Transport advisors

Christian Wolmar’s article in RAIL 951 quite rightly castigating the Treasury and Department for Transport for their role in minutely managing everything they can get their hands on, contrasts quite vividly with his praise of Andrew Gilligan for apparently doing something very similar!

That Andrew is no friend of HS2 is well-known, from his articles in The Daily Telegraph prior to his appointment as Boris Johnson’s transport advisor. But those articles also illustrated a poor appreciation of the expertise and experience of both how the railways were run and the engineering skills of HS2 builders.

It would be interesting to know exactly what input Andrew had in the appalling Integrated Rail Plan, and in particular the decision to only partially build the eastern leg of HS2.

If it is wrong for the DfT and Treasury, with their ‘cost of everything - value of nothing’ approach, why is it correct for a high-level advisor to get involved with similar issues?

John H Brook, Chapel-en-le-Frith