Having looked at some of the strengths and weaknesses of transport policy for Wales things now turn to geography.
In today’s piece:
- Where do weak points and gaps exist in the Welsh transport network?
- Is Wales poorly connected to the rest of Great Britain and Ireland? If so, what connections could be prioritised for improvement?
- What other international links ought to be prioritised for improvement (with one eye on independence)?
After another break, the run-in (starting August 21st) will consist of the final five articles looking at specific transport modes including road transport policies, where new railway stations should/could be built, what railways could/should be reopened, where bus rapid transit could work, other policy changes with independence, international comparisons etc. I’ll save that for then.
This one is more general, focusing on transport corridors with a national or regional impact and it’ll all inform those final five articles.
That’s not because transport at local level is less important, it’s more because I’ll be here all day if I had to include it. There could be some bits and pieces I’ve missed out too.
Brace yourselves for a lot of maps.
“Transport gap” is going to be defined as meaning:
- Principal or large settlements that aren’t directly served by a railway station.
- Transport corridors that would significantly improve connections within a region/travel to work area but have physical barriers or engineering challenges that make the delivery of new infrastructure difficult.
- An important intra-Wales corridor that isn’t served as well as it should by all forms of public transport (what you could call “nation-building gaps”), or has an otherwise sub-standard road network.
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It speaks for itself.
It’s largely a legacy of the Beeching cuts. Though having said that, there are provisional or advanced plans to reconnect some of those settlements to the rail network again: Llangefni, Holywell/Greenfield, Abertillery and the Llantrisant/Beddau/Church Village area. There’ll be more on this in Part VIII.
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The main physical barriers to the delivery of new intra-regional transport infrastructure are mountain and hill ranges. Most will have a road going across the top – even a trunk road – but those roads might not be up to modern highways standards.
The most impactful physical barriers (given the potential volumes of traffic/passengers) are those imposed by the Brecon Beacons, as well as the lack of a suitable corridor across the central part of the southern valleys between Rhondda and Torfaen (more on one potential solution to that from Prof. Mark Barry).
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Not all of the sub-standard strategic corridors I’ve highlighted are bad in terms of public transport – the TrawsCymru bus network often adequately fills any gaps in the rail network (Part VII).
It’s perhaps more an issue of being under-developed relative to their local or regional importance.
The A470, for example, isn’t that important in terms of north-south travel, more so for travel between different parts of northern and central Wales.
Similarly, given Aberystwyth’s relative importance as a regional centre and university town, it must have amongst the worst road links in the UK as well as an under-developed rail service (Part VI, Part VIII).
