Editor's Comment

Media leaders

01.04.13: Welcome to this special Railtex 2013 edition of Rail Technology Magazine. The RTM team is looking forward to what is always a fantastic show, with so much to see, a huge number of people to meet and catch up with, and a great programme of t...

Incentives & initiatives

01.01.13: What are the chances of the Brown review recommending radical reform to the franchising process, or scrapping it altogether? Low, is the conventional wisdom – probably rightly in this case. The mistakes made in the DfT had huge and co...

Franchise demise

01.11.12: As RTM went to press, Sam Laidlaw was still busy getting to the bottom of exactly what happened with the West Coast franchising fiasco – surely one of the biggest and most embarrassing civil service mistakes of recent years. The basic...

First things first

01.09.12: With much public discussion of the franchising process so restricted, for corporate, legal and PR reasons, it can be refreshing once in a while to get a taste of what the people at the top really think – and FirstGroup’s defeat of Vi...

Give and take

01.07.12: It’s summertime, which means terrible PR for the rail industry as we all go into paroxysms over the extent of fare rises. The Government has confirmed that last year’s rise of ‘only’ RPI + 1% was a one-off, meaning t...

Job Centres

01.03.12: Bombardier’s decision to keep open its manufacturing facility at Derby, albeit with fewer workers following its decisions on jobs last year, means people’s worst fears about the future have been avoided. Paul Roberts’ stat...

The jobs forecast

01.03.12: Despite some of the controversies in the rail industry at the moment on major projects and on cost-cutting – notably debates around customer-facing staff at stations – the wider picture over the next few years is going to be one of g...

Someone's going to pay

01.01.12: 2012 will be another busy year for rail policy and technology, starting with a decision on HS2. The decision had not been made as RTM went to press, but it seemed a safe bet that Transport Secretary Justine Greening would not, as one of her...