends, such as a 50 per cent increase in signals passed at danger in the past year. Yes, there are more red signals on the crowded network, that does not explain such a steep rise.

I have been contacted by senior sources in the industry who are concerned that this may be indicative of a more profound trend. The excellent recent safety record, which has seen such an improvement in the twenty first century compared with previous one, has been taken for granted. The attitude seems to be that safety is a done deal and therefore managers can focus on other aspects of the railways.

This is not, of course, universally true. I am struck by how often some managers mention safety, but it is a fact that safety has not been the subject of major speeches by rail industry leaders or indeed their political counterparts that is of concern. The right kind of culture on safety has to come from the top so that it becomes inculcated in the workforce.

Whenever I get a cab ride, I am indeed shocked by the amount of junk there is on the railway, and how this is an illustration that safety is not taken seriously. Old bits of rail and rotting wagons along with other metallic junk litter the network along with buddleia and other weeds. Graffiti is no longer routinely wiped off, giving a poor impression of the railways.

The Bedford accident should result in a more checks, more thinking about potential issues and even some action, which may cost money. The industry is only ever a heartbeat away from a disaster. I am still haunted by how just a fortunate Britain’s worst rail disaster in peacetime was averted by la few seconds. It is now more than 11 years since the Wooton Bassett near miss when a charter train went through two signals and fouled the main line where a high speed train had passed less than a minute earlier. The idea of a high speed train slamming into a charter hauled by a steam engine with a total of nearly 750 aboard the two trains still sends shivers down my spine every time I think about it. And indeed what makes me even angrier is that the driver of the charter was only given an eight months suspended sentence for his idiocy and the charter company, West Coast is still in business when it should have had its licence withdrawn permanently. The fine of £200,000 it received was derisory.

We now know that the signal passed at danger by the train in the Bedford crash was not fitted with the Train Protection and Warning System which has been so effective in reducing the number of SPADs. This is a financial decision as fitting the system is expensive and rightly there are budget constraints. The argument is that this is a section of plain line while TPWS is limited to complicated junctions and the throats of larger stations. However, one manager I spoke with says this was long known as a slightly worrying section of track because it soon turns into a curve.

There is, too, a major source of new risk which has not received sufficient attention. While traditional accidents caused by SPADs, overspeeding – the subject of a recent RAIB report involving a incident at Grantham – and derailments – such as the recent incident in Cumbria on the West Coast – provide the mainstay of the organisation’s investigations, the complete stoppage of all trains in Germany for more than two hours on June 23 demonstrates starkly the new source of risk - the ever greater reliance of the railways on software systems that may well be out of date. The stoppage, according to Deutsche Bahn, was the result of a fault introduced into the GSM-R radio system which provides what the industry calls ‘ship to shore’ communication. Apparently, the software behind this ancient system which is now half a century old triggered the breakdown and consequently the stoppage of all trains as it is not considered safe to run services without the ability to contact control centres.

Actually, being a cynical old bastard, I am less than convinced by this story but I have been unable to discover whether there is a more sinister explanation relating to cyber attacks or fundamental faults in the system.

I have long been worried about the potential risk of a total breakdown in the UK system caused by a software issue. This has become more likely because of the concentration of facilities in a small number of locations. Both signalling and power provision are now largely centralised, which makes the system more vulnerable to an attack or a failure. Cyber attacks, along with climate change, are the two most likely source of industry failures and while lots of publicity has been given to the later, the risks from software issues have attracted insufficient attention. There are legacy systems on trains that like the German radio network stretch back into the 1970s and while efforts are made to eliminate the risk from them, nobody quite knows what systems are in operation and where they are located.

The creation of Great British Railways will both help this situation by ensuring there is more information on industry assets, but by bringing together many disparate systems, it also presents a new risk. I see no sign yet of any coherent work on this potential area of risk to the industry, but clearly whoever takes over at GBR needs to examine this urgently.

What happened to the trams?

Most conspiracy theories are works of fiction best confined to Dan Brown novels but just occasionally they ring true. In the comedy film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there is an odd subplot about how the tram system in Los Angeles was closed down on the instigation of motoring interests. In fact, that explanation is still the subject of debate but there is no doubt that there was fierce opposition to the street car system, as it is called over there, from vested interests in the motoring industry.

