I've been following this thread with interest from afar for some time. I live up in York at the moment but I'm a Rhondda boy. I've been catching trains to Cardiff since I was a toddler.
I wanted to ask the forum - is light rail off the agenda now? I'm very concerned about it. You see, in the valleys we have been absolutely robbed of some of our vital public transport infrastructure in recent years. As the roads have improved, bus services have been cut. In my valley, which lost its passenger service in the 60s, we lost the Rail Link bus service to the next valley due to austerity cuts a few years ago - instead they encouraged us to take a normal service bus to Porth, which isn't the same. A year or two later, we also lost the express bus service to Cardiff - we now have to change at Pontypridd if we want to get to Cardiff within 2 hours. It's that bad - where once you had a choice of a bus to link to a train, or an express bus, now you have to make your own way to the capital, 20 miles away. It's absurd, and I don't think anyone outside the valleys really understands, especially in light of the huge deprivation here.
Now we're facing the possibility (unbeknownst to most of the people who live here) of losing our trains altogether. The WAG have been promoting this idea of trams as a cleaner, cheaper alternative - if it went ahead, no doubt they would say it's huge investment, rather than avoiding doing a proper job, and make it easier to expand. The disruption would be enormous because every station would have to be altered and the wires would still have to be put up. We'd probably lose the freight too, even if there's not much these days. It feels like to me that why would you bother going to the length of electrifying in a half-arsed way? It feels so short-sighted. It's not what people want.
And yet when I'm reading the industry magazines, it's basically being heavily implied that this is what the WAG wants to do. I can't help but feel Ken Skates is totally out of his depth - it seems like he's just parroting some Lyle Lanley-esque scheme that he's been sold, an easy political win which 10-20 years down the line will end up a total disaster. I don't trust Welsh Labour on this at all - contrasted with the Westminster party, they've become very pro-business and Cardiff-centric. I'm supportive of the concept of the Metro, but not if it's just a glorified cover for more valleys austerity so that Cardiff city centre and the Bay can get some shiny trams to show it's "competing" with Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh et al. It would make far more sense if it was basically the same as the West Yorkshire Metro which seems to work quite well - but that means retaining heavy rail. No one would suggest sticking trams or tram-trains out to Castleford, Knottingley, Ilkley or Harrogate. Why is that South Wales seems to be bottom of the pile, below even the North in the pecking order?
So what's the score? Is this an inevitability now? My gut feeling is that it is - I can't help think that we're going to get shafted again, and that within a few years we're going to be longing for Pacers again.
