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City rail link 'too long' - councillor

3:23pm Thursday 13th March 2008

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PEOPLE using the Ebbw Valley railway line may be deterred from visiting Newport because of the lengthy bus journey into the city centre, claims a politician.

It does not take the most direct route from Rogerstone.

Instead, the regular service includes a stop at the Celtic Springs business and industrial areas of the city.

Council bosses, who want to encourage workers to leave their cars, claim this adds just five minutes to the journey time.

But Councillor Matthew Evans said the timetabled trip of around 40 minutes was too long.

He added that figures for the service show that hardly anyone wanted to get off at Celtic Springs.

Many journeys have no passengers at all for the stop, said Councillor Evans.

"We want to encourage people to get off at Rogerstone and come into the city centre. The most direct route would be along Risca Road and straight into town.

"If it is going to take 40 minutes, people might just stay on the train and go to Cardiff."

Councillor Ken Critchley, cabinet member for engineering and transport, said nearly 9,000 people worked at Celtic Springs and the numbers were forecast to increase to more than 12,000 by 2011.

"For an additional five minutes on the running time it seemed a sensible idea to provide the link and hopefully reduce congestion on/around junction 28.

"Clearly it is beneficial to make the best use of the service provided by including this major employment area on the route thus providing access to well paid employment opportunities for people living in the Ebbw Valley area served by the new rail line."

Councillor Critchley added the rail link service diversion to Celtic Springs was being trialled for six months.

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Your Say YourSouth Wales Argus

Chris, says...
3:51pm Thu 13 Mar 08

40 mins to get from Rogerstone to Newport City Centre?
The train would take 10 mins max . (If only there was a service to Newport, of course, in addition to the one to Cardiff.)

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
4:08pm Thu 13 Mar 08

Chris - you took the words right out of my mouth. The most direct route would not be Risca Road, it would be Gaer Tunnel!!

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matt e, comments says...
4:12pm Thu 13 Mar 08

I agree with you both, but at the moment that isn't an option, and you could get to Bristol quicker than this from Rogerstone !

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
4:22pm Thu 13 Mar 08

Although you wouldn't get a seat! ;)

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Marky, Newport says...
4:36pm Thu 13 Mar 08

In other words Celtic Springs is being given priority over the city centre. Stop talking out of your **** Critchley, how many people will work there in 2011 is not relevent now. Until the rail link is completed, why can't we have 2 seperate buses?

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Dave on his soapbox, Casnewydd, Gwent says...
4:53pm Thu 13 Mar 08

...the rail link hasn't a high enough profile for the city councillors to really want to put this up their list of priorities.....
the majority of people who would benefit are council tax payers in other authority areas of Torfaen, Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly.... so the money out of Newport's funds would not be spent/benefit on taxpayers of city....

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roy the boy, newbridge says...
4:57pm Thu 13 Mar 08

AS a user of the rail link. I fail to see why I have to mess about with busses to get to npt. AT cardiff I arrive at the central and can access every thing npt has to offer. SO im afraid npt has got to come up with a better incentive than what is talked about at the moment. Im sure im not the only one thinking this way

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Rob, Risca says...
6:10pm Thu 13 Mar 08

A direct train service is the only answer to this - the bus will always take much longer and is second best. Ultimately, Newport councillors must give it priority soon because the train must already be siphoning off business to Cardiff and that could threaten the viability of the new shopping and other commercial developments in the city.

As a matter of interest, has anyone seen many passengers using the Rail Linc bus? I've seen the odd one or two, but that's all!

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
8:54pm Thu 13 Mar 08

Spot-on Rob. The only problem is the city council are pretty powerless to do anything about it. It's the permanent excuse factories of the WAG and Network Rail who need to pull their respective fingers out...

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lmc, newbridge says...
9:03pm Thu 13 Mar 08

why catch a train that runs from ebbw vale to cardiff,to get to newport,,catch a bus from any stop from newbridge to newport every 10 minutes,,stop wasteing money on the link bus

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Rob, Risca says...
7:51am Fri 14 Mar 08

As a matter of interest I see that Stagecoach will be introducing a revised evening bus service R4 from Risca to Newport and return from 31 March. This will travel directly to Newport but return via Rogerstone Rail station on its way back to Risca. This operates after the Rail Linc service has finished for the day.

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fedUp, Wales says...
9:58am Fri 14 Mar 08

Why would I catch a train to Rogerstone from Newbridge about 20mins then a 40 min bus ride into Newport. I would just jump on a bus in Newbridge that is every ten minutes and get to Newport in about 40mins saving me 20mins travelling. That link bus is a waste of time.