What I had not realised, is that there was a similar – and indeed successful plot – in the UK against trams. Indeed, according to Mick Hamer in his excellent book The Great tramways Conspiracy, there were really two separate conspiracies. The first early in the twentieth century, largely failed. It was an attempt to prevent systems being built and, in particular, from being municipally, rather than privately, controlled. It was organised by various right wing newspapers and the major private tram company, BET, abetted at times by railways eager to see off competition from trams, which wanted to make profit out of the tram systems rather than allowing local councils to run them. By and large, the public systems offered a better service and were able to prevent the private company from taking over their systems. The first couple of decades of the 20^th century were therefore the heyday of the tram systems which provided cheap transport for millions of workers. But it was being constantly undermined by opponents in particular, the growing power of the motoring lobby, which used underhand tactics such as fake letter writing campaigns to local newspapers, which were produced centrally rather than by local people, and painted trams as an old fashioned and redundant system. By dominating the membership of a Royal Commission on transport, the anti-tram lobby managed to persuade the authors of the subsequent report to advocate the abolition of all tram systems as ‘they got in the way of cars’. Effectively with the exception of Blackpool this disreputable campaign achieved its aim by the early 1960s, whereas other countries in Europe retained their systems and were consequently able to renew and expand them when the fashion changed. Interestingly, France, thanks to a similar campaign, also scrapped all its trams but thanks to more enlightened transport policies, now has systems in 25 towns and cities across the nation.

The scrapping of trams was the greatest transport policy error of the 20^th century – with Beeching cuts being on a par - and as Hamer painstakingly points out, was brought about by a nefarious campaign carried out by vested interests. Reading the book is essential for anyone interested in the history of transport in the UK. You can hear an interview with Mick Hamer on my podcast, Calling all Stations.

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE LAUNCH OF FAST TRACK CHRISTIAN WOLMAR’S NEW BOOK ON HIGH SPEED RAIL

Join us to celebrate the launch of Christian Wolmar’s new book on high-speed rail.

The launch event is on Thurs 30th July 6.30–8.30 Lodon. Christian will be in conversation with Andrew Martin, author of The Moquette Mystery and To the Sea by Train.

Places are very limited. (ONLY a few spots left ) If you’d like to attend, please email wolmarsubstack@gmail.com

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London is full of cyclists these days and many treat red lights as optional and pedestrians on crossings as targets. Many of the worst cyclists are those jumping on a hired Lime bike, which have become widely popular in London. These newbies have no idea how to control the things which can be like a bucking bronco and their road sense is minimal.

Also on the sin bin list are the food delivery drivers whose added crime is to use hotted up electric bikes that are both illegal and dangerous both to them and other road users. I am not lauding any of this, merely reporting what cycling in London is like these days.. There are of course a majority of cyclists who broadly follow the rules.

Yet, and here’s the rub. Despite the massive increase – a near doubling over the past five years – of cyclists in London, the number of fatalities has fallen – there were just six last year compared with nine in 2024. There have been five this year, which suggests a slight uptick, but still lower than expected if the rate per million miles cycled were considered. There has, though, been an increase in injuries in recent years, but that probably is the result of inexperienced riders falling off bikes – and those Lime bikes are very difficult to handle and heavy when they fall on top of people.

OK so something interesting is going on here. And I suspect that it is precisely because cyclists behave so badly and unpredictably that car drivers are taking more care to avoid them. The reduction of the speed limit on many roads to 20 mph from 30 mph, has probably helped too as a surprising number of drivers now seem to obey these new limits.

But I stick to my theory. The very way that cyclists are asserting themselves on the streets, often breaking the rules and making a nuisance for other road users, may well be at the heart of why there have been fewer fatalities.

In the past women were disproportionately more likely to be killed in road accidents in the capital than men precisely because they often rode in a timid and passive way. I am not victim blaming here – merely reflecting on how drivers responded to some types of cyclists. There was even research in Bristol showing that motorists gave more leeway when overtaking male cyclists than women.

None of this is to condone bad behaviour. But there is clearly research to be done on why the increase in cyclists and the reduction in their willingness to cycle within the rules has led to, it seems, a safer environment for them.

Thoughts?

