Railwatch 086 - November 2000

De Cymru - South Wales

By Julian Langston julian.langston@bbc.co.uk and Peter Clark

Franchise renewal Eight companies have pre-qualified to compete for the new Wales and Borders franchise. We are sending our development plan to all of them and await the next stage in the process, which should be the announcement of a shortlist of preferred bidders. Meanwhile the fact that the new franchise has attracted so much interest could be considered mildly encouraging.

Caerleon station Newport Council has included provision for a reopened station at Caerleon in its unitary development plan and subsequent local transport plan, and has since issued a draft planning brief for a development project which would include a station. We submitted a response to the latter and followed it up with a meeting with council planners. Our concern about the site proposed is that although it will serve the new development and some housing estates very well, it is rather distant from the centre, the university campus and the Roman remains, thus making it difficult to attract incoming tourist traffic and to serve the student population adequately. The council has recognised the potential tourist and student traffic on offer, so the station must be sited to serve these as well as meet the needs of local residents because all types of traffic will be needed if the station is to be viable. We were assured our views will be considered, and that the station location shown in the draft planning brief is not necessarily the final one.

The former station was ideally sited but unfortunately the surrounding land was sold off after closure and developed as a small trading estate - another example of why it is important to safeguard railway land - so that access and car parking provision would not meet present-day requirements.

Line reopenings The rather ambitious timetable promulgated for reopening the Barry-Bridgend, Vale of Glamorgan line - see Railwatch 84 - seems to have been recognised as such and latest announcements refer to passenger trains starting in late 2002. The long-deliberated Ebbw Vale line reopening still has many hurdles to overcome. Results of the current round of studies are not now expected until about the end of the year. Meanwhile the Ebbw Valley Rail Consortium (the three unitary authorities plus the Welsh Development Agency) has produced an attractive leaflet for house-to-house delivery in the area, describing the scheme and its potential benefits.

Timetable changesWe welcome an increase of four daily Central Trains services on the Cardiff-Birmingham-Nottingham route. As the Wales & West component of the service (south of Birmingham) remains unchanged, the total service is now even further from being regular interval. It's a pity that the opportunity was not taken to improve the service at Chepstow and Caldicot where the two-hourly off-peak frequency is poor for communities of their size. Meanwhile, First Great Western, which has a franchise commitment to introduce a half-hourly London-Cardiff frequency next year, has actually reduced the service by ceasing to run the 16.30 Paddington-Cardiff!

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