Cofnod y Trafodion
The Record of Proceedings

Y Pwyllgor Menter a Busnes

The Enterprise and Business Committee

05/11/2015

Trawsgrifiadau’r Pwyllgor
Committee Transcripts

Cynnwys
Contents

5 Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon
Introductions, Apologies and Substitutions

5 Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi’r Byd
Rugby World Cup Transport Planning

26 Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi'r Byd—Gwasanaethau Trenau
Rugby World Cup Transport Planning—Train Services

50 Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi'r Byd—Gwasanaethau Bysiau      

Rugby World Cup Transport Planning—Bus Services

61 Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi'r Byd—Trefnwyr     

Rugby World Cup Transport Planning—Organisers

85 Papurau i’w Nodi
Papers to Note

85 Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o Weddill y Cyfarfod
Motion Under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve to Exclude the Public from the Remainder of the Meeting

Cofnodir y trafodion yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi yn y pwyllgor. Yn ogystal, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd.

The proceedings are recorded in the language in which they were spoken in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation is included.

Aelodau’r pwyllgor yn bresennol Committee members in attendance
Mick Antoniw	Llafur Labour
Rhun ap Iorwerth	Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
Mohammad Asghar	Ceidwadwyr Cymreig Welsh Conservatives
Jeff Cuthbert	Llafur Labour
Keith Davies	Llafur Labour
Yr Arglwydd/Lord Elis-Thomas	Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
William Graham	Ceidwadwyr Cymreig (Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor) Welsh Conservatives (Committee Chair)
Eluned Parrott	Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol Cymru Welsh Liberal Democrats
Joyce Watson	Llafur Labour
Eraill yn bresennol Others in attendance
Nicola Boyle	Rheolwr Materion Cyhoeddus, Cwmpan Rygbi’r Byd Public Affairs Manager, Rugby World Cup
Ian Bullock	Rheolwr Gyfarwyddwr, Trenau Arriva Cymru Managing Director, Arriva Trains Wales
Paul Carter	Rheolwr Gweithredol—Trafnidiaeth a Gweithrediadau’r Ddinas, Cyngor Dinas Caerdydd Operational Manager—Transportation and City Operations, City of Cardiff Council
Christopher Garnett	Cynghorydd Trafnidiaeth Strategol, Cwpan Rygbi’r Byd Strategic Transport Adviser, Rugby World Cup
Mark Hopwood	Rheolwr Gyfarwyddwr, Great Western Railway Managing Director, Great Western Railway
Josh Jones	Prif Uwch-arolygydd, Heddlu De Cymru Chief Superintendent, South Wales Police
Tom Legg	Rheolwr Trafnidiaeth Twrnamaint, Cwpan Rygbi’r Byd Tournament Transport Manager, Rugby World Cup
Paul McMahon	Rheolwr Gyfarwyddwr Llwybrau—Cymru, Network Rail Route Managing Director—Wales, Network Rail
Lynne Milligan	Cyfarwyddwr Gwasanaethau i Gwsmeriaid, Trenau Arriva Cymru Customer Services Director, Arriva Trains Wales
Claire Moggridge	Rheolwr Gweithredol—Rheoli Rhwydwaith Trafnidiaeth, Cyngor Dinas Caerdydd Operational Manager—Transport Network Management, City of Cardiff Council
Cynthia Ogbonna	Rheolwr Gyfarwyddwr, Bws Caerdydd Managing Director, Cardiff Bus
John Pockett	Cyfarwyddwr, Cysylltiadau Llywodraethol, Cydffederasiwn Cludiant Teithwyr Cymru Director, Government Relations, Confederation of Passenger Transport Wales
Neil Snowball	Prif Swyddog Gweithredu, Cwpan Rygbi’r Byd Chief Operating Officer, Rugby World Cup
Gareth Stevens	Rheolwr Datblygu Busnes, Bws Caerdydd Business Development Manager, Cardiff Bus
Mick Wright	Pennaeth Gwasanaethau Twrnamaint, Cwpan Rygbi’r Byd Head of Tournament Services, Rugby World Cup
Swyddogion Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru yn bresennol National Assembly for Wales officials in attendance
Rachel Jones	Dirprwy Glerc Deputy Clerk
Andrew Minnis	Y Gwasanaeth Ymchwil Research Service
Gareth Price	Clerc Clerk
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:29. The meeting began at 09:29.
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introductions, Apologies and Substitutions
[1] William Graham: Good morning. Welcome to the Enterprise and Business Committee this morning. The meeting is bilingual. Headphones can be used for simultaneous translation from Welsh to English on channel 1 or for amplification on channel 2. The meeting is being broadcast and a transcript of the proceedings will be published later. May I remind witnesses particularly that there’s no need to touch the microphones; they should come on automatically. In the event of a fire alarm, I ask people to follow directions from the ushers.
Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi’r Byd Rugby World Cup Transport Planning
[2] William Graham: Our first item is the inquiry into transport services during the Rugby World Cup. I’m grateful to the witnesses for attending today. Could I ask them just to give their names and titles for the record, to begin?
[3] Mr Jones: Chief superintendent Josh Jones. I’m a chief superintendent in South Wales Police, responsible for specialist uniform operations, and I was the gold commander for the Rugby World Cup.
09:30
[4] William Graham: Thank you.
[5] Ms Moggridge: Hi, I’m Claire Moggridge. I work for Cardiff council. I’m the operational manager in charge of network management, and I manage all transport support for major events in the city.
[6] William Graham: Thank you.
[7] Mr Carter: Hello. I’m Paul Carter. I’m also from Cardiff council, and I am Cardiff council’s head of transport.
[8] William Graham: Thank you. I understand that Neil Hanratty, who was due to come to us is unfortunately in accident and emergency, I gather, from what you were saying. So, we wish him a speedy recovery. We’ll go straight into questions, and I’m going to start the questioning, if I may. One of the key points from the Rugby World Cup’s evidence was this:
[9] ‘Cardiff City Council was responsible for producing the Venue Transport Operating Plan…in conjunction with England 2015 and for making arrangements for the spectator transport provisions.’
[10] Would you like to comment on that, and in relation to what actually happened?
[11] Ms Moggridge: Yes, Cardiff council were responsible for providing the actual transport plan. We provided that transport plan within the time agreement of the Rugby World Cup event promoters, and that plan worked very well. We were quite happy with the predictions, and our knowledge of operating major events in the city, and we were quite comfortable with that plan and how it actually played out.
[12] Mr Carter: It’s probably worth adding, I think, that that transport plan is not something that’s specific to this one event. This plan has been built up over many, many years now of experience of hosting such major sporting events, not just rugby, but football and any kind of events I think the stadium has actually hosted. So, over that 15-year period with the new stadium, the Millennium Stadium, in the heart of the city, I think there’s considerable experience being brought to bear into that plan that we delivered as part of this recent Rugby World Cup event.
[13] William Graham: I see. So, based on what you are saying today, do you think the events of that particular occasion were exceptional?
[14] Mr Carter: In terms of exceptional, yes. In terms of travel patterns, I think the travel patterns for these eight events in Cardiff were considerably different. I think there’s always uniqueness around the events, but as I say, I think the experience gained over the last 15 years has demonstrated that the city and its partners have got good pedigree, really, in running events for any particular scenario.
[15] William Graham: Okay. So, what do you think about the suggestion from train operators that post-match queueing arrangements were not raised during the planning process?
[16] Ms Moggridge: I think the majority of the planning process was to do with capacity, and it was to do with capacity in all elements of transport, not just on rail. In the debates during the planning, as would be the case for any major event, you talk about capacity, both on the road network, the rail network and public transport within the confines of the city centre. So, I think that the main focus during that planning period was delivering the required capacity to the expectations of those travelling to Cardiff. A lot of work was done on travel demand management, managing how many people were coming to the event. So, I think the main focus was on capacity.
[17] William Graham: Thank you very much. Mick.
[18] Mick Antoniw: Yes. There’s an issue, really, with regard to ownership of the overall plan and the co-ordination of all the events. Is that something that would have laid with you? Did you have the ownership ultimately of the delivery of all the outcomes of the meetings and so on?
[19] Ms Moggridge: The council do not have whole ownership of any event transport plan. We work with our partners across all areas, and that plan is owned by everybody, not just by the council.
[20] Mick Antoniw: Do you think that was a weakness of the system: that there appeared to be no-one that had the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that all the key components were actually operating and that any changes needed to be made were made?
[21] Ms Moggridge: I don’t see it as a weakness because I think most of what was discussed and put into that plan was delivered. Capacity was delivered as required, and that was delivered for each event.
[22] Mick Antoniw: So, all the queueing, the problems in terms of trains, the significant delays and the significant problems experienced by a significant number of people, were all things that you’d actually predicted.
[23] Ms Moggridge: As I said, we focused on the capacity. I think there’s an issue around expectation with all major events, whether it might be in Cardiff or any other major city. There is expectation by those travelling people to events to understand what their expectations are, but the capacity was what we were focusing on, and that capacity was delivered for all modes of transport.
[24] Mick Antoniw: Is it a fair comment that the projections on which you based the plan turned out to be significantly inaccurate?
[25] Ms Moggridge: No. That is not a fair comment. I think very early on, two years ago, when we were first planning for this event, some of the predictions then weren’t quite accurate, to those of us who had been involved with major events for many years, but as we got closer to the event, and I mean 12 months before the event, those figures became very accurate. Indeed, you’ll see—and I’m sure that other witnesses will give you those details—that those figures were very, very close to what we actually experienced.
[26] Mick Antoniw: So, you actually foresaw, then, that there would be long queues, that there would be significant delays and there would be major train transport problems.
[27] Ms Moggridge: As I said, working with our partners in rail, we were given the reassurance by rail operators that that capacity would be provided. Now, that capacity, obviously, takes time, as with any form of transport, whether it be a road network or rail network, to actually deliver that capacity. As I said, during the planning phase, that capacity was provided. It was understood that that capacity would remove everybody who wanted to leave Cardiff on the day of the event from the city without leaving anybody behind, and that’s what happened.
[28] Mick Antoniw: But did you predict that there would be those long queues and there would be those significant problems with the transport? Because you say you had all the information and data, which was accurate. Therefore, the events that occurred, which we’re looking into, were presumably predicted. If they weren’t predicted, why were they not predicted?
[29] Ms Moggridge: My expertise, as local authority, is around the road network. Those sorts of questions, I think, will be better placed to the rail operators, because they understand their provision of transport better than I do. So, I would say to you again, and repeat, that I was working with them on capacity and I was reassured that the figure that we had on the prediction of expected rail passengers would be provided for, and that was reassured.
[30] Mr Jones: Could I add something to what’s been said by Claire that may be helpful? From a policing perspective, clearly we’re involved as part of the planning and part of the meeting setup that there is, and we look at all the threats and challenges to any major event in Cardiff, and indeed, we’ve got considerable experience of policing and delivering very safe major events in Cardiff. I think it’s worth pointing out, in terms of the queues that materialised, what we picked up was certainly some frustration, but in terms of the behaviour of spectators, I think it’s worth saying that there was no disorder.
[31] If you look at the profile of rugby spectators, they tend to conduct themselves extremely well and that was certainly the case here. So, I think it’s worth just noting that, although there were queues and certainly, some of our officers picked up some frustration, the way that the rugby spectators conducted themselves, as ambassadors of rugby, dare I say it, was a credit to themselves.
[32] William Graham: Jeff, please.
[33] Jeff Cuthbert: We will, of course, be asking questions of the rail operators, but on the planning, to what extent, in terms of the matches that were in the Millennium Stadium, did you base your planning on experience of the 6 nations, and, indeed, the growing status of the Welsh football team, where home-based fans, in the main, would be going to other parts of south and west Wales? Whereas, of course, for the great majority of the matches in the Millennium Stadium, people were travelling away from Wales back to places like London. Was that factored into your plans?
[34] Ms Moggridge: Yes, that was. The actual tool that was produced by the Rugby World Cup organisers through consultants Steer Davies Gleave not only gave details of capacity, but it also gave details of percentages of where people were travelling from, which allowed the rail operators to provide the required capacity on the required routes. So, I think that was definitely used in consideration of the planning.
[35] Jeff Cuthbert: Okay, thank you.
[36] William Graham: Eluned.
[37] Eluned Parrott: Forgive me, Claire, I was, frankly, astonished by your assertion that the travel plan that you developed had worked well, because the feedback on Twitter and other social media, from people who were experiencing it—. I was in the city centre on some of those match days and I have to tell you that that transport plan did not look organised or regimented; it looked, at some points in time, like it was chaotic. At some points, it looked like Cardiff Central station was under siege. You couldn’t get within 200 yards of the place for hours at a time. It doesn’t feel like a travel plan that was working well. So, can I ask, if those projections and predictions were so accurate and so correct and everything was working according to the plan, why was it necessary for the Rugby World Cup organisers to bring in extra coach services out of central Cardiff after the third match?
[38] Ms Moggridge: I think it was to do with the actual time issue. It is common, after any major event in the city, whether it be a concert or any other sort of major event, that people can take a number of hours to leave the city. So, I think, during that planning period, as I said, capacity was a key issue, but I think it was always understood that that capacity might take a period of time to leave the city. What happened was, once Rugby World Cup, as you rightly say, after the first initial events, had negative feedback, that timescale of how long it was acceptable for people to remove meant that the capacity within a time period was increased, so that allowed crowds to move in a quicker timescale. So, you basically provide more capacity in the initial timescales.
[39] Eluned Parrott: But that was always in the plan for Twickenham, but not for Cardiff. Why is that?
[40] Ms Moggridge: As I said, in all the planning meetings that I attended, the main focus was capacity, and that capacity was provided by rail operators, by us as transport providers in a park and ride and bus operating process. It was all a focus on capacity, and that capacity was delivered. The timescale issue was not something that was ever made aware to me, because, for instance, on a road network, to suggest that you can guarantee that somebody can move through a road network within a set period of time is very difficult. So, that was never a discussion. In transport terms, the discussion around timescales was not what the planning process focused on; the planning process focused primarily on capacity.
[41] Eluned Parrott: In hindsight, is that a weakness of that planning process—for future events?
[42] Ms Moggridge: I think it’s how you read that. It’s the expectations. Some events, people want to go back into the city and they want to have a delay in the time they leave the city centre before they go back to their destinations. In this particular event, it was clear that people wanted to get back to their destination immediately after the event, and, the closeness of the stadium to the train station, you see those crowds building up very quickly.
