Rail Services in Islwyn

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 9 December 2020.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 2:22, 9 December 2020

Firstly, on the cost point, from January, TfW announced—January of this year—that tickets were being reduced by a percentage, which has been going against trend. Clearly, the real answer to affordable fares over time is to make sure we have a successful public transport system that is heavily used, and that we have ongoing investment in it. In terms of the Ebbw Vale line, as the Member will know, we have developed a plan through TfW for an additional hourly service to operate between Crosskeys and Newport from December next year, and we are pursuing UK funding to help us to extend that. We've submitted a bid to the UK Government's Restoring your Railway accelerated ideas fund to secure funding to progress the work on reopening the Abertillery spur, so we are now awaiting a decision on that particular application. Rail infrastructure remains a non-devolved subject, and as we've said before, we have not been getting our population share of railway infrastructure. There is a shortfall of some £5 billion that has been preventing us from pursuing the type of investments that Rhianon Passmore is rightly pushing us to do.