Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 13 February 2019.
The Minister will be aware of my wish to see a new railway station serving Abertillery and the Ebbw Fach valley in my constituency. I share some of the concerns that were outlined by Helen Mary Jones in terms of the process used to make these determinations. The current model appears to me to give a result that will always be biased towards areas of much higher population in the cities of the M4 corridor rather than allow us to take decisions that will enable us to build and develop new stations and new infrastructure in the small towns in the Valleys, and Abertillery is an example of that. Will the Minister consider revisiting the current model and form of assessment to ensure that all of our communities have an opportunity to demonstrate the importance of having stations that will, in the case of Abertillery, serve the whole of the Ebbw Fach valley in my constituency, and to ensure that these are all linked to the new metro and can become hubs for transport and for employment opportunities?