Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:26 pm on 22 June 2021.
Llywydd, I don't disagree with what Rhys ab Owen said about the need for finding ways in which people do not need to use their cars. But, the closure of Castle Street did not simply lead to people leaving their cars at home. It led them to using their cars in other ways. It led them to using their cars to travel instead through some of the poorest parts of our city, where the air quality is already not what it needs to be.
So, my constituents in Ninian Park Road—a heavily congested road where, routinely in the summer, children are told not to go out and play outside because the quality of the air is not good enough to do so—found that the closure of Castle Street made their plight a good deal more difficult. The figures that the council have obtained, not from themselves but by independent analysts, show that the closure of Castle Street had that detrimental effect on residential streets in a way that Castle Street is not a residential street.
So, the choice facing the council was a genuinely challenging one. They have decided to revert to the plan originally agreed with the Welsh Government and that was funded by my colleague Lesley Griffiths at the time when she was responsible, to the tune of £19 million. It's not going back to four lanes of traffic in front of the castle. It's back to two lanes of traffic, as we had agreed, with bus and bike lanes added.
It will, for now, protect those people in those residential streets whose lives had been adversely impacted by the closure of Castle Street. That's the balance that the council has struck, and I think that, for me, until we are able to do longer term things to reduce the use of cars altogether, it is a balance that is entirely defensible.