• Frank Bongiorno

09 February 2010The congestion charge has helped make London work better for commuters, writes Frank Bongiorno in Inside Story

SOME YEARS AGO, when I was a fellow in a Cambridge college for a few months, I met a very pleasant man, Alan Whitehouse, who was (and remains) a BBC transport correspondent in northern England. He’s an expert on rail. I recall being mightily impressed that the BBC had such a specialised post – in fact, they seem to have several transport specialists – but I’ve since realised that it simply reflects the significance of transport in general, and public transport in particular, in Britain.

Perhaps better known and certainly more infamous than my dinner companion is a man named Richard Beeching. In 1966, as chair of the British Railways Board, Dr Beeching was responsible for axing 4000 miles of British railway track. The phrase “the Beeching Axe” is still occasionally heard in this country; although it’s not quite as much of an historical landmark as, say, the Norman Conquest or the execution of Charles I, it’s recalled as a significant moment in the making of (post)modern Britain...

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