[43] Mr Carter: Can I just add that there were a lot of people in the city who were coming to the city for the very first time for that first event? I think people are still astonished, even though we’re talking about quite an iconic event stadium here—they were surprised that it was in the heart of the city. I think, as the tournament developed and, obviously, word gets around that you don’t have to—. The capacity’s there, as Claire has mentioned, but, if everybody wants to leave at the same time, there is inevitably going to be some queueing.
[44] So, I think, as the tournament moved on, there was an understanding, certainly from those visiting the events, that they could go back into the city and they could have some food and some drink after the event. So, I think it worked its way out over the tournament itself, in that we have got a city in Cardiff that is able to offer lots of other attractions that people could go and visit, rather than sit or stand and wait in a queue. So, I think, over time, and as has been demonstrated with other experiences in the city, people learn from experience, as with, for example, the FA cup. So, not everybody who comes by that form of transport understands that, if they want to get away quickly, they’ve got to leave the event early. If they want to have a good experience, then they go and do something else for half an hour or an hour and then join the queue where there is capacity on the network.
[45] Mr Jones: If I can add to what Paul has said there, what is unique about the Millennium Stadium, particularly in terms of the context of the railway station, is that you can literally fall out of the stadium and arrive at the railway station. There are very few grounds that do that, and, therefore, there are going to be significant numbers of folk around the railway station. Even for 6 nations events, the railway station is incredibly busy.
[46] I think the other thing that was very different, and Paul touched upon it, was the profile of the spectators, compared to the 6 nations, where you get a lot of folk who travel from the Valleys, from the west, from Swansea and from north Wales, whereas, here, as quite rightly has been pointed out, a lot of spectators came from over the border and chose at the end of the game, certainly for the first few games, to leave immediately after the game. Normally, for the 6 nations, a lot of those spectators would stay in the city.
[47] William Graham: I’m going to appeal for short questions and answers, because we’re a third of our time through, and we’re still on the first set of questions. Rhun, please.
[48] Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you. Good morning to you. The reason, of course, we’re holding this inquiry is because we want to see what lessons can be learnt, because of evidence that suggested that things were not perfect this time round. You seem to suggest that there aren’t any lessons that can be learnt, but, on rail travel in particular, changes were introduced after those first couple of games, because of problems—revised freight timetables, a new queuing system—which suggests that there were problems in those initial games, for whatever reason. It might not be your fault, but things were imperfect. Do we not need to realise that there are lessons that need to be learnt?
09:45
[49] Mr Carter: I think, as always, there are going to be teething problems if you’re hosting such a major world event as this in Cardiff. We’re not complacent; rest assured, we do a lot of work with our partners to make sure that we polish this event as much as we can, and, as I say, we’ve been doing this many, many years now. So, yes, there can be adjustments. As I say, you’re dealing with such different patterns of movement for every different event here. Inevitably, no event is actually the same, but, with experience that we’ve built up over a considerable period of time, there are opportunities to mitigate a lot of that. As I’m saying, we’re always learning. We’re always learning and we’re always receiving feedback, good and bad—predominantly good. Where we do have negative information back, we work as hard as we can with partners to make sure that we put that right for the next event. I think that’s what happened with this event. It wasn’t just the one event in Cardiff; there were eight events for the Rugby World Cup. I think a lot of the lessons and fine-tuning that was taking place—which you allude to in your question—I think that’s all part of the process.
[50] Rhun ap Iorwerth: But we can’t have teething problems for the Champions League final, for example, because it’s a one-off.
[51] Mr Carter: Of course we can’t. As I say, the learning experiences from the Rugby World Cup will feed into that and, again, we’ll work as hard as we ever do, with our partners, to make sure that we iron out as many of those wrinkles as we can.
[52] Rhun ap Iorwerth: That’s good, because that’s where we need to go: we need to find out what those lessons are that need to be learnt. If I could look at, for example, infrastructure, we’re looking ahead, hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, to a remodelled Cardiff Central railway station, which needs to be more than just cosmetic. What have you learnt from the experiences of the Rugby World Cup about what the specifications should be for that new Cardiff Central railway station?
[53] Ms Moggridge: Indeed, one of the other parts of my role is to project manage the Central Square development and I have been working closely with the developers in Central Square and with Network Rail on their aspirations for that train station. I think it is vital that we get a train station that has the capacity within it to deal with the crowds. We talk about capacity of road networks, well there’s also capacity around footfall and pedestrians and getting those people, in a safe manner, onto their form of transport. I think there is a restriction in the current train station, and I welcome what Network Rail have been tabling in their master plan and their ideas, focusing on not only event growth, but also general growth in people that want to travel by that form of transport in and out of Cardiff on a daily basis. So, I think it is key that they have that ability to increase the areas within that train station to increase the way that they can safely allow people to get on and off a train—in an environment where they are under cover as well.
[54] Mr Carter: Notwithstanding those capacity improvements, which are very, very welcome, I think you will still have the situation where, if everybody wants to leave at the same time after an event, you will have queues.
[55] Rhun ap Iorwerth: I think people accept that, and I’ve stood in queues at Wembley myself. The question is whether it should be a four-hour queue, and whether the queue is as long as is necessary. The evidence suggests that, perhaps, something wasn’t right, certainly, in those initial few games. How quickly will you be putting pen to paper on revising the spec that you need for that new Cardiff Central station on the back of your experiences in this world cup, for example?
[56] Ms Moggridge: I think we will work with Network Rail, but, ultimately, any specification for that new train station is a matter for Network Rail to put pen to paper. We, obviously, as a local authority, will work with them and give them a view—not only from an event-management point of view, but from a general transport point of view—as to what we, in transport terms, require for the daily commute in and out of this capital city.
[57] Rhun ap Iorwerth: Can I ask you as well, from South Wales Police’s perspective, how the constraints on infrastructure—permanent, with Cardiff Central station, and perhaps temporary, with the closure of Central Square and the bus station—how that affects the way that you’re able to police the event in terms of crowd management?
[58] Mr Jones: Certainly. British Transport Police have primacy when it comes to the rail network, and, indeed, around the queues, British Transport Police have primacy, but we work very closely with them and we were there to offer them support during these events. I think it’s fair to say that at the end of an event Wood Street becomes congested, and, when you have queues coming out of Wood Street, that adds to the congestion. However, it didn’t pose any safety issues, which is our primary concern. Quite clearly, the more safely, the more quickly, folk who wish to leave Cardiff can leave is a positive thing. One of our concerns always is that folk will get left behind. That didn’t happen, even during the events where there were large queues. That was not an issue.
[59] I think things changed. I think you make a good point—things changed after the third or fourth game, with new queuing systems in place. I think the marquees that were there were removed, which created new capacity. There were queuing lanes set up in Wood Street as well, which added slightly to the congestion but I think gave the spectator a better experience, because they realised they were in an orderly queue that was being well managed. So, certainly from the third or fourth game on, there was a significant improvement, and I guess those questions are for folk coming afterwards, in terms of what changed.
[60] Rhun ap Iorwerth: Finally from me, and it is quite important, does it feel to you, as the person in charge of policing that, in terms of safety and so on, you’re dealing with inadequate infrastructure, and that it’s not infrastructure that feels built for what it’s being asked to achieve?
[61] Mr Jones: I’ve had the privilege of being the commander of policing in Cardiff, and I’ve had the privilege of policing many events from a command and operational perspective in Cardiff over many years. It is a superb city to host events. It’s a very safe city to visit. There are always things that can be improved, and I think you’ve alluded to some of those issues already, but Cardiff is a safe venue to hold major events.
[62] William Graham: Thank you. Dafydd, very quickly.
[63] Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas: Yes, obviously, I live in Cardiff Central station at least three or four times a week; I’m using it regularly. Isn’t the truth far more serious than what we’re talking about now? You’ve only got two eastbound platforms, neither of which is capable of taking the full load of high-speed trains. You’ve got the possibility of using platform 4, which was used on the occasions we’re talking about, but the reality is that Cardiff Central station, as compared with Temple Meads, is a totally inadequate station for a capital city and we all have to do something about it.
[64] Ms Moggridge: I would only say that I completely agree with you. I think that anybody who is involved with anything in this city would like to see a train station that is fit for a capital city, and I think any improvement to that train station is definitely needed, but I think the level of detail around how it operates and works is a matter for those that currently manage it, which is Arriva Trains Wales.
[65] William Graham: We’ll try to get on to that, so, bus issues now. Joyce.
[66] Joyce Watson: I want to ask particularly about any impact that the bus service had on some of the issues you have to deal with. There were a number; you had a bus strike, you had the impact of the Central Square redevelopment and the closure of the bus station. I just want to know how you dealt with those issues and what impact they might have had.
[67] Mr Jones: I can talk very briefly, if I may, about—. There were protests, as well, by some of the striking bus personnel. We had conversations with them, in terms of agreeing parameters around those strikes. The numbers involved were relatively modest within the context of 70,000 people in the city centre. The actual protests caused no issues whatsoever. Speaking to colleagues who had command positions within the stadium, it was their perception that it had little or no impact upon the event.
[68] Joyce Watson: Anybody else?
[69] William Graham: Okay. Thank you very much. Taxis, Oscar.
[70] Mohammad Asghar: Thank you very much. I just want to say, ‘Thank you very much’ to the panel. They have done a wonderful job during the Rugby World Cup. The fact is—. Could you tell this panel here how many taxis run in Cardiff at the moment? How many taxis are there?
[71] Ms Moggridge: I’m unable to answer that question, because I don’t—
[72] Mohammad Asghar: The reason I’m—
[73] Ms Moggridge: —work in the licensing part of the—
[74] William Graham: Would it possible for you to supply that at a later date?
[75] Ms Moggridge: Of course we can, yes.
[76] William Graham: Thank you very much.
[77] Mohammad Asghar: What it is—. The thing is, there was a general perception during the world cup—. Did you actually give them training, pre-world cup tournament—
[78] Ms Moggridge: Again, I think these are questions for the licensing department, so I’d need to find them—
[79] Mohammad Asghar: —on how to behave? They were overcharging. This was the general perception in the public—
[80] William Graham: Oscar—
[81] Mohammad Asghar: —and the service was—
[82] William Graham: They are not the licensing authority.
[83] Mohammad Asghar: Oh, but—
[84] Mr Carter: We can take your questions back.
[85] Ms Moggridge: We will take them back.
[86] Mohammad Asghar: Cardiff—
[87] William Graham: What they will do is go back to their colleagues and they will provide some written evidence to us—
[88] Mohammad Asghar: Cardiff city council is responsible for the taxis—
[89] William Graham: Quite so, but these are not the officials who have that responsibility.
[90] Mohammad Asghar: All right, but the fact is that this is what I’m saying about—
[91] William Graham: They have undertaken—
[92] Mohammad Asghar: My question—
[93] William Graham: —to give that information as soon as they can.
[94] Mohammad Asghar: My question relates to the taxis—the service provided. A lot of people use taxis, and during the tournament, just around that time, there were three serious sexual assaults. But you don’t know that either—. Do the police know about it?
[95] Mr Jones: Yes, I can answer questions around that. I’ve spoken to the local commander in Cardiff. I can confirm that there were three incidents. What I can also confirm is that they were not connected and that three individuals have been charged—three males have been charged—in connection with each of those incidents. Just to give you that reassurance, sexual assaults in Cardiff, particularly stranger-type sexual assaults, are extremely rare. They were dealt with very quickly, taken very seriously, and persons have been charged with that.
[96] It’s also worth pointing out that, when we get the influx of students that we do every year, again, it’s a safe city to come and study in. Local police have an operation working with the students, with the three universities, just to create a safe environment and give advice, because folk come to a new city and they are vulnerable—they don’t know the area, perhaps it’s the first time they’re away from their folks. So, we give advice as well, working with the students’ union around student safety.
[97] After those specific incidents, additional resources were brought into the city as well—additional police resources from other parts of South Wales Police were brought into the city—to provide that reassurance, to provide a greater visible presence. There was also a summit held. Interested parties, including students, including Cardiff city council and lots of other folk—I think it was run by the police and crime commissioner or the deputy police and crime commissioner—just to see what additional measures could be put in place in terms of making sure that people were safe within the city.
[98] Mohammad Asghar: Another thing is that, during the world cup, taxis were not taking female passengers—it was very unfortunate—especially for the short journeys. It was very inconvenient for the local people. Finally, on the devolution of taxis and private hire regulation in the Wales Bill, are there any issues that you can discuss here?
[99] Ms Moggridge: Again, we don’t know enough about that. They are questions for the licensing department, and I promise we’ll come back to you.
[100] William Graham: Public safety—Jeff.
[101] Jeff Cuthbert: Thank you very much. I noted in the written evidence from the police that you made the point that there was no disorder but there was frustration. Is that the case for all of the eight games, six of which, of course, did not involve Wales? Many of the spectators would be from very different countries who, obviously, could well be strangers completely to Cardiff and Wales. So, I wonder if you could clarify whether that comment applies across all of the eight games. Was the frustration that you referred to linked to the issue of transport in and out of Cardiff or were there other issues as well? Especially for those people who were strangers to Cardiff and Wales, were there any particular health and safety problems—public safety problems—caused by transport arrangements?
