FEW AND FAR BETWEEN

Some more positive news - for the first time in 56 years, the village was joined to the rail network as the first train stopped on Sunday. The opening was obviously low key as Wales is under a strict Covid-19 lockdown. The 09:12 GMT service from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth stopped to pick up passengers at the Ceredigion village for the first time since 1965. 

The £8 million pound project to reopen the station on the Cambrian Line that connects Aberystwyth and Pwllheli to Birmingham and Shrewsbury has been 11 years in the making. The new single-track halt with a park-and-ride is south of the old station. It closed after 101 years in the 1960s Beeching cuts which saw the end of thousands of stations around the UK. The completion of this project is a very visible first step for the Transport for Wales rail franchise. 

Now while this is good news, the news that Bow Street station is the first station to open in Wales since Pye Corner in Newport more than six years ago (on 14-Dec-2014) should be shocking!  It is important to remember that control of our railway infrastructure investment remains not devolved to Cymru / Wales - a decision made by the then Labour Government in Westminster.  

It still remains with the UK Westminster Government, all the Welsh Labour Government does is draw up a short list of suggestions. And then it wait for Westminster to pick the ones it wants from the list, all the Welsh Labour Government does is draw up a short list of suggestions.

All potential stations go through three stages of assessment, not in Wales but in Westminster / Whitehall:

• The first looks at Welsh Transport Appraisal Guidance criteria and consideration of the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act.
• The second looks at the strength of the financial and economic case for a new station and advice from Network Rail on deliverability.
• The third is "development and assessment of the highest priorities".

To help narrow the list down, station demand forecasts were drawn up which are designed to give a likely viability of proposed stations. This may actually sound a more scientific and rational process than it is. Is it any wonder that nothing gets done or it takes forever. Quite simply decisions about railway infrastructure development and spending need to be made here in Cymru / Wales, not in Westminster - as happens in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Plaid Cymru has always maintained that our railways should be brought into public hands and the government put passengers before profit. So don’t get me wrong, this long overdue - finally bringing the ideologically driven idiocy that has reduced our railways to a poor dividend profit driven service is a good thing. 

Considering where we are this is a sensible measured first step.That said, as yet, there are unanswered questions, the devil is as always in the detail, I would prefer a not for dividend profit model rather than a government controlled railway service. It is important that our railways in the future are independent of day to day, week to week, month to month interference from the current Labour in Wales government in Cardiff, and future Senedd governments. 

Questions need to be answered in relation to the financial implications and also in relation to the nature of the subsidiary. There is obviously a balance to be established, as it is very important that our railways are democratically accountable and are democratically responsive to the needs of our nation, and as yet there are no real details. Decisions of this importance should be announced in the Senedd so that members can ask questions on behalf of the people of Wales and openly scrutinise decisions.