Whilst it is true that there are rarely proper 'cashflow' issues within government / local government / the public sector* (as they can always borrow from somewhere), they do have a desire to balance expenditure against budgets (not necessarily income) on an annual or rolling 3-year basis. Slowing down work (as per the HS2 'pause' at Euston) makes it look like budgets are being met, even though the long term cost turns out to be higher and everyone knows it - tomorrow's and possibly someone else's problem!
Councils often freeze expenditure across the board if it looks like they are going to overspend towards the year end, pushing work, or at least the invoice, into the next financial year. In the opposite situation work is brought forward to ensure a budget is fully spent in the year. From (say) January to March highways crews will be doing road repairs like crazy to get the money spent before 31 March and screaming at contractors to get invoices in! It all comes down to: 'if the money isn't spent this year, it can only be because you asked for more than you really needed, so next year's budget will be set at that lower level'.
*recent Section 114 notices 'council bankruptcies' excluded.
Local government (councils) have a duty to balance budgets every year, so for maintenance and minor projects they can often defer work to next year, that’s true. At the other end of the scale, HS2 is so large that the Treasury worries about borrowing too much money in any given year (and there are politics around debt-to-gdp ratio). But I’d be very surprised if the apparent lack of progress at Cardiff Bay is cash-related - contractors are there daily, it’s just that without a drone to see what’s going on behind the hoardings, it’s very difficult for the casual observer to see obvious progress!
Shame that was a great little coffee place. I wonder if they will re open elsewhere? Thanks for the update.
If you miss it, they have another branch in Penarth, in a tiny booth next to the station.
Thanks for the update, very helpful.
There seems to be have been very slow progress considering it started 15 months ago. Whilst there are contractors there daily, it's feels like a small number. This could surely have been all done already had there been a larger workforce. As the end date has now slipped to 2025 I assume that something has gone down since plans were first made.
Just quoting the last project timeline
update - Cardiff Bay branch is supposed to have wires live on one track by November this year, with the second track complete by May next year. Worth noting that the branch is currently signalled just for one train at a time, and the opening of the second track will mark the transition to tramway-style line-of-sight operations and tramway signals. So it can’t be used until a) the 398s are in service b) the Queen St resignalling, which also completes in May ‘25.
If I were to guess at a problem that’s taking longer to solve than expected, it’d be the cart road bridge: it’s been closed for a very long time, and it’s not uncommon for bridge refurbishments to uncover a variety of surprises (most notably in Oxford at the moment)