10:00
[102] Mr Jones: The lack of disorder that I referred to was around the queueing system specifically. In terms of the event itself—and when I say the event, I’m talking about the eight matches and also the two matches when Wales played away at Twickenham, because, again, they were very busy days for us—there was a nationally run police operation, which we fed into, and one of the things we would do was record around these events whether there were incidents of disorder. We picked up, I think, 59 issues of disorder in total. About 25 of those were in licensed premises. I think there were nine or 10 as well in areas where you had screens, so Cardiff Arms Park and other places. So, for the whole of the tournament, you’re talking about 59 incidents of disorder. I’m not in any way diluting the importance of that, but the figures I’ve seen would suggest that about 700,000 people—700,000 additional visitors came to Cardiff in that period. So, that is a relatively modest level of disorder.
[103] We deployed, at any one time, about 100 cops. Just under 100 cops would work these events, doing different things. You’d have some, for example, working in our licensing department, who would visit licensed premises to make sure that licensees were complying with the law. You’d have some working with colleagues in the local authority, dealing with street traders, making sure that they were appropriately licensed. You had some police officers as part of an order crime team, making sure that cars were safe, and then you had a significant number of police officers dealing with potential disorder in the city centre. I think, in total, we’ve attributed about 23 arrests during the whole of the tournament that had some link in some way to the tournament. I think there were four in the stadium itself—not all for disorder, I hasten to add. So, as a policing operation, given the numbers that were involved, the incidents of crime and disorder were relatively modest and well managed.
[104] Jeff Cuthbert: If I may, I note that ‘cops’ is now the official title for police officers. [Laughter.] The Fanzone seems to have been generally praised, but from a health and safety, public safety view, do you think that that was a successful initiative?
[105] Mr Jones: What I’m advised is that the Fanzone in Cardiff attracted more numbers than any of the other Fanzones in England and Wales. So, it was certainly well attended. I’m aware that there were a few incidents there, but when you’re talking about 10,000 to 12,000 people there, that is not a surprise. There were no major issues in terms of the Fanzone.
[106] Jeff Cuthbert: Okay. Thank you.
[107] William Graham: Thank you very much. Eluned—economic impact.
[108] Eluned Parrott: I note that, obviously, Neil Hanratty isn’t here, so I’ll try and limit my questions on economic impact to the ones that relate more specifically to transport management, where I think you might have some views. Obviously, the economic impact overall of major events is said to be very positive, but there are businesses in the heart of the city centre that are very badly affected by major events. Let me give you some examples. I’ve had traders in the arcades near the castle on the verge of tears in my office telling me that they’d had no customers on some of the match days; that on the morning after a particularly lively night in the Fanzone, they’d walked into their businesses to find the street outside—and this was on the day of the half marathon—ankle-deep in rubbish, that they had to clean vomit from their front windows, and that they had imagined that the city council would put in place cleaning operations in the night after matches and after major events, as they used to do in former years. So, perhaps that’s something you might want to take back.
[109] But in terms of the impact on getting people in, the major events—. They shut down the railway station, essentially—it’s under siege from the visitors—we move the buses out of the city centre; and we close a lot of the roads and a couple of the car parks as well. This means that those businesses can’t get any customers and they can’t get their staff in and out of the city centre either. What assessment do you make within your transport planning to make sure that the normal operations of the city can go ahead even on major event days?
[110] Ms Moggridge: When you say ‘assessment’—it’s all part of the planning. For many years, we have had a detailed database of all contacts within the city centre and they’re consulted well in advance on which major events are happening and when, what the timings are of those major events and the timings of road closures. The road closure that is implemented as part of major events in the Millennium Stadium is the same road closure that’s been implemented since 1999, since the stadium opened. So, all businesses within the city centre are very familiar with that road closure and the key is the communication with those businesses sufficiently in advance to allow them to plan, in advance, how they can get people to and from their businesses.
[111] On the day itself, there are council staff available in the city from very early—6.00 a.m. or 6.30 a.m.—so that, as people drive into the city, when the road closure isn’t on, they’re aware of what’s happening later in the city so that they don’t find themselves in areas where they can’t move later in the day. But the city uses a pattern of transport arrangements, which is a pattern that has been used now well in excess of 10 years.
[112] Eluned Parrott: Indeed. The pattern is familiar, but, actually, the communication, as far as I’m told by businesses—and I’ve done a survey of some of the businesses in the arcades—is that they didn’t know; they weren’t informed of when exactly the events were, and that they go on various websites to look for them. They said that some of them have had to do trawls of the websites themselves to find out when these events are going to happen and to try and guess what time the road closures will be in place for matches at different times of the day; that planning a half marathon, which closed half of the city the day immediately following a Rugby World Cup match, was possibly ambitious and possibly not well thought out in terms of the impact on businesses that had lost one whole day’s business and then lost another whole day’s business; and that those management issues—the communication isn’t good with local businesses, and they don’t feel listened to.
[113] Ms Moggridge: I would advise any local business owner who does contact you to make contact with the council and give us their contact details and we’ll add them to our database and ensure that they are part of that communication, which is often up to 12 months before any major event. So, if there are businesses that are saying they’re not getting the communication, I would welcome them making contact with me, directly, and I will make sure that they’re part of our communication strategy.
[114] Mr Carter: I think the added benefit of actually building up that database actually helps the council as well, in particular with some of its plans in moving forward. The city is growing at a considerable rate, with the local development plan, for example, and it’s important to make sure that we do maintain accessibility, not just for the shopkeepers, but obviously for the shoppers themselves who are equally important on these major event days.
[115] Eluned Parrott: Sorry—forgive me, but presumably you have a decent database to charge these businesses business rates. How is it that you don’t know who they are when you want to communicate with them?
[116] Mr Carter: I think we’re talking about a communication that is very, very sophisticated in being able to give them, you know, the kind of information that you’ve alluded to in your question. I think it’s important for us to get that information and to really provide a first-class communication plan. For example, I think we’re looking to inform all of the businesses with what we’re doing in the Central Square area; we’re trying to get as much information out there as possible with regard to a bus station that will operate, for example, on event days, so that the level of inconvenience to businesses is minimised considerably. So, I think, yes, we have got databases, but I think we’re looking at a sort of way of communication that is really getting to the finer detail.
[117] Eluned Parrott: Sorry, but that method of communication isn’t getting there. I just want to clarify: are you telling me that when you’re communicating with people about major events and the potential impact on their businesses, you don’t use a comprehensive and complete list of the businesses in the city centre?
[118] Ms Moggridge: We do use a comprehensive list, but often the data that you have probably alluded to in terms of business rates may not be the store manager, so what we tend to do is walk the streets; our city-centre management team have a relationship with all the retailers through a retail consortium, and we do the footfall and walk through the streets. As I said, if there are people out there who feel that they need to be better communicated with and we’ve missed them, then, I would advise them to make contact with me and I will make sure that they have the ability to be visited by a member of the council staff, or they go on to that database.
[119] Eluned Parrott: Thanks. I’ll certainly let them know that.
[120] With regard to the future, you talked about the new bus station and we’ve also got potential plans for changes to the railway station, which Rhun alluded to. I understand that the proposals for the new bus station have been delayed. What impact is that likely to have on major events like the Champions League final? Does that mean that you’re going to have to change your transport planning to take into account a different layout on the ground, if there’s building work, or not building work, at times when you weren’t anticipating it?
[121] Mr Carter: I’m not aware of any delay—
[122] Ms Moggridge: I’m not aware of any delay.
[123] Eluned Parrott: It was due to go before the planning committee in December, but no plan has been submitted, and it’s not due to be submitted to planning now until next summer, so that’s obviously a delay.
[124] Ms Moggridge: I don’t see that as a delay to the end date of delivering that bus station. As I understand it, and I’m working with the developer, the end date for the delivery of that bus station remains the same.
[125] Mr Carter: Obviously, in the interim, there will be plans put forward that will mitigate any concerns about that eventuality that we’re going to have to, you know, maintain the city and its movements in the absence of that. That’s already happening now.
[126] Ms Moggridge: It’s all about improvement, and I agree with you that a new bus station will be built in such a way that it can operate on event days, but, as we said previously, our experience of major events is that local buses don’t actually carry many event passengers. They are more for commuters and people who want to visit the city. What I would say to you is, up until now, we’re managing major events with a bus station that’s not actually in operation on those days. So, we’re now planning for the Champions League; we will carry on improving the current travel arrangements that we have on major event days.
[127] Eluned Parrott: But, as you said, the key—
[128] William Graham: Finally, please.
[129] Eluned Parrott: Indeed. The key point about the bus station is that it allows the normal operation of the city of Cardiff, even when there’s a major event on—
[130] Mr Carter: Correct, and we—
[131] Eluned Parrott: —and that is what we need to ensure. Now, currently, those buses are moved out of the city centre, and people don’t know where they are. What can you do to improve that for future events, so that the regular users of those buses will be able to get in and out as they planned?
[132] Ms Moggridge: You say they don’t know where they are. There are always people who get lost, but the majority of bus users who use buses on a regular basis—. Those buses go to the same location as they have done for over 10 years when there’s a major event on. There are detailed communications done by local bus operators and by the council to explain to people where the buses go. On the ground, on event days, people are actually fully briefed and they are able to give passengers information. So, because the pattern is the same pattern used for the last 10 years, I feel that the majority of bus users know where those buses go on event days. But, to improve it, it’s all about communication and making sure that people understand. Again, we will work with local bus operators to ensure that communication continues and improves to capture everybody.
[133] William Graham: Thank you. Keith.
[134] Keith Davies: All I can say is our stadium is the best rugby stadium in the world. The very fact that it’s in the city centre is fantastic.
[135] William Graham: Hear, hear.
[136] Keith Davies: I mean, I’ve gone to Twickenham, I’ve gone to Murrayfield and I’ve gone to Dublin, and, in fact, I had to miss the trip to Dublin with this committee to stay in Cardiff to go to the fourth rugby game, Wales versus Fiji, because my son had bought me a ticket. But what I can say is: I drove from west Wales to Cardiff, had no problems whatsoever, walked from the bay to the stadium, stayed in Cardiff, had a few drinks with my two sons and had a taxi back. I had no problems whatsoever. So, I think businesses in the centre of Cardiff are very lucky to have the stadium where it is.
[137] My question to you, though, is: after the third game, right, where all this fuss had been and there was a meeting called by Rugby World Cup with Cardiff city and with Welsh Government about plans for the future, now, what did you learn at that meeting about plans for the future? Obviously, during the first three games there were issues; there were issues on park and ride, and we know the issues with the railway station. But, for future events, now, are there any changes? In fact, one of the things that Rugby World Cup said was there should be an ‘integrated command structure’. So was that one set up after the meeting on 24 or 25 September? And planning for the future: perhaps you can comment on that.
[138] Ms Moggridge: I think the key focus for me is that the people who come to this city, to this fantastic stadium, give us back, on the whole, the feedback that we want to hear. So, after those first couple of events, unfortunately, the feedback was not what we wanted to hear, and that is the key: people need to come and have a fantastic experience—everybody. As we moved through the events, that was the feedback we were getting, and I’m sure that the guys in the Rugby World Cup who you will see later will give you those figures and that information around how positive the feedback came back. So, I think we can always improve. We have to think about these people who come to and from this city, because we want them to come back, so that is, really, how we improve, and that’s how we focus. We look at those data, we look at the negativities around not happy being in a queue, not knowing what’s going on. So, it’s communication, expectations—whatever it is, we make sure they’re aware of it before they come here. So, I think that is the key issue for me.
10:15
[139] Around the command structure, those of us who have worked with each other for many years have worked in a command structure for many events—NATO, the Rugby World Cup, the FA Cup play offs, the half marathon, and we’re planning for the world half marathon—and that structure, on the whole, works very well. What we did to improve it is that we brought other colleagues into the event control room from the British Transport Police, who tend to work in their own control room, plus the event promoters themselves, during half-time on the event. So, for the exit patterns, which are very, as you can imagine, challenging—because people, as Paul said earlier, leave at the same time—we brought everybody together into the one control room, as well as the communication teams, and it worked very well. So, I think, we did implement it, it worked very well, and that was another lesson that was learned.
[140] Mr Carter: Can I briefly add, in terms of planning for the future, I think it’s really important that we continue to make sure that we’re on time with our key infrastructure projects, and delivery is going to be very, very important for this city in coming years? But let’s not forget, since that stadium was first built, we’ve had extra pedestrianisation in the city centre, we’ve had extra bus priority lanes, enforcement, with the assistance of the Welsh Government, park and ride, reconfigured bus routings around the city, and so I think, slowly but surely, we are starting to build up the infrastructure that will benefit the city in hosting these prestigious events, like the European cup, and let’s hope we get many more of them. They still keep coming to Cardiff, so we must be doing something right.
