Why is the VoG line 2tph being deferred again? Doesn't seem like it should be very difficult to achieve and this deferment is not helping the WG owned Cardiff Airport's accessibility.
Cardiff Airport's problems are not VoG related. I hadn't realized how poorly used it was but for reading an earlier comment and looking it up: Bristol gets 10M passengers a year - no rail connection. A 3x per hour 25 minute bus ride.
Cardiff gets 1M passengers a year. There are 8 flights a day
- 1x to Edinburgh (EMB-145, 50 seater - would fit in a class 153 "plane replacement train" given the climate emergency?).
- 2x to Amsterdam (80 seater EMB-175)
- 1x to Belfast (80 seater ATR72)
- 1x Dublin (b737)
- 3 x b737s to Malaga, Alicante, Faro.
(of those, the inbound from Lanzarote arrives 23:50 long after the last train)
Or put this another way, if more trains stopped at Rhoose, why? There are already 18 services stopping in each direction - there are many arriving when there are no planes to catch or arrive from for hours. I wouldn't be surprised if most passengers at "Rhoose International Airport" were just local commuter/ordinary daily rail traffic.
The airport is needs £10M subsidy per year apparently too, or £10 per passenger / £20 for a return trip. The Gerallt Gymro service is apparently £4M subsidy a year, so the airport is probably better value than that - but neither make sense.
Let the airport come back with a strategy to grow and get the services, and the rail service will get used - it's a pretty good service already.