Railways: The Wales train service that is mimicking London’s Tube

While the new South Wales Metro has been described as transformative for people in the valleys getting to and from Cardiff, one of the criticisms that in the short-term is it will not increase rail transport for much of Wales’ biggest city.

With a population of about 360,000, more people live in Cardiff than most of the valley destinations combined – which includes Barry and Bridgend as well as those bigger valley towns.

“The South Wales Metro will be transformational for areas around Cardiff but large parts of the city are not going to see any change in service frequency or capacity,” said Prof Barry, who was an TfW advisor on the metro until recently.

“That’s a bit of a hole for me. We need to fix the Cardiff issue because then we can say that Cardiff is getting the full metro treatment, it’s not quite getting that from the current committed phase of work.”

Some areas of the city like Radyr, Llandaff, Cathays and the valleys hub at Cardiff Queen Street will get more trains, but many parts will not in this first metro phase.