Cardiff Gridlock

[jonesy]

Cardiff and the Valleys are ideally suited to public transport because the geography forces development into narrow corridors with rail and road links running along them. The industrial past left a dense network of railway lines that are were originally primarily for coal and ore, but lend themselves to conversion to light rail or metro. Sadly a lot of useful routes were closed, in particular east to west between the Valleys (you can look at old maps and weep at the opportunity that was thrown away) but what remains is still more extensive than in many city regions.

 

[mjr]

[QUOTE 4921486, member: 43827"]Yes. The world is full of selfish, inconsiderate people who think only of themselves and their families and want to live in beautiful houses in places like Merthyr.

The difference between fuel costs and rail fares, and an extra hour a day commuting, might mean nothing to you but it is quite important to many.[/QUOTE]
So do you feel that because some people are currently cursed with long-distance car-commuting and will be first to hit the wall when fuel costs rise, we should keep encouraging that car-dominated lifestyle and not do anything to change how any city is currently configured?

All these arguments against moving any large employers near public transport hubs sounds like a manifesto for fiddling while Rome burns... or at least while Cardiff chokes.

 

[jonesy]

[QUOTE 4921955, member: 43827"]That apology is after four pints of Brains Bitter, but I think I'll still mean it tomorrow morning.[/QUOTE]
They didn't have Brains SA on tap?

 

[jonesy]

[QUOTE 4922190, member: 43827"]I know my limits.[/QUOTE]
I should have done too in my foolish youth...

 

[jonesy]

@jonesy isn't a snowflake ...[/QUOTE]

You should have given me a trigger warning if you going to comment on my age.

 

[Bazzer]

Cardiff city is almost at gridlock in rush hour.

How have our glorious council leaders tackled this?

By approving a city center office block to accomodate 4000 extra
workers .

2000 of the workers are HMRC employees that currently work in LLanishen a few miles outside the city center.

The move by HMRC to locate to a city centre will be because of the transport links. It is also part of a much bigger plan by HMRC to shrink its estate, hence why, with (currently) a limited number of exceptions, your local tax office no longer exists.
However poor you may feel the transport links are in Cardiff, in general a city centre location presents the opportunity to attract staff from a wider geographic area and therefore in theory at least, the pool of suitable candidates for jobs is expanded.
From conversations I have had with people behind such moves, the discomfort, overcrowding, or jams employees have in getting to and from work is of no consideration.

 

[mjr]

[QUOTE 4921949, member: 43827"]No, we should not keep encouraging such a car dominated environment, but any planned changes should be based around investment in improved infrastructure and not just by penalising or demonising those people who have been "encouraged" to use cars for commuting in the past because of the lack of previous investment in such infrastructure.[/QUOTE]
OK, so how do we get there from here? If infrastructure is built before granting permission to develop, developers aren't going to be paying (they pay the infrastructure levy in installments as development happens) and government gets lambasted for using taxes to build infrastructure where there's no demand (yet). All those sensational press reports of "white elephant" and "council folly" roads, cycleways, health centres and so on are partly how we got to the current situation where infrastructure comes last.

 

[User16625]

Your quite correct Adrian Yes those that go in by train would be able to get to Wood St quicker than Llanishen that's a no brainer.


Bringing in thousands of workers previously based outside the city centre cant possibly help. Long term high quality jobs encourage people to consider moving close to where they work , putting huge employers in a city center pretty much removes that option .

Unless a major overhaul of our road ,rail and cycling provision is proposed gridlock on the roads and third world experience on the trains are here to stay and get worse.

I certainly wouldn't hold up Amazon as an example of a good employer but look at their out of town warehouse in Swansea. Easy motorway link. Cycle path to City center and other places . Lines of buses outside at shift change time and car parking on site. But no shiny new building to showcase how well we are all doing.

Swansea tho?

 

[Profpointy]

For all the naysayers, surely it'll be far easier to get into the centre of town by public transport than it would be to get to a building out in the 'burbs or out of town entirely. The latter would pretty much force you to drive particularly for anyone outside the city. I'd not want to car commute into the centre of cardiff, so if I was taking such a job I'd go by train / bus / cycle rather than drive. Hey, some people even live in town and could walk

 

[mjr]

[QUOTE 4922515, member: 43827"]Concrete proposals for infrastructure development would be a help. They don't necessarily have to be completed before building developments can take place, but there needs to be evidence that overall public transport improvements are an integral part of the city centre development and will take place within a defined timescale, not an afterthought based on how things turn out.[/QUOTE]
The long-discussed "Cardiff Central Enterprise Zone and Regional Transport Hub" plan has already been approved, so aren't they just doing what you say they should? They have concrete proposals but they can't do the final design and build until they approve the other parts of the development so they can start raising the levy to pay for it.

 

[lutonloony]

We had gridlock here the other day, two tractor drivers stopped for a chat