That's hilarious, bullet trains at 225mph on the Great Western!!?

Great research Daily Vile.

They just love writing misleading crap which twists the truth to catch your attention in that rag, don't they.

This article contains a more rounded report, and includes the key sentence that 'In Japan they run as fast as 225 miles an hour but will be limited to 125 here because the track is only built (to!) take trains of that speed'.

http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2012-07-18/bullet-trains-for-thames-valley/

Roll on the new rolling stock!

This is the story that the Mail was trying to report.

New trains

Would it benefit the South Wales economy if HS2 didn't get built as places like Leeds and Manchester would be closer to London than Cardiff?

This has been in the pipeline since before the electrification announcement - it's still good news.

Work has begun on a £220m scheme to provide hundreds of extra rush-hour seats each day on the Cardiff and Valleys railway network.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2012/08/06/220m-worth-of-good-news-for-wales-rail-commuters-91466-31555496/#ixzz22krdCYlY

Great proposal from Mark:
http://www.m.walesonline.co.uk/ms/p/tmg/walesol/sbmS_dvc0uOEPSkOd_cicLg/view.m?id=5127591&tid=638956&cat=Business_News

Mark, throughout that article you propose that a City -region approach should be taken to transportation. Do you think the same approach should be taken to employment and housing? It seems to me that planning strategically across South Wales for transport but not for housing will achieve less than optimal results and that some gains in transport may be negated by a disjointed approach to where we build our houses.

Timetable announced for electrification:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20941072

London - Cardiff 2017
London - Cardiff - Swansea 2018

Valleys complete by 2020 - 2024, poss first line ready to go in 2017.

I'm not sure if the 2017 date for Cardiff London means that's when the first trains will be running or whether we will need to wait for the full line to Swansea to be in operation before they run electric for any part of it.

I'm told season tickets from Barry to Cardiff haven't risen by too much in the new year. Apparently much of the fare rises going on are to pay for the monstrosity of HS2. I can't help but feel that's going to turn out to be a huge waste of money that would be better spent elsewhere on the network.

I wonder if it would be possible to re-open the line to Creigau, particularly if the go ahead is given to the Waterhall development in north west Cardiff. Unfortunately they have built some houses in the way, so compulsory purchase might be necessary. Ah well.

It's very possible. There's a good discussion on it here.

http://dicmortimer.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/waterhall-and-back/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rdfsm anyone catch this yesterday?

you might like this... live from tomorrow AM

www.metroconsortium.co.uk

Link doesn't work! What was supposed to be there?

For some reason the link does not work from within the forum...try typing it in your browser, it works then www.metroconsortium.com or www.metroconsortium.co.uk

 Metro Consortium

.

As Mr Punch might have said - that's the way to do it. Way to go.

Good read that was! Nice to see this is being led by the private sector.

I found Jonathon Adam's piece interesting. He seemed to be advocating the managed decline and depopulation of some parts of the valleys.

His view is that towns/villages should be clustered around transport hubs with services close by and that there should be demolition of some housing to create green spaces between different settlements aping more rural settlements where everything radiates out from one centre. I get what he's saying. Quite often you drive along one road with development on either side and it's almost impossible to tell when one village ends and the other starts. He also advocates that larger towns such as Merthyr, Ponty, Aberdare etc should in effect act as more urban centres with higher density development.

His reasoning behind this is that the valleys area is not appropriate for large human settlements particularly now that it's raison d'etre has disappeared. He has a point. If coal had never been discovered would many of those towns have ever been built?

That leads to another conclusion of his - implied rather than explicit - that a lot of valleys towns are rather jerry built and don't really have the amenities that towns of that size should have. Once again I can't argue too much with that. With a few exceptions the built enviroment in Wales is quite poor. I think this is down to the way urbanisation took hold in south Wales at least - whole new towns predominantly consisting of cheap housing built in inaccessible places for the sole purpose of being close to heavy industry. I suppose you could argue that as a result of that pattern of development the character of the Valleys - tight knit, communitarian etc - was formed.

I think he has a number of valid points but it's quite a controversial standpoint in a document that is trying to build consensus and I wonder how that will play with people outside of Cardiff.

Looking at the doc on the above new website on the link below I was surprised that the Crwys Road station was based around the existing pedestrian link over the railway line between Richmond Road and Rhymney Street. I would have thought it would be better to base it on the existing road bridge (Crwys Road itself). This would provide access from four directions as opposed to two (or possible three) with the pedestrian bridge.