And thanks to those who have sent off for my new book Fast Track - you can get signed discounted copies from me by emailing christian.wolmar@gmail.com

Christian discusses the pros and cons of the Railways Bill for conveying goods by train in Great Britain with Maggie Simpson, Director General of trade association the Rail Freight Group [1:46], after which Christian and co-presenter Mark Walker update listeners on the latest progress with the legislation [19:44]. Having been one of the first people to read Christian's new book - 'Fast Track: The Extraordinary Story of High-Speed Rail' - Mark asks the author to develop the themes of his latest work [31:48]. In his final thought from the departure lounge, Christian asks what can be done about the literally growing problem of bigger and bigger cars on the UK's roads [57:36].

That is the result of rationalising the system and simplifications like this will definitely increase the railway’s market share. But this piece of good news has barely been advertised and I only to find out about it by turning up at the ticket office at the airport. There were no big posters or people actively selling tickets as there had been in the days when National Express ran the service and encouraged people to pay their then exorbitant fares.

This is part of a wider lesson for transport ministers and those setting up Great British Railways. Not only must there be improvements to the railway, they have to create a strong perception of such success. The tasks for the soon to be appointed chair of GBR – perhaps they could start by dropping the Borisonian G – are manifold and complex.

While there has been progress with the Railways Bill finally passing all its stages in the House of Commons, there are still a huge number of known unknowns – and possibly unknown unknowns to quote Donald Rumsfeld – on the precise nature and powers of GBR. The report stage of the Bill, the final debate before it goes to the Lords, went along predictable lines in that all the amendments were easily rejected thanks to Labour’s huge majority but what was more revealing was the focus of the opposition’s attacks.

It was concern over fears of GBR’s possible monopoly position on which the most significant amendments were focussed. In particular, there is a lot of lobbying on the part of the open access operators, given that this is the only way that the old owning companies will in the future be able to run trains. Ministers have blown hot and cold over this issue, initially suggesting they would encourage open access operators and then reining back, having realised that they could end up poaching significant chunks of GBR revenue, which ultimately belongs to taxpayers.

On the second issue, the role of the independent ticket retailers, also much dithering behind the scenes. I have received briefings from insiders who are greatly supportive of third parties selling tickets, while others have told me that they will only play a limited role. Frankly, I am on the side of the latter. I want to see ticket offices remain open, at least at the most used stations, and I don’t buy the argument that the independent sector will necessarily be more innovative than GBR and therefore worth the commission it inevitably will receive.

Watch for these issues to be raised strongly by the Lords where there are several ex Tory transport secretaries and rail ministers who know enough to challenge Lord Hendy who will have his work cut out to press the case for the government’s reforms. I suspect a ringside seat will be worth it.

The Lords, remember, does not have an inbuilt majority and some of these amendments may squeeze through in the initial debate. They will then go back to the Commons, where predictably they will be rejected, and the Bill will return to the Lords. However, convention has it that this form of parliamentary ping pong can only have one winner on an issue that is a manifesto commitment, and therefore this process will only delay rather than prevent the passage of the Bill.

The likely timetable is now that the Bill will become law at the end of the year, and GBR will be created in 2027. But the debate in the Commons highlighted the amount of work that still needs to be carried out. There are more than a dozen documents that need to be produced specifying various aspects of how GBR will function.

There are by no means trivial and will form the basis of rail strategy and GBR’s role. For example, one document will clarify issues over open access which is of enormous importance for the freight companies which effectively all operate in this way. Others will set out a freight strategy, a long term strategy for the railways, and a rolling stock policy. These, along with the future role of the watchdog, Transport Focus, are likely to be the first to emerge sometime this summer, while others on open access, ticket retailing and the terms of the licence for GBR (very technical but also vital) are due in the autumn. A further half dozen will be published next year. No shortage of work, therefore, for the Department for Transport civil servants.

Given that it is unlikely that GBR will be properly established and in full receipt of its powers until 2028 given it will need time to settle down, the remarkable aspect of this restructuring of the rail industry is that it will have taken a decade to bring about from the initial concerns raised by the near collapse of the system due to the timetable changes in May 2018. In the intervening period, we have had a change of government, five transport secretaries, countless reports and debates, and numerous changes in direction. Contrast this with the ability of the Tory government with a small majority to push through rail privatisation and all its consequences in just one Parliamentary term from 1992 to 1997. I’m not suggesting that was a success and, indeed, I have long argued that the speed of the process was the cause of the four major rail accidents in a five year period, but from an administrative point of view it was a triumph, showing what can be done if there is a clear strategy and commitment. There is a lesson there to be learnt.

