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| There are growing calls to reopen a railway between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen. (Pic : BBC Wales) |
At the moment, Carmarthen-Lampeter-Aberystwyth is served by the T1 TrawsCymru long-distance bus service, which has been criticised for excessively long journey times. Despite the existence of this service, there has been talk of reopening the line for several years (related 2009 post from Syniadau with a video showing one option for the route), but a formal campaign – Traws Link Cymru – was formed in the last year or so to lobby in favour of the project (website with project overview here).
The campaign is gathering pace, with a official statements of support from : Carmarthenshire Council, numerous community and town councils along the former route and a large number of AMs and MPs. Campaigners are also set to meet the Welsh Secretary, Stephen Crabb MP (Con, Preseli Pembs.), at some point. A (relatively) well-attended public meeting was held earlier this month, with plans for further activities in the near future.
Simon Thomas AM (Plaid, Mid & West Wales) held a short debate in the National Assembly on this issue back in March 2014 (below). Meanwhile, Carwyn Jones has expressed his tacit support for the principle of the project during First Minister's Questions (I remember him saying it at least once but can't remember precisely when, so don't hold me to that). He gave no firm commitment for reasons which will become obvious.
An Irish Case Study
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| Ireland's Western Rail Corridor is a similar project, but is it an appropriate direct comparison? (Pic : paulsalveson.org.uk) |
Comparisons have been drawn to the Western Railway Corridor in the Republic of Ireland, which is a proposal to link Sligo and Limerick along Ireland's west coast. At the moment, all lines lead to Dublin in the same way Welsh railways go east-west. A section enabling trains to travel between Galway and Limerick opened in 2010 at a cost of around €107million (£84million at 2015 prices). The total cost of reopening the line to/from Sligo was, in 2004, estimated to be around €366million (£286million [2015]).
Since reopening, there's been criticism of low passenger numbers between Galway and Limerick (Galway alone is larger than Carmarthen, Lampeter and Aberystwyth combined, while Limerick is about twice the size of Llanelli). The service is subsidised by the Irish Government, with cheap online fares and tax incentives to encourage people to buy season tickets - but it's right to point out that service frequencies are very low indeed with maybe no more than 5 trains a day in each direction.
The crucial difference between Aber-Carms and the Western Corridor section is that, in Ireland's case, large sections of the track were already there and were used as a freight line. All the Irish Government needed to do was (re)build the infrastructure for passenger services (stations, improved track etc.). So the Western Corridor is more comparable to the reopening of the Vale of Glamorgan and Ebbw Vale lines.
Aber-Carms would be a major engineering project above and beyond that of the Borders Line in Scotland, and would arguably be the most extensive reopening of a railway on the island of Great Britain since the Beeching cuts. The old alignment is just over 90km long (56miles), and almost all of it has been pulled up apart from the Gwili railway on the outskirts of Carmarthen.
The Possible Route
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| Click to enlarge (Pic : Adapted from Google Earth) |
I would guess stations would/could be built at Glangwili Hospital, Bronwydd, Pencader, Llanybydder, Lampeter, Tregaron, Llanilar and Llanfairian. Some of the smaller stops would presumably be request stops like those on the Heart of Wales line.
The Benefits
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| Linking three (maybe eventually four) university towns along the western coast could boost economic, social and research ties, helping to rebalance the Welsh economy away from the M4 corridor. (Pic : The Telegraph) |
The obvious one - it makes it a lot easier to get to Aberystwyth by public transport from the south and vice versa (Swansea, Cardiff and London) whilst reconnecting a large part of Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion to the rail network. Considering the relatively poor state of north-south road links in west Wales, journey times are likely to be competetive with road.
The catchment area, although rural, will be physically large with great opportunities to provide park and rides as well as linking with local bus services. Public transport provision is often poor in rural areas, so encouraging people out of their cars there is often ignored, as the emphasis is usually focused on urban areas. Reopening the line would have a knock-on positive impact on pollution and accident rates, with the A44 between Aberystwyth and Llangurig being the most dangerous road in the country and the A487 not faring much better.
Creating "commuter villages" in and around the three larger towns – Aberystwyth, Lampeter and Carmarthen – might spread out development and enable these villages to retain some of their local services like pubs and schools.
If this were combined with a Bangor-Porthmadog link and a re-engineering of Dovey Junction it would eventually connect four university towns. This would guarantee minimum passenger numbers, but also develop economic and academic links right along the west coast to compete with the "city universities".