That given, the pedestrian bridge scheme included a focus on redevelopment of that old site tucked between Richmond Road and Crwys Place which has been in and out of the planning system with a flats development for a little while now. I guess the attraction in that this development could provide financial support for the station. However, I suspect someone will build flats on this land anyway before the metro plan becomes a reality (unless the metro plans actually puts developers off building onsite in the hope a station wil be there that increases the site value).

Either way, there are old buildings suitable for redevelopment eitherside of Crwys Road bridge that, if allowed to get a high as the new build across the road, could also supply some money to the pot.

And I recognise that the images in the report are just illustrative.


http://metroconsortium.co.uk/downloads/Metro-Consortium-21-03-13WEB.pdf

I watched it, but only now got chance to comment. I seemed largely an ok coverage of the issues, but was largely ruined by a caricature of the debate by the reporter. The main problem was that the city region approach was misrepresented as making areas around cardiff into parts of cardiff, as opposed to being areas around cardiff that were better connected to cardiff. This was not helped by some attention seeking by Terry Matthews who argued newport and swansea should call themselves part of brand cardiff (felt like he enjoyed saying something outlandish to gain tv minutes for his opinions), and this led the reporter to frame interviews with people in the valleys about train connectivity in terms of whether they would want to be part of cardiff (and support the blues) or not. They all said no of course, but it has nothing to do with anything. (They just had to squeeze rugby in to it somehow)

Then, in the closing commments, an equally stupid comment. It asked the audience whether they would prefer to see the metro plan as being devised or whether it would be better to invest in the existing rail infrastructure. But they are the same thing! The metro is based on an expansion of the existing network once electrified. It was all just bloody stupid and pointed to how we cant have a serious news programme intelligently made about a serious issue in wales. I understand that the issues need to be made accessible, but there is no need to totally misrepresent them.

the show was also horrendously edited with interviews cut abruptly short and overuse of that stupid ident with the sort of "static" noise in the background. Also, the presenter kept popping up at various places like the Ely Bridge housing development but didn't say where he was or what was planned for there!

I thought it was shockingly ameteur, badly researched, badly put together and badly presented!

I also groaned when I saw that. Why on earth did BBC Wales go to the bar at Ponty RFC to discuss proposed transport policy? I immediately feared a barrage of parochialism, which fortunately didn't materialise because they managed to find people who could speak coherently on camera. Thank God they didn't speak to the people who are usually hanging around the back entrance of Ponty station!

two of them post on here

This metro should have been built years ago, I was in Sheffield two weeks ago their tram system was opened in 1994!

There is no reason why Cardiff Metro can not be launched almost immediately, by taking the existing Valleys Lines out of the hands of Arriva Wales - yes it would only involve rebranding initially but dont underestimate the strength of this in generating public interest and increasing profile of what is already an extensive suburban metro network.

Wales and borders franchise is with arriva until 2018. Although responsibility is with the Welsh government, so I wonder if there will be an appetite for nationalisation post 2018

Labour, Plaid and the Lib Dems have all suggested it could be run as an arms-length "not for profit" operation on the lines of Glas Cymru. I believe there's some uncertainty over whether the Assembly has the power to adopt such a model or whether its obliged to go to open tender.

What the Assembly does have the power to do it to divorce the franchise and the brand. "ScotRail" is always "ScotRail" who ever holds the franchise. The Welsh Government could probably introduce a "Metro" branding on services if it wanted - although it might have to pay for the paint!

this may be a bit out of date but I'm sure that ATW received something like a £70m subsidy from WG in 2010 - it is probably a bit more now. At the time ATW made £14m profit so WG could reduce the subsidy wy £14m to make it not for profit. That way it keeps the business in the private sector and encourages better value for money and cost mananagement than would otherwise arise if it was nationalised.

It was £170 million I think, and arriva are taking almost 10% of that straight out of the country.

If we reduce the subsidy then they aren't going to just make no profit for theirshareholders, they'll just cut services and pocket the cash.

This franchise needs to be split into two
=> the heavily trafficked and profitable Valleys Lines should be separated out and run on a commercial basis without subsidy - and to be relaunched and branded as Cardiff Metro and developed further
=> the lightly trafficked rural services (Border, Heart of Wales, Cambrian Coast, anything else I have forgotten..) are non-profitable services which should be run as a social service for rural communities, and attract a subsidy. I suggest rebranding these servies as RailWales

The problem for me has been the lack of competition in the market. If I get a return from Aber to cardiff, there is only one train company i can travel on, and that company are also forced to operate several loss making other lines.