[141] Keith Davies: Yes, and can I applaud Cardiff city for putting that rugby ball on the castle? A friend of mine was involved until 4 o’clock in the morning putting that up, and it was such a success that—. It should have come down after the last Wales game, but Cardiff city—. I think one of our colleagues here had a word, because I’d had a word with her, and we kept the rugby ball right up to the final. I’ve got a selfie with it, and there are thousands—. But it was something special—
[142] William Graham: There’s no time for personal reminiscence here, Keith; we’re out of time. So, thank you very much for your attendance today.
[143] Keith Davies: —something unique, and, again, the very fact—
[144] William Graham: Keith, thank you.
[145] Keith Davies: —that the stadium’s in the middle: brilliant.
[146] William Graham: Thank you very much for your attendance today. We’re now going to break for 15 minutes.
[147] Ms Moggridge: Thank you.
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:17 ac 10:28. The meeting adjourned between 10:17 and 10:28.
Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi'r Byd—Gwasanaethau Trenau Rugby World Cup Transport Planning—Train Services
[148] William Graham: We’re going to be entertained now. Okay, let’s go; thank you.
Dangoswyd DVD. Mae’r cyflwyniad ar gael drwy ddilyn y linc hon: cyflwyniad DVD. A DVD was shown. The presentation can be accessed by following this link: DVD presentation.
Dangoswyd DVD. Mae’r trawsgrifiad mewn llythrennau italig isod yn drawsgrifiad o’r cyfraniadau llafar ar y DVD. Mae’r cyflwyniad ar gael drwy ddilyn y linc hon: cyflwyniad DVD. A DVD was shown. The transcription in italics below is a transcription of the oral contributions on the DVD. The presentation can be accessed by following this link: DVD presentation.
[149] Rugby World Cup travel advice brought to you by Great Western Railway. With over 400,000 more people travelling with us throughout the tournament, please bear in mind that our services will be very busy. So, leave plenty of time for your journey. To help, we’ve teamed up with Network Rail and Rugby World Cup organisers to put on hundreds of extra trains and carriages across our network, as well as extra staff at key stations. We’ve even relaxed ticket restrictions, so you can travel earlier to the matches. For further travel advice, please visit gwr.com/rugby.
[150] William Graham: Thank you very much for your attendance today. Just to mention that you needn’t touch the microphones as they come on automatically. Could I ask you to give your names and titles for the record? We’ll start with Lynne.
[151] Ms Milligan: Hello, I’m Lynne Milligan and I’m the customer services director for Arriva Trains Wales.
[152] Mr Bullock: I’m Ian Bullock, managing director for Arriva Trains Wales.
[153] Mr Hopwood: Mark Hopwood. I’m the managing director at Great Western Railway.
[154] Mr McMahon: Paul McMahon. I’m acting route managing director for Wales for Network Rail.
[155] William Graham: Thank you very much. We’re going to start by going straight into questions. The first one simply is: what do you think was the effectiveness of the overall approach to planning this event? Anyone—we don’t mind.
[156] Mr Hopwood: I’ll start. Planning started quite a way back. I think ultimately we should be judged on results and we moved more people during this tournament than we’ve ever moved before. We moved 50 per cent more people in and out of Cardiff than we did during the Olympic Games. We’ve certainly learnt some lessons along the way. But certainly in my business, in Great Western, we moved 200,000 people in and out of the events—on some days, over 50 per cent of my high-speed train fleet was involved in taking people to or bringing people back from Cardiff. So, it was a huge logistical exercise. I think there have been some challenges and they are well recorded. But, equally, we should recognise that we moved huge numbers of people and we moved numbers of people that we’ve never moved before.
[157] Mr Bullock: I’d like to echo what Mark said. I think there are lessons to be learnt in terms of the planning, but, if you just look at Cardiff Central station, we moved over 600,000 people in and out of the station during the eight matches and all were moved safely. In terms of logistics, it was a huge logistical operation for us as well. Every train that ATW has was out on the network and working. We suspended things like train maintenance and a lot of planning went into being able to arrange that level of service and move that number of people.
[158] Ms Milligan: The only thing that I’d add is that I was involved with planning from the beginning with Rugby World Cup and was attending planning meetings to that effect. The focus was always on having enough capacity to get people home; that was always the key concern. We worked with CrossCountry and First Great Western to deliver that. During the planning meetings that took place, the real focus was on, ‘Have we got enough capacity to get people back after the matches?’, particularly the 20:00 kick-offs at the stadium.
[159] William Graham: You will have heard that the committee has already received evidence on, and we’re aware of, the physical constraints, which we’re all familiar with, I suspect. So how about with the Rugby World Cup organisers? Did they properly consider the transport implications in terms of kick-off, when you recall that return travel was impossible? How was that brought out at an early stage—or perhaps it wasn’t?
[160] Ms Milligan: In those early planning meetings—. We attended every one. Not every train operating company did—they mainly focused on the city planners—but we were flagging up from the very earliest meetings about capacity constraints at Cardiff Central. We flagged up about the building work that was going to be taking place there during the tournament time. We took stills of closed-circuit television that we were able to show in those meetings to say, ‘Here are the issues that we have—that we work with on events’. So, that was known about from the very beginning—that it’s a small station and our risk assessment shows that people have to queue outside. We showed lots of photographic evidence to show that’s what we do—that’s our operation.
[161] William Graham: Okay. The reason you’re here is that you’re obviously experts in your fields, so tell us a bit about the forecasting of demand for transport, particularly when it became clear that so many passengers were coming from the east.
[162] Mr Hopwood: We worked with Rugby World Cup, as I think the other train operators did, and they had a system in place for predicting demand that was partly influenced by ticket sales. I think you’ve highlighted one of the challenges that affected us in particular at Great Western, which is that, over the years, many of the big events at Cardiff have often been Wales versus somebody else, and that means that a lot of the supporters who are coming to support Wales are heading back westwards or they’re heading into the Cardiff Valleys, which means the numbers heading east are more limited. Certainly, we had a number of games where the majority of tickets were sold to people from the English side, and that clearly put particular challenges on us, but we did work quite closely with Rugby World Cup to look at numbers. I think, actually, when you look at how we performed, we didn’t have a problem moving the number of people in totality; I think where the challenges arose was how many we were able to move particularly in that critical first hour after the game.
[163] William Graham: Thank you. Ian.
[164] Mr Bullock: I think, Chair, that there’s a discrepancy in expectation and assumptions that went into the planning. I think that the rail industry, and I include GWR in this as well as ATW, was under the assumption that we were to protect existing travellers as part of our arrangements—so those not involved with the event. That was how the train plans, both for GWR and ATW, were designed. So, it was about two things; it was both about the capacity to move people as well as protecting non-event travellers, if I can use that phrase.
[165] William Graham: Okay. Thank you very much. Mick.
[166] Mick Antoniw: One issue that seems to have arisen is the whole question of the ownership of the overall preparations. Were you satisfied that the actual co-ordinating preparations were actually right?
[167] Ms Milligan: There was a monthly meeting with all of the agencies involved as part of the planning. Each agency is involved in the plan—its particular contribution to the overall plan. As part of the rail team, the team that works for ATW is liaising constantly and closely with the other train operators and Network Rail throughout that. So, the rail companies involved, and there were three train operating companies and Network Rail, were meeting every month to talk about the rail plan and to make sure that—. We have to bid for a rail path; that’s validated centrally and then has to come back to us as a confirmed route for a particular train, and that is designed to make sure that the station is able to cope with the train plan that’s designed.
[168] Mick Antoniw: Much of what you’re doing is dependent on the data, the forecasting and the projections that you’re given. We heard earlier that, at the beginning, everyone was completely content that those data were absolutely correct, based on experience and all available information.
[169] Ms Milligan: So, the early data arriving from the modelling tool underestimated the amount of capacity for Cardiff, and we flagged up that, whilst Cardiff was showing this, our experience from past events shows that Cardiff brings extra people in; we called them throughout the planning phase our ‘spectating spectators’—people who come into Cardiff just to enjoy the atmosphere, to watch the match on pub screens and so on. Over the years, we can see that that adds to the travelling numbers—not people who would be ticket holders for a Rugby World Cup match.
[170] Mick Antoniw: So, you had identified early on that there were potential problems with the data that were being used for the plan.
[171] Ms Milligan: We identified that the original figures coming through weren’t reflective of our past experience, and we said that the numbers that were showing weren’t quite right. As the tournament moved through, and more people were confirming their travel plans with the Rugby World Cup, that figure became more realistic. So, there was a proportion added onto their figures for the ‘spectating spectator’ group. There was a debrief meeting yesterday with Rugby World Cup and all of the agencies involved, and there was an acknowledgement that people weren’t making travel decisions until, perhaps, the week before the match. So, that did lead to that very late surge in demand for rail. A week before the match is quite difficult to forecast for.
[172] Mick Antoniw: Do you think there was an overdependence or—I don’t like to use the word complacency—an assumption that ‘we’ve got all of the information we need and we’re right’ rather than a more cautious and more prudent approach to the data you had?
[173] Ms Milligan: I think our capacity assumptions were good; for ATW, I think that they mirrored the capacity we then provided. I think Great Western did see a very late surge, and I’ll let Mark pick that up, but there was certainly a higher demand for rail from London at the last minute concerted into a very small period of time.
[174] Mick Antoniw: So, that would be one area where there was a weakness in the advanced preparation.
[175] Ms Milligan: I think that’s also about customer advice about how you travel to a match, and that was led by Rugby World Cup—so, information to customers.
[176] Mick Antoniw: Do you think the changes that were then made, when it turned out that the data that you were working on were not as you expected them to be, were made as quickly as was actually possible?
[177] Mr Bullock: The main changes, Mick, were on the GWR side and the train plan.
[178] Mr Hopwood: If you look at it from our point of view, the system that Rugby World Cup had in place was a computer modelling system called TRACME, which is a transport demand model. If you go back to last year, to November 2014, that was predicting across the board that 30 per cent of fans coming to the matches would travel by rail. By the time we got to the start of the tournament that had increased to 44 per cent. I think one of the other challenges that we had was the spread of people across the period of time in the run-up to the game travelling. The Rugby World Cup had put together a travel app, which I think in many ways was very helpful, but it only had a limited number of trains on it prior to the start of the game, rather than the whole service. So, one of the things that we learned after the first weekend was that passengers seemed to be concentrating themselves on those later trains, and, actually, we were very keen that people spread themselves out, got to Cardiff early and enjoyed the pleasures of the city of Cardiff. We agreed with Rugby World Cup straight away to change their app to present the whole portfolio of departures, and we saw a very significant improvement in the spread of passengers after that.
[179] Certainly, as far as the London fans were concerned, not only did we run the scheduled service, of course, but we had a very substantial number of our own extra trains, but also trains that we’d hired in from other operators. I think it’s worth pointing out as well that for some of the games, particularly the 8 o’clock kick-offs, the game was finishing at a time when not only was there limited capacity but, actually, there weren’t any timetabled trains at all. Normally, the last train back to London is at 9.25 p.m., so everything that we provided, and we provided thousands after thousands of seats, was in addition to the base travel plan, and that was clearly a challenge for us.
[180] Mick Antoniw: If you had known, right at the beginning, that there was going to be that 40 per cent of people travelling, as opposed to around about 33 per cent, you would still have been hampered, though, by the infrastructure restrictions you have in terms of availability of trains and so on. So, was there much more that you could have actually done with those particular limitations?
10:45
[181] Mr Hopwood: Well, you’re absolutely right that those are very serious limitations. I think the point Ian made a few minutes ago is quite important that all the train operators had approached the planning of this from the perspective that we weren’t going to disrupt the train service on other routes or for other customers, so that everything we were trying to do for the Rugby World Cup was layered on top of the normal train service.
[182] Mick Antoniw: One major infrastructure issue, though, is this problem with the Severn tunnel. It seems quite incredible that you have restrictions there when there are major events. This is something, of course, that has arisen periodically with past events. What attempts were made to overcome that or to deal with that particular issue?
[183] Mr Hopwood: It would be helpful just to know which issue with the Severn tunnel—
[184] Mick Antoniw: Where there’s closure or where there’s maintenance work, which then imposes restrictions on the London to south Wales links.
[185] Mr McMahon: We take a regular Saturday night possession of the Severn tunnel late at night, through the night, to carry out important inspection work. We’re also planning every year regular maintenance activities, and we moved some of that around for the Rugby World Cup. We can always discuss with the train operators whether we can make changes to those plans if needs be.
[186] Mr Hopwood: In fairness to Network Rail, the response that we had, if you take the Friday evening game as well as the Saturday evening game that finished very late, was that we had full access to the railway and we ran a very comprehensive train service at a time when, normally, there would have been no trains back to London at all. I think the physical limitations of the track layout around the station are probably more pertinent in terms of capacity.
[187] I think we should recognise that, because we all felt the need to respond in the way that we briefed you on in our documentation, we did impose some pain on customers who weren’t travelling to and from the rugby. So, services from Cardiff to London during the game itself were curtailed in order that we could hold the rolling stock in Cardiff and have it available for the finish of the match. Passengers travelling into Cardiff during the match and shortly after—some of those trains terminated at Newport and passengers had to wait for the next train so that we could bring those trains through the centre tracks in the station that don’t have a platform. The original planning over many months assumed that we wouldn’t do that. We recognised after those first couple of games that we did need to respond, and that was the joint response. I know that Arriva Trains Wales had some similar but different challenges of their own in terms of their train plan as well.
[188] Mick Antoniw: So, the biggest challenge as far as Arriva’s information is concerned is that there are really major issues with regard to infrastructure capacity.
[189] Mr Bullock: Yes.