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DG, Newport says...
10:48am Fri 14 Mar 08

Fully agree that the Link Bus is pointless. Aside from the direct bus into the city centre, I believe you can catch a Cardiff bus that goes past Celtic Springs/Cleppa Park from Newbridge, too - X16 I think?

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pwharley, Newport says...
12:13am Sat 15 Mar 08

Perhaps Stagecoach could be paid to divert some of their direct buses to Newport via Rogerstone Station? Passengers would then have the choice of going to Celtic Springs or direct to the City Centre.

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DG, Newport says...
10:41am Mon 17 Mar 08

Nice thought, but wouldn't that mean that instead of having a the choice of the indirect train route or the direct bus route, we're left with an indirect train route or an indirect bus route?

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BOB, nEWPORT says...
7:32pm Wed 26 Mar 08

pwharley wrote:
Perhaps Stagecoach could be paid to divert some of their direct buses to Newport via Rogerstone Station? Passengers would then have the choice of going to Celtic Springs or direct to the City Centre.
The daft thing is there is already a direct bus sevice the Stagecoach R6 from Newport to Afon Village that preety much passes the Rail Station. It would ned minor changes to the timetable but that all. So why are the Council paying out something like £40K to run a bus around empty. It is pretty clear that an hourly train service will not generate much traffic to Newport, particularly when it takes up to 50 minutes.

The service to Cleppa Park could be amended to run via the local estates and Pye Corner to Celtic Springs that might provide a usefull service. I expect though the councill will get hung up on it having to be a specific Rail Link service. If they do then that service also will be dead in the water.

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BOB, nEWPORT says...
8:25pm Wed 26 Mar 08

roy the boy wrote:
AS a user of the rail link. I fail to see why I have to mess about with busses to get to npt. AT cardiff I arrive at the central and can access every thing npt has to offer. SO im afraid npt has got to come up with a better incentive than what is talked about at the moment. Im sure im not the only one thinking this way
Well this ideas are dreamt up by people who have not a clue. Quite how they expected people to use a bus service that takes pretty much an hour from Rogerstone to Newport defies common sense

Logically from a sensibly point of view you would have routed all the trans via Newport to Cardiff. By doing that you link the two major centres and can provide a more frequent service. An hourly service is never going to attract that many people and as the line is single track it will be difficult to run the trains more frequently then every 1/2 hour.

Routing al the trains to Cadiff via Newport would provide a higher frequency service and considerably improve usage as it serves the two major centres.

This though would be far to logical.

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BOB, nEWPORT says...
7:26pm Thu 27 Mar 08

The even bigger mess is the bus station. It appear however came up with the new proposal failed to consult anyone and got his sums wrong so the new bus station is far to small and also poses considerable safety issues. The same shambles occurred with the lower dock street bus stands. The bus companies have only reluctantly used them because of the safety issues they pose. There have already been several near misses. Its also proved a hazard for pedestrians as well as causing considerable difficulties when changing buses
Given the track record of the organisation involved I suppose we should have expected it. Looks as if the budget is well overspent now so look forward to most cost cutting.

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BOB, nEWPORT says...
6:41pm Sat 29 Mar 08

Owain Vaughan wrote:
Spot-on Rob. The only problem is the city council are pretty powerless to do anything about it. It's the permanent excuse factories of the WAG and Network Rail who need to pull their respective fingers out...
One has to ask what planning and market research went into this. I strongly suspect about zero because if they had they would not be running this service in the manner they are.

Currently because of this incompetence the taxpayers are paying Newport Tranport to run 2 empty buses around all day.

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BOB, nEWPORT says...
8:56am Sun 30 Mar 08

roy the boy wrote:
AS a user of the rail link. I fail to see why I have to mess about with busses to get to npt. AT cardiff I arrive at the central and can access every thing npt has to offer. SO im afraid npt has got to come up with a better incentive than what is talked about at the moment. Im sure im not the only one thinking this way
Even dafter is the fares which I looked up on the Arriva Web site. A single from Rogerstone to Ebbw Vale is £1.90. A single from Newport to Ebbv Vale is £6.30. So the short stretch from Newport to Rogerstone costs £4.30. It would not cost that much more to do it by taxi and it would be a lot quicker.

Even dafter is a normal service bus to Rogerstone would cost £1:10. So anyone using this raillink service is just being ripped off.

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Shuttle bus waiting outside Rogerstone station Shuttle bus waiting outside Rogerstone station

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