I think that in this case, we are so far from a perfect market that the private sector is unlikely to be an improvement over a state run service.

I would like to see a state run company run the trains in Wales, but I would attempt to introduce some behavioural motivation to simulate the behaviour of a private company in a competitive market.

Something along the lines of starting the new company with employment contracts that have a modest basic wage, and significant bonuses if targets are reached in areas like punctuality, number of passengers and profitability. Maybe 5% per target, with the targets being set against the performance of other train lines.

There is plenty of competition - you can take the train, or the bus, or a car....

Not sure where else to put this but last week...

£11.5m for train station in Ebbw Vale town centre

... and today...

Station at Pye Corner, Newport moves step closer after £1m cash boost

The Ebbw Vale line is progressing nicely, any other lines with the realsitic potential for new stations in the next couple of years?

There's going to be a new station on the Rhymney Valley line at Energlyn in Caerphilly:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22252058

Any chance of that Ebbw Vale line connecting to Newport any time soon? How many millions are they holding the WG to ransom nowadays for a new set of points? Apparently that's all that's stopping them, and they want taxpayers' cash before they'll think about it.

I always wonder why, whenever rail is concerned, there are always a couple of zeros added to what you'd consider a reasonable cost. That line is a shadow of its former self - it's unidirectional apart from a few passing points. The stations themselves are nothing more than glorified bus stops. £11 million? Seriously?!Someone is bleeding tax payers dry here.

Does anyone know what will happen to the journey time between Paddington and Cardiff when the electrification comes through. My memory was that it would cut the journey time to Swansea by 20 minutes, so you'd guess the Cardiff time would be maybe 15 minutes less and about 1hr50m?

I presume there is time saved because of the more impressive acceleration/deceleration of electric. Have they included the fact that the new super trains will be able to go at 140mph? It would be nice if you could get to London in 90 minutes as even with HS2 Cardiff wouldn't be at much of a disadvantage.

Announcement in the last few days of a new station at Pye Corner as well - on the Ebbw Vale line nr Bassaleg. It strikes me that Newport is somewhere that needs all the suburban railway stations it can get.

The Ebbw Vale rail line runs out well short of the town centre so they're going to have to put in about a mile of extra track. That'll be why it's expensive.

The extension is all tied up with this development in ebbw vale:

http://www.theworksebbwvale.co.uk/?skip=1&lang=en

The new Intercity Express trains will only be capable of 125mph as that's the maximum line speed on the GW. They will be able to be easily modified if necessary to 140mph.

The trains will or the line will?

The trains, the line is more complicated.

Oh great!

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/new-electric-valley-lines-rolling-4040269

Perfectly sensible to use old rolling stock on the Valley Lines as the money saved could be used to develop new routes and open new stations. John Davies knows what he's talking about he's the man who helped save the Valley Lines in the 1980's.

Personally I'd rather see new stations in Cardiff and the Valleys than shiny new trains. London is still served by some pretty old diesel trains and when you get down into the underground some of the rolling stock dates back to the early 1970's.

I can remember taking a mate from leafy Surrey up the Rhymney valley line (fnarr fnarr) about 10 years ago and he said it was like being in a third world country.

The prices are pretty reasonable though aren't they? It's all very well complaining about the carriages, but as people have said the underground is hardly smart is it? Is this WAG funded or does it come from Westminster?

It comes from Westminster, rail isn't devolved. It's hardly surprising that Wales gets hand me downs from a Government who couldn't give two shits about us.

But those trains were new for the underground in the 70's, on other Lines they have very up to date stock. On practically all our lines in South Wales we have crap trains that were handed down to us from other places in Britain. It's important to remember that these will be the first electric trains on computer lines in Wales surely that merits newer trains?

Living in London now, I can report that tfl (transport for london) is investing billions into the tube. There is a rolling programme of replacing old train stock. They started a few years ago by replacing all of the trains on the met line, which were all 40 - 50 years old. Next was the Victoria line and now this year the circle and hammersmith & city lines. Then moving forward with all of the other lines. The last ones to be replaced will be the Bakerloo line by which time the trains will be getting close to 50 years old.
Some of the suburban overground trains are totally minging and yak! and of the same age/design as those used in south wales/cardiff.

My point is that although the rolling stock in wales may look pretty crappy it is in no way any worse that the trains used in London.

Yes this is very true, but the new stock is brand new, not refurbished old stock.

and if Wales gets refurbished rolling stock then somewhere else gets the brand new stock.