[190] Mr McMahon: Some of those are being worked on now as part of the Cardiff area re-signalling programme. That work’s under way, and that will give more operational flexibility, which should provide more capacity to run additional trains out of Cardiff from the end of next year onwards. But, looking further ahead, the big issue around capacity is around the station—you know, the inherent constraints of trying to put 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people through a station that was built in the 1920s.
[191] Mick Antoniw: Okay, thank you.
[192] William Graham: Jeff and then Keith.
[193] Jeff Cuthbert: Thank you. This is mainly for Arriva about passenger flow through Central station. We know that six of the eight matches in the Rugby World Cup did not involve Wales, and we knew this in advance. So, these would be people largely coming from the east and from countries outside the UK. So, when you planned for the passenger flow, did you anticipate that or did you base it really on experience of the 6 nations and, indeed, Welsh soccer matches? To what extent did you allow for the fact that, perhaps this time, people wouldn’t be staying in Cardiff to eat and drink, as they may well do at domestic internationals, but would want to leave back to wherever they were based—London, Bristol, wherever that is—on a faster basis? Was that allowed for?
[194] Ms Milligan: Shall I pick that up? Yes, that was. We have started to see that much more with events generally. For matches that take place in the middle of the day we tend to have two waves of traffic coming back to the station. So, there’s an immediate wave of people that want to leave straight away, and there’s a big chunk of people who go into the city and do some other stuff—perhaps watch another match on a screen or have a meal or something else—and then come back a few hours later. We anticipated for that, and our queue and crowd management operations therefore stayed in place for a lot longer than you would normally expect to see. So, for the late matches, you had that surge back straight away because there are limitations beyond the sort of 10 p.m. or 10.30 p.m. finish. But, yes, we had expected that.
[195] Mr Bullock: I think one of the lessons that we learned as the games progressed was that overspill onto Wood Street from the passengers going eastwards. We worked very closely with Cardiff council and the police about trying to manage that area. That was one of the big learning points. That was uncontrolled—that entrance onto the station queueing system from the sheer number of people going eastwards. The changes that were made proved very effective and really helped the feeding into the station queues.
[196] Jeff Cuthbert: Thank you.
[197] William Graham: Keith, please.
[198] Keith Davies: Yes. I don’t mind watching rugby or football matches at 8 o’clock at night, when I’m at home watching them on the television, but I don’t like having to travel to them and travel from them. So, when the early discussions took place with Rugby World Cup, were the issues of 8 o’clock kick-offs actually discussed?
[199] Ms Milligan: Yes. They are a real challenge, you know. A few years ago we would have really found it very difficult to think about how we could do it, but I think that we recognise the importance of events to the city and we really do want to make sure that everyone has the best possible experience. So, we do whatever we can to try and make that work in the best way. They are a real challenge. You’re stretching train crew and station staff schedules, you know that you’re queueing people outside late at night, and you make as many provisions to make that as comfortable as possible.
[200] Mr Bullock: I think, Keith, you’ve raised a really important issue. This one isn’t confined to the Rugby World Cup. We’ve seen later and later finishes with the 6 nations games, with some Friday night 8 o’clock kick-offs. I remember a past managing director of Arriva who actually—and it’s a good number of years ago now—made a big point about saying that we couldn’t handle a 6 o’clock kick-off and the impact that that would have. Now, 8 o’clock kick-offs are regular. I think we put it in our submission that we do work very closely with the stadium and people like RBS 6 Nations, but it does appear that some of them are a bit agnostic to how people then travel back from an event that finishes very late. So, as Lynne said, we throw a huge amount of resource at it. One of the consequences that Lynne hasn’t mentioned—and we’re back to this impact on non-event travellers—is when you’re finishing that late, and you’re talking 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock in the morning before the trains are stabled, they often end up in the wrong place. So, that has a detrimental effect on the next morning’s service. So, it’s not just the train crew and the passengers arriving home very late, wherever the destination is, it’s also that you’ve then got a logistical problem of train stock that could be completely in the wrong place.
[201] Mr Hopwood: I think that it is a really important point. I think, particularly in the context of this competition, that Saturday night game, which was a quarter-final, I think—
[202] Keith Davies: Who won it?
[203] Mr Hopwood: I’m not the biggest expert on rugby, so maybe you can ask that question to someone more talented later on. But I think the 8 o’clock kick-off on the Saturday night was followed by the 1 o’clock on the Sunday. Certainly, for us in the railway industry, we require all our staff, most of whom are safety-critical, to have 12 hours rest between shifts. We were taking people back to London on trains—by the time they’d got back into the depot and had been stabled for the night and were undergoing maintenance, it was 2.30 a.m. or 3.00 a.m. and we were then mobilising the trains to get people the next day at 6.00 a.m. What that meant was we had to have two completely separate groups of staff. Fortunately for me, the workforce in Great Western was very motivated and very keen to help us deliver this, so they volunteered for overtime to support that, but it was something that did stretch the organisation. We have the same challenges as Ian in that a lot of those trains would’ve been in the depot having maintenance exams and being fuelled and we had to squeeze that into a very tight margin. The great news is that the teams responded, we got everything serviced and fuelled and we ran the service for the rugby and it didn’t impact on the scheduled service elsewhere, but it was pushing, I think, the system to its limits.
[204] William Graham: Thank you. Eluned.
[205] Eluned Parrott: Thank you. It just seems very clear that with the current design of the station—and I recognise that Network Rail are looking at that very closely, as well as the signalling issues—we simply can’t push 40,000 people or so through that station after an 8 o’clock kick off to get them home in a timely manner. So, what arrangements were—? I understand that the Rugby World Cup organisers put on buses after, say, I think the first three events, to get some of those passengers home and to reduce the length of the queue. Why hadn’t that been raised earlier in the planning process? Why wasn’t that there from the beginning?
[206] Ms Milligan: Well, again, we planned for capacity—the capacity that was forecast—and I think all of our data show that we actually did have the capacity. The emphasis changed to then be about wait times. So, for us, we had built our plans—along with Great Western and CrossCountry, we built our plans on being able to get that capacity back after the match safely, and we responded to the pressure. And we’d already done that, I think, after match 1 and match 2, and Ian and I were involved all the way through all of the matches. We’d already started looking at, ‘So, what more can we do?’ The Rugby World Cup made the offer of buses that might then alleviate things and make things move more quickly, and we were advised that they’d been able to secure some buses the evening before the third match. Now, that meant that we weren’t able to do the risk assessments in time to change all of our dynamic queue modelling, but we were able to introduce that from match 4, and that did make a difference. That was a very big support in terms of being able to move one of our queues very quickly indeed.
[207] Mr Bullock: I think if—
[208] William Graham: Sorry, I don’t mean to stop you, but I remind Members we’re halfway through this session and we haven’t yet finished the first group of questions. Oscar.
[209] Mohammad Asghar: Thank you very much, Chair.
[210] Mr Bullock: Before you continue, can I just add one—?
[211] William Graham: Yes, please.
[212] Mr Bullock: I think, in terms of your question, it would’ve been really helpful to have had the offer of the buses much earlier and at the start of the process and it could’ve been integrated into the queuing systems, and that offer came very late in the day.
[213] William Graham: Sorry, just to follow that one up then: in terms of the offer, when was it made and why wasn’t it made before, I suppose?
[214] Ms Milligan: Well, we know that it was trialled for Twickenham in the warm-up matches and had been really successfully done, which is why the Rugby World Cup team proposed it as an option. It did make a big difference and it would’ve been great if that had been offered from the beginning.
[215] William Graham: Rhun.
[216] Rhun ap Iorwerth: Two things: did you think that you could, perhaps, ask for those buses, and if the pressure was initially on capacity, not on timescale, are you saying that you were happy and prepared for four-hour waits at Cardiff station, initially? Was it only when people started questioning whether that was too long that you then changed your tack?
[217] Ms Milligan: Do you want to pick up the bus point, Mark?
[218] Mr Hopwood: Yes. I think, as far as the buses are concerned, the buses, when they were provided, were used, mainly, to get people to Bristol Parkway. I think the nature of the geography is that, clearly, with the largest English city to Cardiff being Bristol, there’s no car parking of a substantial nature in central Bristol, so a lot of people use Bristol Parkway. The challenge for us with that is that Bristol Parkway shares the same trains as London, so we’re trying to get people on. Clearly, it’s best to use the rail capacity for the longest possible journey, so putting people on those buses worked well. I would endorse what Lynne has said. I think it was a good solution. With hindsight, if everybody involved in the Rugby World Cup planning had put that on the table earlier, I think that may have been a good idea. It’s certainly something for us to consider in the future.
11:00
[219] As far as wait times are concerned, my perspective as one of the train operators at Cardiff—I think on the four-hour thing, we need to just be careful how we express that, because, you know, the last person at the back of the queue was cleared after four hours, but we’re not necessarily saying that they joined the queue four hours at the match turning-out time.
[220] William Graham: Oscar, please.
[221] Mohammad Asghar: Thank you very much, Chair. My question to the panel is: you know the matches’ timing months before when the matches happen anywhere in these countries, Cardiff and elsewhere, but the timetable, you know, from Great Western—. You know, that was only giving four hours’ timing from London to Cardiff, and that was only placed on the website four hours before. The people who travelled had to arrange their travel arrangements. So, don’t you think it’s a bit of not co-ordinating with the Rugby World Cup people and railway officials, or there was co-ordination—?
[222] Mr Hopwood: Sorry; I’m not entirely sure I understand the question.
[223] Mr Bullock: I think it’s the four hours on the Rugby World Cup app.
[224] Mr Hopwood: Right. Okay. I mean, I think, with hindsight, it would have been great if the full train service all day was on the Rugby World Cup app as well as on the national rail journey planner. I think everyone would accept that.
[225] Mohammad Asghar: But did you have continuous communications with tournament officials and the train operators?
[226] Mr Hopwood: Yes. I mean, there was regular dialogue with the officials from quite a long way out about how we were going to plan for the event. I think, with hindsight, it would have been good if the railway journey planning systems had flowed the full portfolio of departures through to the Rugby World Cup. I think it’s a shame that the Rugby World Cup app didn’t have that, but it was fixed very quickly. So, I think, for the majority of people who attended, that wasn’t an issue.
[227] Ms Milligan: It’s just worth adding that our own websites and our own information would have had all of that information on them, including a short animation that we made to help people understand the queueing system. That was on our website.
[228] William Graham: Dafydd, please.
[229] Lord Elis-Thomas: Thank you very much indeed. First of all, I would like to put on record my gratitude to all the people you employ for the way they all look after me, because I am a regular user of Cardiff Central. But you answered your own question in the video. Isn’t it a fact that a train station of the capacity of Cardiff Central is not appropriate for a capital city in the twenty-first century? When can we have, at least, the equivalent of an Edinburgh Haymarket, and I want the timing clear now?
[230] Mr McMahon: So, Network Rail has started some work, as part of the Cardiff master plan works, to look at potential designs for Cardiff Central—rebuilding that and redeveloping that, going forwards. So, that work’s under way at the moment; I think some of that’s in the public domain and I think people will know about that, and we’re happy to talk much more about that. In looking at that, clearly we’ve got constraints with the listed nature of the station, so there’ll be questions about what you might want to do if you weren’t constrained by the listed nature of the station, or if you want to build around the listed nature and reflect that as part of the new design and as part of the new station footprint. So, that work’s all in hand at the moment.
[231] We’re projecting significant growth through Cardiff Central in the years ahead: 13 million passengers this year; by 2023, increasing by 10 million to 23 million, and far more in the years ahead. We’re reflecting that in our planning, so there’ll be a bigger footprint—you know, more space for retail and more space for passengers. But, as I said at the start, we are constrained by the listed nature of the station.
[232] Lord Elis-Thomas: But are your plans sufficiently radical and visionary for what Cardiff really needs? Now, I know as well as you do there are only two platforms that are going eastwards; none of them are of adequate size. Platform 0 is too short for longer trains. You can use platform 4 occasionally for eastward-moving trains, but that disrupts what happens elsewhere, and they all end up through the same point system and the same tracks, so you need to reframe the whole place.
[233] Mr McMahon: Absolutely, but as part of the Cardiff area resignalling works that are ongoing at the moment—that will give more operational flexibility through the changes to the track layout and to the signalling system. So, that would come ahead and independent of any development of the station. Of course, if or when the station is developed—. For example, at the moment, we’ve got constraints with platform 0—it can only take a five-car unit—and one of the obvious options is to extend that to provide more capacity to put in the bay platform on platform 5, so to give far more platform capacity. Our current designs see major changes to the platforms to provide more usable space for pedestrians. The plans we’ve got at the moment, which work around the listed nature of the station, I think, are fairly radical. If you’ve seen those, they really do make a dramatic change to the look, feel and usability of the station. We’re very happy to work with other people to consider other options and suggestions.
[234] William Graham: Thank you very much. Before we turn to others, I’ll just ask Joyce to do the question and it’s easy, then, to give a reply.
[235] Joyce Watson: I listened to what you said, and I’ve used these trains going east and west—I live in Pembrokeshire. There are issues about the trains that were knocked out of service—reduced—to service this. They all come down to the same thing—capacity at that railway station—in my view. I listened to Paul talking about the challenges of the listed building, and, yes, they are challenging, but they’ve been overcome repeatedly in places where upgrades have happened, with massive investment. So, I can’t accept the argument, if that’s what it is, that just because the building is listed, you can’t upgrade it. I absolutely refuse to accept that, because I’ve seen those improvements happen elsewhere.