Time and wear on the Metro

There is both good and bad news in the fact that the Tyne and Wear Metro has, at last, got new trains with the previous set having lasted 42 years. This is an excellent light rail system that emerged out of a series of underused and abandoned lines that mostly had been part of Tyneside Electrics, which in 1904 had been one of the UK’s first electrified services and had been neglected under British Rail. Indeed, the system was de-electrified in the 1960s as it was considered too expensive to replace the life-expired equipment, and irregular services and vandalism let to falls in passenger usage.

However, far sighted local politicians at the time realised the importance of keeping a suburban network in what was one of the most deprived parts of the country whereas several other regions lost much of their suburban network under Beeching.

After its completion in the mid 1970s, the system has gradually expanded with new stations and lines, notably taking in Sunderland and its new Stadium of Light. Initially it was conceived as system that was integrated with local bus services but one of the daftest results of bus privatisation and deregulation in the mid 1980s was that buses started competing with parts of the system, rather than feeding into it. The bus companies, to their discredit, took legal action when this situation was challenged.

Now, with changes in legislation, a more coherent system can emerged with the excellent new Stadler trains. It was, though, an enormous struggle by local politicians and transport managers to convince the then Conservative government of the need for the new rolling stock, despite the all too obvious decrepit state of the old trains. Moreover, despite the new trains being promised for 2023, it is only now that all 46 have come into operation, around three years later thanks to software and other issues which seem to be the norm with new stock. Therefore the only bad news is why did it take 42 years, far beyond the expected lifetime of most railway carriages, to replace them? And will they have to last 42 years before they in turn get replaced?

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE LAUNCH OF FAST TRACK CHRISTIAN WOLMAR’S NEW BOOK ON HIGH SPEED RAIL

Join us to celebrate the launch of Christian Wolmar’s new book on high-speed rail.

The launch event is on Thurs 30th July 6.30–8.30 Lodon. Christian will be in conversation with Andrew Martin, author of The Moquette Mystery and To the Sea by Train.

Places are very limited. (LAST CHANCE) If you’d like to attend, please email wolmarsubstack@gmail.com

Can’t make the event? Signed copies of Fast Track are also available for £22 plus £4 postage. (The retail price will be £30.)

To reserve a signed copy or request an invitation to the London launch party, please contact us at wolmarsubstack@gmail.com

It is a fab story, taking in the early attempts to speed up trains including the various races held at the end of the 19^th century and the 1930s. But the bulk of the book is devoted to modern high speed rail, a story that started in Japan more than 60 years ago and one that continues to provide huge amount of media coverage. Indeed, high speed rail is rarely out of the news, whether it is the launch of a new magnificent railway, inevitably after a long gestation period and probably a budget overrun but by then who cares, or whether it is a debacle like HS2 or the California high speed rail project. There is even coverage of the fortunately very few accidents including the one in Spain this year that was the first high speed collision between two trains.

I devote a chapter to the struggles in the UK and US on their high speed lines but much of the book focusses positive, the amazing achievements of the various countries who have joined the high speed club, ranging from the earliest lines in Japan and France, to the biggest success stories, Spain and China.

On the way there are diversions to South Korea and Taiwan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia and lots of other places too. It was a fun story to write and research, which included trips to Japan and China, and there is no shortage of stories, such as the salamander who almost stopped a line being built and the jailing of the man who did the most to get China’ amazing network started.

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE LAUNCH OF FAST TRACK CHRISTIAN WOLMAR’S NEW BOOK

Join us to celebrate the launch of Christian Wolmar’s new book on high-speed rail.

The launch event will be held Thursday, 30th July, in London.

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If you’d like access to opportunities like this in the future, please consider becoming a premium subscriber. Your support helps this Substack and makes my work possible. If you’d like to attend, please email mailto:wolmarsubstack@gmail.com

Christian will be in conversation with Andrew Martin, author of The Moquette Mystery and To the Sea by Train.

DATE: Thurs 30th July 6.30–8.30 London

Can’t make the event? Signed copies of Fast Track are also available for £22 plus £4 postage. (The retail price will be £30.)

To reserve a signed copy or request an invitation to the London launch party, please contact us at mailto:wolmarsubstack@gmail.com

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