Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:42 pm on 14 February 2023.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you, Deputy Minister, for commissioning this roads review, which is going to help us align our net-zero obligations with our transport strategy, and it's clear that there's still quite a lot of work to do to ensure our planning policies are also aligned with our net-zero obligations. For example, just as we need to halt unsustainable housing developments, such as the one you referred to in Wrexham—and the one that is in my constituency, the Lisvane housing development, where Redrow has made an absolute killing on it, and I've yet to see any measures to improve active travel or, indeed, bus routes to join up that very large housing development with any public transport, and so that's something that we should all worry about as it starts to reach completion—.
I think that it's really helpful, this roads review, because it gives us a really clear direction of travel. Roads were invented long before the combustion engine. In fact, it was the Romans that built the A5, so it's about how we use our road network and surely we have to focus on those who don't have a car, as to how we can enable them to get around. And I think that the issue I want to speak about, and ask you about today, is really how we can get more rapid bus transport routes with dedicated bus lanes as a vehicle for getting the constituents of Blaenau Gwent or the Cynon Valley into Cardiff without having to use cars? Because, at the moment, the main reason given by people who bring their cars into the city centre, just to sit for eight hours while they are working, is that they can't rely—