Input sought on Ambition North Wales transport vision
A 12-week consultation has begun as the public body looks to set in place a five-year regional transport plan covering rail, road, bus, walking and cycling.
ANW said that “by focusing on integration and innovation, we aim to provide residents and visitors with more travel choices and better digital connectivity, while also reducing our environmental impact”.
Arup is advising on the plan. The goal of ANW ultimately is to give the 74% of North Wales commuters who are currently reliant on private car use realistic alternatives.
As outlined in the draft transport plan, there are currently 24 bus operators serving 188 routes in North Wales, amounting to 500,000km per week. Only Wrexham has any bus priority infrastructure, with two bus lanes and a contraflow lane.
Around a third of bus journeys are of less than 3m, suggesting more active travel options could find takers – improving cycle use should not be difficult, given only around 10% of people travel by bike more than once a month at present.
Rail aspirations
There are four headline aspirations around the North Wales Main Line. Broadly, the aim is better connections to Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, and the airports of those cities; along with London Euston, Warrington and Crewe.
How to make that a reality has been taxing minds for a long time. The key infrastructure intervention is required outside of Wales: by adding a platform, ore approach tracks and new crossovers at Chester station, five trains per hour could come through from/to North Wales, including one express service.
Required alongside this would be interventions around Llandudno Junction, with new signalling, track and platform required, with the same kind of interventions required in and around Bangor.
Away from the main line, there are also aspirations for the Borderlands Line and Padeswood. The Borderlands Line connects Wrexham to Bidston on the Merseyrail network, so potentially could connect through to Liverpool. However, the route at present is de-prioritised due to conflicts with freight routes. The key intervention could be lines giving direct access to Padeswood cement works, meaning those freight services could be kept off the main line.
Theoretically, if the Borderlands Line could be made more appealing, it would link with Shotton on the main line, making this an interchange, and improve access to Deeside’s industrial heartland with a new station.
Other rail aspirations include improvements to the Shrewsbury-Wrexham-Chester line, where frequency is currently bogged down due to single-track stretches, and improving the Conwy Valley and Cambrian Coast services, important to the visitor economy.
Strategic road ambitions
Having featured already in the news this year, the replacement of the River Dee Bridge on the A494 is chief among the key objectives on maintaining and enhancing the road network, while ANW is also keen to resume work on paused infrastructure projects such as the A494/A55 Flintshire Corridor dualling project and the A483 Wrexham project, looking at junction improvements.
A further project is the enhancement of the Menai crossings, including the addition of a third crossing.
Buses
The Bus Bill, looking at franchising, will go to the Senedd in March this year, with improved services and greater integration expected from 2026. Beyond that, the goals are broad, mainly seeking greater frequency of services and longer hours.
Policy aspirations and access to employment
Giving people realistic options to access work at key employment areas is a priority. Should investment zone status be secured for Wrexham and Flintshire, this could unlock £160m, which could be used to support walking and cycling infrastructure linked with improved public transport.
Another workstream is the exploration of strategic transport partnerships in major employment areas, bringing big employers together with local authorities and Transport for Wales to work on reducing car use.
A step in a new direction could come with the award of total services contracts covering local authority areas. This would reduce duplication and simplify things for service users, rather than dealing with multiple bodies for school travel, social services and non-emergency patient transport.
When will this come into effect? Once consultation closes in April, responses will be reviewed and fed into the regional transport plan, which will be put together by ANW and put to the Welsh Government for sign-off in July this year. In effect, from that point on, the Welsh Government will only sign off funding for projects coming under the RTP.
The consultation is now live online, along with full details of other ways to access the reports and questionnaire. All information can be found here.