In the long, long, long term, reopening this line could enable serious consideration being given to reconnecting Newcastle Emlyn, Aberaeron and Cardigan to the rail network.
The Challenges
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| Do not think for one second that this is going to be a simple case of lobbying for funds. There are serious challenges facing this campaign that need to be overcome. (Pic : Network Rail) |
Reinstating the old route – Most of the former route is development-free but there are areas where the route has been built on, mainly for homes or cycle paths. The route can be engineered to avoid these areas, but the old route will have been the most logical path in the first place (short of radically new alignments). This is down to the shortsightedness of planning authorities. Though there's a bit more protection for former railways nowadays, it's too late for this project.
Farm access and (negative) environmental impact – The former route is littered with crossings to and from farms. Network Rail are supposed to be phasing out level crossings, as they're not popular with transport unions and are a safety hazard. I don't think they'll take kindly to including so many unmanned crossings. They might have to be replaced by bridges, which is an added expense.
Reopening a railway may not be associated with environmental damage, but obviously there would be as the route crosses or passes near environmentally-sensitive areas.
The Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) – My personal opinion is that regardless of fiscal tests, as many former railways should be reopened for its own sake where practical (before I'm accused of being a buzzkill).Unfortunately, this is the primary reason why it won't happen.
The political will is there, and I suspect if all of the trackbed were still in place Welsh Government backing for the project would be stronger (and the price tag would probably be no more than £100-150million).
A full CBA (or cost-benefit ratio) usually costs around £20,000-30,000. If the ratio on return of investment is below 2:1 (for every £1 spent, there's a £2 economic return), public authorities won't consider it "high value". That's very technocratic, but it's supposed to prevent the creation of white elephants and discourage "pork barrel spending" , even if at the same time it puts a set of concrete shoes on socially-important projects like this.
A potential price tag of £650million has been bandied about, so this would have to (theoretically) have a wider economic impact of at least ~£1billion to get the levels of return on investment necessary to be approved.
Taking into consideration the relatively small catchment area (population wise) and likely low passenger numbers, the Carms-Aber rail link will fail any CBA instantly (as would my idea of reopening the Mid Wales line). You can have as much heavyweight political support as you want, but these tests determine whether big projects go ahead or not.
AMs and other senior politicians should be well aware of this, but they're not in a position to quibble (because they're pathologically unable to tell the truth and say "no" during an election year) so I'll have to play "the bad guy" for them.
Service levels – It's too early to say what sort of service levels people could expect if it were reopened. You would presume the service would mainly run as a shuttle between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth (due to lack of space on the south Wales mainline) with a few direct trains each day further beyond – probably to Swansea and/or Cardiff (which would make reopening the Swansea District Line for Cardiff-bound trains a higher priority in itself).
The old track alignment between Llanybydder and Strata Florida is remarkably straight and could enable high running speeds. This is offset by some very difficult terrain between Carmarthen and Pencader – though a diversion via Alltwalis has been mentioned. If the line were designed with an average running speed of between 60-70mph then it's possible to get the journey time down to nearly an hour (making Aber-Swansea ~1hr50mins, Aber-Cardiff ~2hrs30mins), but that requires a high quality route that will be expensive to engineer.
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| Click to enlarge (Pic : Adapted from Google Earth) |
Another option would be to use the path of the Vale of Rheidol narrow gauge railway for a few miles, then create a link to the "main route" south to Carmarthen. This would be rather expensive due to the landscape it would have to cross which requires several deep cuttings and/or short tunnels. It would provide an opportunity to build a station serving the Glanyafon Industrial Estate and with a footpath/cycle path it could link directly to Coleg Ceredigion - but at the expense of stations in Llanfairian and Llanilar.
A further option would be to tunnel under Penparcau, which is certainly doable but depending on the construction method and underlying geology would likely cost £50-60million on its own. This would probably be the best option, but I'm no engineer.
One of the only other options left, therefore, is to CPO the former route, which will mean demolishing several buildings and possibly more than 100 homes (because several blocks of flats have been built on the former line). This means legal challenges, local opposition and a significant additional cost. An alternative would be to allow some limited street-running, but I'm presuming this will be a heavy rail project.
You could create a new route following a ridge around Pen Dinas and going through a caravan park instead (perhaps on a viaduct), but that would be a significant engineering outlay like the tunnel.
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