[236] Mr McMahon: Can I clarify? I didn’t say that we can’t upgrade the station and have full regard for the listed status of the station. The first plan we’ve got on the table absolutely does that. So, it works around, and works with, the current listed nature of the station. What I was saying was that, if people want to do something even more radical, and potentially a bit cheaper, then you have to address the question of the listed nature of the station. Elsewhere on the British railway network, at King’s Cross and plenty of other places, Network Rail absolutely works around and accommodates the listed nature of the station.
[237] William Graham: Ian, you manage the station.
[238] Mr Bullock: Could I just add—? There are two questions here. One is managing current expected annual growth, and the second important point about the redesign of the station that Network Rail are looking at are special events. So, it’s not just the Rugby World Cup, it’s the RBS 6 Nations, concerts and the rest of it. There’s some really important decisions that we need to consider. So, for example, where is it acceptable for people to queue? Is it outside the station, or do we need to bring them inside the station?
[239] Lord Elis-Thomas: Edinburgh Haymarket I mentioned.
[240] Mr Bullock: Exactly. So, as part of this design, we need to consider not just that the station’s footfall is going to grow by 10 million over the next x number of years, it’s what we do for these huge influxes of people that we get, which are so important to the prestige of Cardiff and Wales. We need a station that’s fit for purpose for both of those aspects, and that’s the point I wanted to make, Chair.
[241] William Graham: Thanks for making it.
[242] Mr McMahon: It might be worth just adding where we are in terms of the planning process. So, we’re looking at designs at the moment. We’re willing and able to have conversations with anybody who wants to talk about it. It feeds in to the planning for the next five-year regulatory control period for the rail industry. That starts in 2019. Ideally, we need to be able to put a plan, an outline plan, on the table in less than a year. The costs of a world-class station, which is what we’re looking at, are upwards of £200 million or £300 million. We haven’t got a firm price tag; it’s all very much an outline at the moment. So, it’s a significant sum of money that, at the moment, isn’t funded.
[243] William Graham: Rhun.
[244] Rhun ap Iorwerth: I was just going to ask about the ‘when’—the second half of Dafydd’s question. When are we going to see this station?
[245] Mr McMahon: If it gets agreed, if it gets funded, then work could start, potentially, in the run-up to 2019, but really it would start after that. So, you’re looking at no earlier than a number of years after 2019. It would be a significant piece of work.
[246] Rhun ap Iorwerth: What about the question of priority? Where is this in the list of priorities for station developments for Network Rail UK-wide?
[247] Mr McMahon: We don’t have a prioritised list, so, in a sense, I would say it’s nowhere, but don’t take that as a negative response. It’s not at No. 1 and it’s not at No. 10, but it’s—
[248] Rhun ap Iorwerth: What’s it competing with? What are the other ones you can say need obvious radical redevelopment, in the same way as Cardiff needs obvious radical redevelopment?
[249] Mr McMahon: There are some of the stations in London. London has seen a lot of investment, clearly. Leeds is another station, Liverpool Lime Street—these are all stations that, if you visit them, are crying out for some investment, and that’s all in the mix for the debates for the initial submission that we will make in September of next year to outline the potential funding case for the five years beyond 2019.
[250] Rhun ap Iorwerth: And who’ll be pushing—apart from us—for Cardiff to be high up on that as yet non-existent list of—
[251] Mr McMahon: Train operators, all stakeholders, you and, ultimately, networks. It’s a joint industry plan between Network Rail between all train operators next year, so there’ll be a healthy debate over the next few months as we work out what the priorities are and what the funding package could look like.
[252] Rhun ap Iorwerth: And political pressure from Welsh Government would be useful on you to get you some [Inaudible.]
[253] Mr McMahon: Absolutely.
[254] Mr Hopwood: We certainly will be pushing quite hard, and I think for us, running the capital-to-capital service from Cardiff to London, the station facilities are really important for special events, but also for the day-to-day business. Very quickly, I’ll just point out that if you travel from Cardiff to London, the busiest station you’ll travel through is Reading. Reading has had nearly £1 billion of investment from Network Rail over the last five years. Every August, we have the Reading pop festival. We’ve struggled in recent years to cope with the outflow of that, similar to a sporting event in that most people want to leave at the same time. For year after year, we’ve had large queuing systems outside the station; this was the first year, in 2015, that we responded to that event with the station complete. We set the queuing systems up, and I was there on bank holiday Monday with my hard hat and my orange jacket. We waited for the queues and they never arrived, because the station just absorbed the passengers and we were able to run some extra services we hadn’t run before. I think Reading is a great example of how putting that investment into a station allows you to cope with the capacity not just of the trains, but actually of the people, which is, in many ways, even more important. And Network Rail preserved Brunel’s 1840 station building on platform 7 at the same time, so these things are possible.
[255] William Graham: Thank you very much. Jeff, please.
[256] Jeff Cuthbert: Health and safety. Now, we’ve had reports from Transport Focus of a number of incidents, and I’ll assume that they’ve been reported to you as well. These are things like some people being forced to stand in a toilet because of the volume of numbers of people on the train and travelling in overhead luggage racks—I’ve seen this happen at normal times, shall we say, so that’s perhaps not too surprising—and, indeed, people being trapped in the toilet because they couldn’t open the door. I’m not saying that’s because of the Rugby World Cup—I don’t think there’s any suggestion of that—but how confident are you that the train services are safe and, indeed, comply with the law under those circumstances?
[257] Ms Milligan: Certainly, in terms of the loading of trains, we work with a plan on the day that tells us how many coaches are on each train, and it’s loaded to those limits. There isn’t an upper limit for safety in terms of—
[258] William Graham: Sorry, there is or isn’t?
[259] Ms Milligan: There is not, in terms of the load bearing of trains, so it’s done on the basis of knowing that we’ll be loading trains with standing room, and you’ve seen that on the film. We use everything we have in our fleet for events. So, there are no trains sitting anywhere unless they’ve been involved in some kind of incident—there’s nothing sitting anywhere that’s not in use. So, we are using everything at our disposal to deliver capacity after events.
[260] Jeff Cuthbert: Okay. I’ll give credit—I went see the Wales-Uruguay match and I came down the Rhymney valley lines and I was very pleased that it was a six car train in both directions, and they were on time. And, at both ends, I was able to get straight on the train at the first one that turned up, and I had no problems at all. That’s not necessarily the case for others, and certainly this would be an issue for Great Western as well. But, on the issue, for example, of the toilets—people using it as a place just to stand in—surely there are rules that the toilets are there for the proper use of a toilet, not just an extra place for people to stand in. Wouldn’t that be a fair statement? How do you ensure that that happens?
[261] Mr Hopwood: I think it’s very difficult for us to police what every individual passenger is doing for every minute of their journey. There was one photograph taken, on social media, which was circulated, and the reality was that there were some standing, but there was plenty of space on the floor of that train for people to stand. Someone chose to climb up into the luggage rack I think more as a stunt than for anything else.
11:15
[262] I think one of the serious dilemmas that we face after a match at Cardiff is how many people do we try and get onto the first trains, and to what extent do we hold people back for following departures. That’s a very difficult challenge for all of us. And, as we said in our submissions, certainly on Great Western, for every event, the last trains in our plan ran either empty or with very significant numbers of empty seats. But, as we’ve heard, one of the key issues for people attending the events was queuing time, so we do have a slight contradiction there in terms of how we manage that, and that’s a challenge for us.
[263] One of the good-news things for our business is that the investment that we’re seeing, and which Network Rail are putting into electrification and new rolling stock, means that, not too far away from us now, London trains will have more capacity. Each carriage on the London InterCity trains will be slightly longer, and instead of trains having eight carriages, they’ll have nine or 10. The other bit of important news is that the commuter trains into Paddington from the Thames valley are going to be capable of 110 mph. They’re nearly new or brand-new electric trains with quite comfortable seating, and we’re working with Network Rail to have those trains route cleared, right through to Cardiff, not because we’re going to use them to Cardiff day to day, but because, for events of this nature, we’ll be able to join them up into 12-carriage trains and run them to Cardiff for special events. So, I’m really confident that, as we move forward, we’ll see a real transformation in the capacity that we can provide for these type of events, which is one of the reasons why we’re so keen to see the station infrastructure given the right level of investment to support the increase we’re going to see in the train capacity.
[264] Jeff Cuthbert: If I may, just a final point: what’s your response to the suggestion that, especially on these very, very busy days, people should book for specific trains—times of trains—so that there’s a spreading of the take-up of passengers coming to the station, or indeed, on the trains, in the same way that if you’re going to fly somewhere, you have to book onto a specific airplane? What would be your response to that?
[265] Ms Milligan: Shall I pick that up? This used to happen, where people would have a reservation, so a reservation held for a particular train. When people are standing in a queue and they’re booked on a specific train, they become incredibly anxious about not catching it because they can see there are lots of people in front of them in the queue. So, we deliberately suspend reservations for all the train companies going out of Cardiff after an event, in order that people are loaded in accordance with their place in the queue. We just found that the distress and anxiety levels that people were having if they were pre-booked on something that they could see they might not get onto was just unfortunate and was distressing for customers, so we changed that.
[266] Jeff Cuthbert: Okay.
[267] William Graham: Eluned.
[268] Eluned Parrott: Just following up on the issue of safety, clearly, the train managers and the guards on trains are there not only for revenue protection, but for the safety of the passengers. On these seriously overcrowded trains, are they able to get through the train if they need to?
[269] Ms Milligan: If they need to, so—
[270] Eluned Parrott: If there’s an incident on a train that requires the train manager, are they able to get there if the train is so overcrowded that there are people standing in the toilets and in the luggage racks?
[271] Ms Milligan: So, when you see imagery of people standing in an aisle, yes, you can fight your way through that. You can move your way though when there are people standing in the aisle, usually in single file, so you can move through it. We see it on very busy trains coming into the city today—
[272] Eluned Parrott: I often do.
[273] Ms Milligan: The conductors can get through, and we have extensive risk assessments for each part of the operation in order that we’re managing our operations safely.
[274] Mr Bullock: I think, implicit in your question, is should there only be seating on services for things like special events. I think it would be almost impossible to police. For example, on the Welsh network, most of our stations are unstaffed. How would you actually physically stop people boarding those services? And, if we only went to, ‘You’ve got a seat’, it would severely restrict the number of people that could actually attend events.
[275] Eluned Parrott: It wouldn’t be my suggestion that there would only be seating, but I’ve been on trains—I commute regularly on the train into Cardiff—where the train manager has struggled to get out of the cab at the end of the carriage to open the doors when we got to the station. So, that question about safety and whether or not the train staff are—. If overcrowding gets beyond a certain point and you don’t have a limit for the number of standing passengers that each carriage is able to safely take, like a bus does, is that then a potential issue for the safety of the passengers, but also of the staff operating those services?
[276] Ms Milligan: I have two points: we load to a level on every train so that we’re not just saying that it’s unlimited. So, we only release numbers from the queue for each train that we believe fit with our risk assessment. On my second point, if you look at the busiest network in the UK, that is probably the London underground, there isn’t anyone else on that train other than the driver, and passengers will load to a level that they want—people will stand back if they don’t want to get on a very busy train and you’ll see that happen lots of times. We ask our train managers to make that call. So, if a train is coming into Cardiff, for example, from north Wales, they will, at some point, say, ‘Actually, this train is too full’; they have that judgment to make that call.
[277] Eluned Parrott: Okay, thank you. I want to move on now to talk about the queue management system at Cardiff Central station. I think the customer services director for a rail company is probably—how should I put this—one of the more exciting jobs in the rail industry, I imagine, especially around these kinds of major events, where you have lots of challenges. So, why do you think that the queuing arrangements for the Rugby World Cup in Cardiff has been a particular problem in comparison with other events, because there are other events where most of the passengers are heading east? Obviously, we’ve had FA Cup matches and other matches and concerts and events where the audience is not coming from the pattern that we see for the 6 nations matches, which we are more used to.
[278] Ms Milligan: I think that people, who are coming into Cardiff for the 6 nations and autumn internationals have typically been before or are aware of the queuing arrangements from the stadium to the station. So, I think that if you are a regular user of the stadium, you’ll know the arrangements post-match, and, in order to help customers to understand that, we have lots of information on our website that indicates all of the information that you might need when leaving an event at the stadium.
[279] One of the big differences was that people were coming to Cardiff who had never been to Cardiff before and had maybe been to Wembley Stadium or the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Stadium, which is a different arrangement altogether, where there are purpose-built stations next to stadiums. That’s not what Cardiff is; Cardiff is a city-centre station with all the limitations that we’ve already talked about. So, I think that there was a differing expectation of what they would experience when they arrived, despite the fact that we and Great Western would have had lots of information on our websites and on customer information leaflets. We produce a queuing leaflet with top tips, and they go out to Great Western and CrossCountry for them to share with their customers about the arrangements post-match.
[280] Eluned Parrott: Okay. It worries me a little—and we’ve hosted a Rugby World Cup before, and, as I say, we’ve hosted events that were not 6 nations pattern, if you like, on many occasions—that particularly for the first couple of matches, the queuing system seemed to be disorderly and that people didn’t engage with it. Clearly, the Rugby World Cup organisers were asking people to go for information from their information sources and not necessarily from yours. So, if you’re giving advice about things like queuing systems, it’s quite possible that those people attending the event haven’t seen it because they’ve done as they’re told by the people who sold them the ticket and gone to the Rugby World Cup’s app, which has given them too little rail information and none of the queuing information that you’ve provided. How can we make sure that, for those who are going to the UEFA Champions League final, we are not going to experience those kinds of problems again, because, clearly, again, as much as we love Swansea and Cardiff, I’m not anticipating that there are going to be too many people travelling on local services? I imagine that many of them will be, again, shipping back over the border.
