Platform to ease rail congestion

A new platform is scheduled to officially open at Cardiff Central station today in a bid to ease congestion for train passengers.

Platform eight will be used for the Penarth, Barry Island and Vale of Glamorgan lines.

A track for the new platform has been installed and will allow trains to depart westwards from platforms seven and eight at the same time.

Services will run from platform eight between 6am and 8pm Monday to Saturday and will run from platform seven at all other times, with a few exceptions when Penarth and Barry Island lines will run through platform three or four.

Christian Irwin, programme manager for Network Rail Wales, said: “This new platform is designed to ease congestion and is just one of the many elements of this highly complex project to remodel and modernise the railway in south Wales as part of our railway upgrade plan.

“As part of this project, which began in 2012, we have replaced ageing signalling equipment, enhanced track layouts, built new platforms and improved stations.”

Platform eight is part of the £300m Cardiff area signalling renewals project aimed to modernise the Cardiff and Valleys network.

Engineering work was carried out during the Christmas period and passengers faced delays as disruptions were caused to some services.

The disruptions were expected to last until around 4am today.

Yesterday heralded a rise in fares for rail passengers across the country with the average rise across the UK hitting 2.3% – the biggest hike since January 2014 when fares went up by 2.8%.

The increase came ahead of a new study, published today, which revealed workers are spending up to a seventh of their income on rail fares – around six times as much as people across Europe.

The Action for Rail campaign said workers would spend 14% of their income on a monthly season ticket in some parts of the country.