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....

Didnt know where to put this. So I put it here as its to do with isolation. Pretty bleak film about life in the valleys, with not much confidence that the Works or the race track will help.

"There are fewer than 60,000 adults in Blaenau Gwent. Each month almost 10,000 prescriptions are issued for anti-depressants. It is a statistic so shocking it is hard to comprehend."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23028078

Petitions need to be started in both towns and eventually submitted to the WG's petitions committee.

Not really relevant to this thread, but thought I'd mention that I read on the weekend in the papers that Milton Keynes are ploughing ahead with an Ultra pod transport system - looks identical to the one that Cardiff turned down about a decade ago.

Paul I think you're being a bit harsh. As aesthetically pleasing as the Taff vale railway station was, the Victorian architecture needs to be considered against the post modern avant garde queen street station we have now. In years to come olso's centralstation, berlin's hauptbahnhof and cardiffs queen street will share the same first page in the greatest early 21st century railway stations almanac.

well call me old fashioned!!

Due to the stops being pretty close and the fact that the line is pretty curved I doubt the GWML will get much faster tbf, unless it is rebuilt in a new alignment. The late night trains run slower as they have contingency time built in for example if they have to go via another route last minute or being put on the slow lines out of Paddington which means it generally takes an extra 10/15 minutes to get to Reading. Annoying but that's what happens when the companies get fined if the train is late to its destination.