[281] Mr Bullock: I think there’s been a number of lessons learnt through this Rugby World Cup in terms of communication and there’s a number of good practices that we’d want to continue. There was a huge effort, and this is in our submission, regarding social media and taking adverts out in papers. The number of flyers that we handed out equalled the total number of people who attended the matches. The flyers were given to Great Western and CrossCountry to give on their trains. so there’s some really good practice that we can continue. Lynne was on the media most nights talking about queuing systems, and that’s a really useful source of getting that information out. It is working with the event organiser and making sure that their information and the rail industry information is all joined up.
[282] Eluned Parrott: We have the—
[283] William Graham: Sorry, we’re very short on time. Mick, you’ve got one question.
[284] Mick Antoniw: I think you’ve answered most of the points. A very short point, just to clarify a little bit more about what you said about the rolling stock position. Obviously, it’s good news that on the GWR line there are proposals there. But in terms of our domestic train situation and the available capacity of rolling stock, on the basis that there’ll be a number of years before there might be significant improvement in Cardiff, clearly the issue of capacity—increasing that capacity—is vital. What are the prospects of that improving? I suppose it’s Ian I’m asking.
[285] Mr Bullock: In terms of the franchise situation, there’s two, nearly three, years to go in terms of the franchise. I know that, as part of the franchise renewal process, it is something that Welsh Government are really considering. I think, if we move outside of special events, and just the growth that we’ve seen in terms of the Welsh rail services at Arriva, we are getting to a point—we’re not quite there, but we’re getting to a point—where it is getting increasingly difficult to get more people onto the system. We’ve moved from carrying 18 million people to—it’ll be about 31 or 32 million this year, and it’s more or less with the same number of trains. The delays in the electrification programme, nationally—this is not about Wales, but nationally—are hindering the cascade of additional diesel rolling stock. So, it’s certainly an exercise, and I don’t think there’s any quick or easy solution, Mick, to this problem, but I know it’s something that Welsh Government are considering.
[286] Mick Antoniw: But, for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with what we’ve got.
[287] Mr Bullock: I know that Welsh Government are considering it. Have I got any additional rolling stock coming in the next year or two years? No.
[288] William Graham: Thank you. Keith, very quickly, on lessons learnt.
[289] Keith Davies: Well, I think Eluned was asking that earlier, with the big soccer final coming here—any changes proposed?
[290] Mr Hopwood: I think our intention will be to work as early as we can with the organisers, to work with colleagues who are sat with me here today to make sure we’ve got a good industry plan. I think we will try and bring as much rolling stock as we can to try and meet the need. I’m confident that we’ll be able to deliver what’s needed. Of course, as colleagues have said, there are some lessons that we can pick up from the last couple of months, and I think all of us in the industry want to make sure we do that.
[291] Mr Bullock: I’d echo that. Certainly, some of the things that we’ve already talked about, like the interface at Wood Street, it’s really important to retain; that expanded queuing system for the people travelling east, that will be maintained. So, there’s a lot of lessons that we’ve learn and that we’re still reviewing at the moment that we’ll be incorporating into things like the UEFA cup final.
[292] William Graham: Thank you very much for your evidence today. A transcript will be sent to you in due course for checking. Thank you very much.
11:30
Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi'r Byd—Gwasanaethau Bysiau Rugby World Cup Transport Planning—Bus Services
[293] William Graham: May I welcome our witnesses? Thank you for your attendance today. Could I ask you just formally to give your names and titles for the record? John, please.
[294] Mr Pockett: I’m John Pockett and I’m the director of the Confederation of Passenger Transport Cymru, the professional trade organisation of the bus and coach industry.
[295] William Graham: Thank you.
[296] Ms Ogbonna: I’m Cynthia Ogbonna; I’m the managing director of Cardiff Bus, Cardiff City Transport Services Limited.
[297] William Graham: Thank you.
[298] Mr Stevens: I’m Gareth Stevens, business development manager for Cardiff Bus.
[299] William Graham: Thank you very much. We’re going to start by going straight into questions, if we may, and the first question is from Joyce Watson.
[300] Joyce Watson: Good morning all. I would like some views from you on the approach to the planning of the Rugby World Cup, particularly how bus operators were involved and whether bus operators have, in your opinion, a significant role to play in providing transport to major events.
[301] Ms Ogbonna: Do you want me to take that first?
[302] Joyce Watson: Any of you.
[303] William Graham: Please do.
[304] Ms Ogbonna: I think we have always managed major events in Cardiff, as the main bus service provider for the city; we have comprehensive and extensive experience in doing that. We generally would have meetings with both the council and the main event provider—in this case Rugby World Cup—well in advance of the event. We have ideas about expected numbers, and that would determine our operational preparedness for the event. It will involve us looking at communication and resources for additional drivers and vehicles in anticipation of the numbers that we hope to have in place. In some instances, we will look at road closures and inform our customers through social media and through posters on our buses about what the events are and how they might be impacted upon as a result of that event. My colleague here, who is involved in day-to-day operations, will give you more details about what we do.
[305] Mr Stevens: Obviously, as Cynthia has said, we operate local services within Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. When there’s an event at the Millennium Stadium, roads are closed around the stadium for obvious reasons, so we go into a revised operation within the city centre in terms of how far we can get into where we’d normally get into, and we decant to three mini satellite points, if you like, just on the fringes of the main city centre.
[306] In terms of information and how we prepare for all of these events, we sit on a group called the stadium events liaison group, which is held and chaired by the Millennium Stadium. From that information, or from that meeting, rather, we get advance notification of events due at the stadium, sometimes up to 18 or 24 months in advance. Predominantly, the closures or the events we see are rugby autumn internationals and the odd occasional concert. So, from those meetings and the dialogue with the council, we are able to see in advance what events are coming and how we cope and how we plan for them.
[307] Joyce Watson: And you’re happy that they’re quite adequate?
[308] Mr Stevens: Those are, from our point of view. The stadium is where the stadium is, the roads that are closed are the same, regardless of whether it’s rugby, a concert, or even football. So, therefore, from our point of view we need to glean from them the date of the event, the type of the event and the expected crowd so we can then form a view of when roads will be closed and how we divert our services.
[309] William Graham: Are you able to react fairly quickly? Clearly, on this occasion, there were long queues, and, therefore, more road disruption; therefore, more bus disruption. How do you cope with that?
[310] Mr Stevens: The roads closed are determined because of where the footprint of the stadium is. We then work with Cardiff council to enforce the road closures to understand when the road closures will commence and when they will end. In that, we take a view as to whether we think we should actually—. For example, if it was a 6 nations Wales game and it was potentially a championship decider, for example, we would know that we would probably give a little bit of tolerance to the advertised road closure times, just in case—
[311] William Graham: Quite so.
[312] Mr Stevens: So, we take a view from that, and that’s from experience over the last sort of—
[313] William Graham: I see, but, on this particular occasion, we know that the queues were very much longer. Therefore, road reopenings were delayed. Did that severely affect your timetable?
[314] Mr Stevens: No, because of the nature of when most of the kick-offs were. For example, if it was an evening kick-off, by the time the crowds would be cleared anyway, in effect, services would have just been displaced from 16:00. You’d be looking at sort of 10.30 p.m. before the buses could go back in and our last departure’s at 23:20, and therefore we would take the view to stay out for the remainder of the day so everybody is clear on where things are going from.
[315] William Graham: Thanks very much. I had a letter from National Express, which only reached me yesterday. I’ll just read it for the information of the committee, and I’m going to ask John to comment then.
[316] ‘During the Rugby World Cup this year, we provided 5,000 additional seats onto our national coach network to meet demand from passengers attending matches. Two thousand of these seats were between London and Cardiff and included special late-night services following games with a later kick-off.’
[317] How involved do you think were the bus operators with the Rugby World Cup organisers?
[318] Mr Pockett: It’s a little bit difficult for me to answer that specifically, obviously, because I’m not involved in operations, but I made some enquiries with colleagues in London and I heard no—. I understand there were no complaints at all logged with my office in London on behalf of operators about anything in Cardiff. There were some about Twickenham, and there were some about the Olympic stadium. So, I think that’s a feather in Cardiff’s cap. I think the other thing, Chair, is that we’ve heard already from previous witnesses—and, obviously, I was quite closely involved in the work with the previous session and even before that—that the provision of extra coaches and buses was a little late coming to the party, and only a little late, to be fair—. Once it came, the bus and coach industry is able, generally, to react far more quickly than other transport providers. You’ll be well aware of this: I refer you to the Ryder Cup, and I think the amount of road transport that was put on there—that’s what made the thing such a huge success, I think. So, I think there is a role.
[319] Again, repeating what you’ve already heard from other witnesses, the audience here, the crowd here, was different to what we are normally—. I know lots of my members will bring loads of coaches from west Wales, from north Wales, from everywhere, to home internationals. This was a little bit different, but National Express obviously saw a need and put something on.
[320] William Graham: Quite so. In your earlier evidence, then—. So, really, why wasn’t it identified—the solution that could be provided by bus transport—very much earlier?
[321] Mr Pockett: I can only refer that to those who were on the planning group—
[322] William Graham: Yes, fine.
[323] Mr Pockett: I wasn’t invited to be on it. I would happily have gone on it had I been invited. [Laughter.]
[324] William Graham: Okay, thank you very much, John. Eluned.
[325] Eluned Parrott: Thank you. I wanted to ask about the impact of—. Obviously, you had some industrial relations issues, shall we say—
[326] Ms Ogbonna: Yes, we did.
[327] Eluned Parrott: —at Cardiff Bus recently and there was strike action coinciding with some of the events. What impact did that have on the level of service that you were able to offer in the city?
[328] Ms Ogbonna: Unfortunately, there was some dispute, which I’m glad to say has now been resolved, but, turning back to the issue in particular, whilst there was this strike action, obviously there was probably going to be some impact on some of our customers who were not able to use the bus services. What we did, as a contingency for the industrial action, was to get our management team supervisors and some engineers driving. My colleague here and some of my directors were driving buses, and we were able to provide about 30 per cent of our usual service. What tends to happen on major event days is that we always observe a reduction in usage of bus services because people stay away from the city centre. Our customers don’t usually travel. So, we have a massive reduction in numbers. So, in this particular event, we were able to keep to the core corridors of service and we were able to provide adequate service. I’ve had a lot of feedback from our customers about that. I do apologise to the customers who weren’t able to come because of industrial action, but we did all that we could. I think our supervisors’ buses had filled in so that we could keep Cardiff moving, and we tried very hard to do that.
[329] Eluned Parrott: In terms of that reduction in normal numbers on major event days, clearly it’s just vitally important that we can keep the city of Cardiff moving as a city on those event days with or without the additional visitors. But moving the bus stops out of the city centre has an operational impact on people’s willingness to travel. What can you do to improve the level of information available to people because, even now, so many years after we’ve started these arrangements, people will say to me, ‘Well, I don’t know where my bus goes from on a match day, so I never catch the bus’?
[330] Ms Ogbonna: I think we continue to improve our channels of communication. We put posters on our buses, we issue through media, we use the radio stations, we do all we can, and we actually place information on bus stops. As human beings, we are all creatures of habit; so, when people are used to being picked up by their bus at a particular bus stop, they tend to go there. But what we did in addition to that was we had people on key bus points around the city centre—our staff—to give information to passengers and direct them to the places where they could. So, we will continue to see how we can improve on that, but the city is where the city is. We know that, on event days, we have almost mastered the act of being able to react very quickly to the conditions that we face. So, in terms of cost and communication, we will continue to try and see whether there are other ways we can get people to inform people about what the issues are. We have an app. I do appreciate that not everybody has access to a smartphone, but there’s quite a lot of media for us to communicate and, well in advance, inform people about potential changes to their travel arrangements. We also have Traveline. So, there are quite a lot of outlets for people to be able to be informed about what is happening in the city.
[331] Eluned Parrott: Okay. Returning to the issue of the industrial action, as I say, clearly, you were able to operate some services, but to what extent were you able to work with other transport providers to provide alternatives? Did you approach other bus service operators and ask them to run services on your behalf, for example?
[332] Ms Ogbonna: I am not sure, looking at the legal framework, whether we can when we have a strike action, based on the fact there has been a legitimate strike action by our employees. We are not allowed to outsource and subcontract work to other people to take place. So we can’t do that, because that is work under the Industrial Relations Act 1971. If our trade union has legitimately voted to take industrial action we can’t subcontract their jobs elsewhere. But I think that there was adequate provision. For instance, Cardiff city council were able to make adequate arrangements for park and ride, additional facilities for park-and-ride services, and there were a lot of coaches and buses that came in and they were able to take on some of the work that we couldn’t provide.
[333] Eluned Parrott: In terms of the future, though, obviously, it would be ideal if we were able to avoid strike action in the future. Are you absolutely content that the relationship between Cardiff Bus management, the unions and your staff has improved and resolved, and that we can try and avoid getting as far as strike action in the future if staff have issues that they need to raise with you?
[334] Ms Ogbonna: I think, as a company, we’ve always prided ourselves as working very well with our union partners. We have a partnership working agreement with the unions. In the world of work there are bound to be disputes. I cannot guarantee you that there will never be a dispute. All I can say is that what you try and do is build relationships. When you come to a position where you’re going into industrial action both parties have failed, but that does not remove the need for people to exercise their right. We should indeed, as the management, see how we can resolve it. We are trying to build a relationship that puts the people of Cardiff first but puts our employees first as well, where we try to ensure that we will provide a service that you can rely on and depend upon. So, all I can guarantee and can assure you is that we will continue to work hard to make sure that our customers are not inconvenienced by our inability to reach an agreement due to industrial relations. But our union partners went through the right process; they chose their dates when they could go on strike and we try to negotiate, but I’m glad to say that we have resolved that issue and we will try to build our relationship, moving forward.
11:45
[335] Eluned Parrott: Thank you.
[336] William Graham: Thank you. Keith, please.
[337] Keith Davies: Why do you think we had transport difficulties, then, during the Rugby World Cup? What are your views on what caused it?
[338] Mr Pockett: Shall I answer that first?
[339] Keith Davies: Yes, certainly, John. Bore da.
[340] Mr Pockett: Bore da. I think Cardiff—I think we’ve heard this already—particularly in Wales, can hold its head up high. Certainly there were a couple of things that weren’t right, but, on the whole, Cardiff transport providers, partners, Rugby World Cup, the local authority—everybody pulled hard here, I think. It was a huge event; I imagine it was the biggest sporting event, probably the biggest event, we’ve ever had in Wales, bigger even than the Ryder Cup, I imagine—yes, much bigger than the Ryder Cup—in Newport.
[341] I think the small amount of difficulty that has been highlighted is not within the realm of us. I think the biggest problem, as you know, is the infrastructure and the size of Cardiff station. It’s not physically possible to move all those people through. The queuing issue was an expectation, a frustration issue, as you’ve already heard, rather than a capacity issue. Where our industry could help—and we did help when we were asked to do so by Rugby World Cup—was to come in and take some of the people who were queueing over to Bristol Parkway, so that any trains that might have been banked up there could’ve been used. So, the difficulties were far more perceived, I think, than were actual. I’ve been to Twickenham and I’m sure lots of us have and I’ve queued for hours there. I expect to queue for hours; I don’t expect any different, and I don’t know why it was different and that people didn’t want to queue. Cardiff’s a wonderful place. [Laughter.]
[342] Ms Ogbonna: I think that they could also have stayed overnight, couldn’t they? It’s just down to money. [Laughter.]
[343] William Graham: I think the point you make is very valid, isn’t it? It was an exceptional event, and when you go to other venues—. At Murrayfield, we usually walk in and walk back. It’s accepted, because that’s the way it’s done. On this occasion, there were vast numbers of people and we’re beginning to understand why there were difficulties, but relatively minor. One thing that came out this morning, I think, is that the safety issues were quite remarkable considering the number of people who were moved about in a short period, and all tribute to those services that provided such an excellent service.
[344] Keith Davies: I think it’s also true that, with the 6 nations, so many people come—and I think we talked about this earlier—from the north or from the west. Whereas, this time, it was visitors perhaps who were the main—
[345] Mr Pockett: They weren’t staying. Because they only had one game—their team only had one game here—they were coming, as you’ve already heard, I can only re-emphasise it, last minute—all they wanted to do was see their team; they didn’t want to go and see the marvellous city and go to the pubs and the restaurants; they wanted to get back. And, as you’ve heard my rail colleagues say, everybody wanted to get on the first train and that’s not physically possible.
[346] Keith Davies: Thank you.
[347] William Graham: Jeff, you had a question.
[348] Jeff Cuthbert: Yes. On that specific point, we’ve asked other witnesses about whether it was taken into account that this would be very different from, say, the 6 nations, in that Wales only played in two of the eight matches. Now, I know, John, you said you weren’t on the planning group for this, nevertheless—perhaps you could all consider this—to what extent was the planning of co-operation between rail and buses considered, especially in light of the fact that you’re dealing with a different client group here in terms of, particularly, overseas visitors?
[349] Mr Pockett: Shall I answer that again, because I have two hats? I can’t answer for the rail industry, or the bus industry in this, but I think, as we’ve already heard, everybody thought that the capacity was the issue and the capacity was dealt with. There was enough capacity on the trains; it was the expectations and the target audience, if you like, that were coming here. They had different expectations; they didn’t want to wait. And I’ll say again, Jeff, that, when asked, the bus and coach industry reacted very, very, very quickly and continued—
[350] Jeff Cuthbert: But was it anticipated that they wouldn’t want to stay?
[351] Mr Pockett: From what I heard my colleagues say earlier on. I mean, it’s not for me to say—
[352] Jeff Cuthbert: I appreciate the difficulty.
[353] Mr Pockett: —I think that’s a question to ask the Rugby World Cup, I suppose, later on.
[354] Jeff Cuthbert: We will, I’m sure.
[355] Mr Pockett: Absolutely. [Laughter.]
[356] Mick Antoniw: John, we’ve heard what’s been said about the infrastructure problems and, of course, some of those are being addressed, but it will be a number of years because of the actual scale of them, but, in terms of lessons to be learned for the future, do you think it’s the case that, probably, we haven’t paid enough attention to the actual role of buses as part of the solution, until we actually achieve those halcyon days of new stations and new infrastructure?
[357] William Graham: I’m not sure that I should allow such a leading question, should I?
[358] Mr Pockett: On the basis that you are allowing it—[Laughter.]
[359] Mick Antoniw: Well, if he’s my own witness then I can, of course.
[360] Mr Pockett: I think this is general, Mick, that the bus industry is seen as the cinderella of public transport in so many ways. I don’t want to widen this out, because you are dealing with something specific. But, I think, perhaps, what you may be alluding to a little is the redevelopment and the new bus station, the new hub. We can only hope that there will be—it’s an awful expression—lessons learnt from this that will be taken on board by the planners when they look at the actual, specific plans for the new transport integrated hub there. I hope that politicians at all levels would play their role in ensuring that the bus industry will have a full say in that.
[361] Mick Antoniw: But, of course, some of the evidence that we had was that, you know, when it was realised that there were problems and the predictions weren’t quite right, buses were bought in as a part-solution and so on. So, I suppose it would have been a surprise to you, looking with hindsight now, that, in actual fact, the bus element wasn’t an integral part of the planning from day one, in terms of what we know about our medium-term capacity problems.
[362] Mr Pockett: I think, with hindsight, and, again, using that awful expression, let’s hope that there are lessons to be learned. My colleagues from Cardiff Bus are always involved, but you’ve heard from them that their involvement is limited. There are lots of wonderful coach operators from all parts—from Pembrokeshire, from north Wales, from Pontypridd and everywhere—who bring lots of people in. I think there is something to be said, that the coach industry, particularly, ought to have a seat at the table.
[363] William Graham: Very true. Oscar, please.
[364] Mohammad Asghar: Thank you very much, Chair. Wales is having wonderful events for the last few years, continuously: 6 Nations, Ryder Cup, NATO and all the rest of it. I think we can give the best possible bus service, because the Royal Welsh—we all go there every year; the bus system there is exemplary, you know, people are continuously in and out. So, I think in any event in future, why can’t the bus operators can’t use the same strategy as, you know, the Royal Welsh adopts?
[365] Mr Pockett: Yes, I mean, that’s a park and ride—. Sorry, I’m saying too much.
[366] Mr Stevens: For event days, generally, we run the Pentwyn park and ride, just off the A48 end. On event days, we increase the operational hours and we increase the number of vehicles involved to cater for the event. So, for example, if it was an evening kick-off and the site would have been closed on a normal operating day, we extend and we put more services on to provide for that. So, we do that kind of thing. In terms of buses within Cardiff, we have, on occasions, when we’ve been able to understand—well, not so much understand, but when we’ve predicted—. For example, going back about four or five years ago when Wales won the 6 Nations and they were in Cardiff, we put extra buses on for the evenings, because we knew that there was a big uptake on that particular day of people from within Cardiff within our network who we could serve. So, it does happen, and, certainly, the park and ride that we put on as additional, does work in a similar way to that which you explained in the Royal Welsh one.
[367] William Graham: That’s very interesting. Thank you very much. One thing that was put to me previously, in terms of the analogy with the FA cup—
[368] Mr Pockett: The UEFA cup, is it?
[369] William Graham: What was in the city a few years ago.
[370] Mr Pockett: In the past. Sorry, I beg your pardon.
[371] William Graham: Again, numbers were large, people were from all over the United Kingdom for that. The same problems were not quite so apparent, and it was put to me that perhaps the organisation of football is slightly different in that there is a great deal more organisation for the fans to get to events and, usually, the buses played an enormous part of that. Would that be true?
[372] Ms Ogbonna: I can answer that. What tends to happen, most matches, and Gareth, as a football fan, will answer that as well, is there tend to be coaches that bring quite a lot of people in. It’s planned well in advance. The football fans, as well as local rugby fans, when they come in, actually experience the city. So, they come in and they are not in such a rush to get out. So, there’s more management of such events, and the atmosphere is slightly different. So, it was a totally different profile.
[373] Cardiff, as a city, has hosted large events, and we had the occasion, for example, when One Direction was in Cardiff, and we had to extend our operating hours. For those of you who don’t know, they used to be a group. [Laughter.] And what tended to happen on such occasions—. A lot of people don’t like our bendy buses, but they become a wonderful God saver, because when we use them, we can disperse crowds by moving people quite quickly. So, there’s a well-established way as to how we manage big events in Cardiff. Cardiff has done this so well in the past. So, this is something that took some of us by surprise—the queuing. Like people have said, people queue wherever they go in terms of major events, so maybe we should just keep that in mind and look at it from that perspective.
[374] Mr Pockett: You mentioned the FA Cup, and of course the FA Cup happens every year; this was a unique, one-off event that, I don’t know, but hopefully will come back here, because we did so well, in the very near future. But, the FA Cup was every year and, as Cynthia said, lots of trips come. It reflects a little bit more the RBS 6 Nations, I think, than it does the RWC.
[375] William Graham: Right, very good. Any further questions from Members? No. Thank you very much for your attendance today—well worth while. We’re most grateful to you. You’ll be sent a copy in due course.
[376] Members, we’ll come back at 1 o’clock to continue our investigation. Thank you.
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 11:56 ac 12:59. The meeting adjourned between 11:56 and 12:59.
Cynlluniau Trafnidiaeth yn ystod Cwpan Rygbi'r Byd—Trefnwyr Rugby World Cup Transport Planning—Organisers
[377] William Graham: Good afternoon and welcome. Could I ask you to give your names and titles for the record, please? Do you want to start from the left, Neil Snowball?
[378] Mr Snowball: Yes, certainly. Neil Snowball. I’m chief operating officer for England Rugby 2015.
[379] Mr Garnett: Christopher Garnett, transport adviser to ER 2015.
[380] Mr Wright: Mick Wright. I’m head of tournament services for England 2015.
[381] Mr Legg: Tom Legg. I’m the tournament transport manager for England 2015.
[382] William Graham: Thank you very much. We’ll go straight to our first question, which is from Rhun ap Iorwerth.
[383] Rhun ap Iorwerth: A very good afternoon to you and we’ll start, I suppose, in fairly general terms. If I could ask you how you went about the engagement process with various partners on planning for the world cup and the Welsh link and transport in particular, and then how effective you found the engagement to have been with the various important stakeholders, from Cardiff council, Welsh Government and the various transport providers.
13:00
[384] Mr Wright: Good afternoon, everybody. So, the way we approached our planning for transport for the whole tournament was, within the governance structure for the tournament, each of the host cities signed up to a host city agreement, and part of that was the engagement process for the development of a transport plan, which, I think you heard this morning, Cardiff city council had responsibility for developing, alongside us, because we were obviously providing the core information. We instituted a venue transport working group at every venue, which had all the relevant stakeholders at it, and they met on a regular basis, and in Cardiff that would have been monthly. And, on top of that, we then had a national transport co-ordination group, where we invited key stakeholders down, really to be able to review how the integration of all of that would happen.
[385] On top of that, from a rail perspective, we had a number of cities that we were concerned about from a rail point of view—Cardiff being one of them; Twickenham was another, as was Birmingham, and Manchester, to a slightly lesser degree. In terms of the effectiveness, all parties did participate in the planning process with relative enthusiasm, I would say, with the exception that, probably, it was a little bit more difficult in Cardiff, because there was an element of, ‘We’ve done this for 16 years and we’ve got a plan’, and therefore there was a lot of scepticism about some of the things that we were expressing concern about. But, that’s not to say that those parties didn’t take part; they did, and we had fairly robust engagement with them all the way through the two years that we were really focused on developing this.
[386] Mr Legg: I was just going to add to that that it was absolutely critical for us to have a multi-agency co-ordinated approach to our planning. All of those parties did take part in those transport working groups and the national transport groups, and although there was some complacency, we did have all of those partners at the table at each of those meetings.
[387] Rhun ap Iorwerth: You would have heard stakeholders say this morning that, again, ‘We have the track record, so we knew what we were doing’. In general terms—we’ll get down to details later on—what were those main concerns, the headline concerns, that you were able to draw attention to fairly early on in the process?
[388] Mr Wright: Both Tom and myself worked on London 2012; I was head of logistics for London 2012 and Tom was head of transport for all of the football venues, so Cardiff fell into that. I’ve worked for England 2015 for the last three years. We’ve observed quite a lot of events down here and at non-Wales matches, there is a significant challenge for the city and for the stadium, because, as you heard this morning, the stadium is right in the centre of the city. That’s great; it means it’s a great destination for people to come to, but it does pose a logistics challenge because there isn’t much buffer space from a queuing perspective; the train station itself has got relatively aged infrastructure—
[389] Lord Elis-Thomas: You can say that again. [Laughter.]
[390] Mr Wright: And we’d experienced, in London 2012, and when we observed the Rugby League World Cup, the Heineken Cup Final, and several concerts that when it’s a non-Wales game, regardless of the fact that people feel like they’re delivering a robust plan and they get people away, the experience we’d observed didn’t meet the sort of expectations that we believe a major international events audience deserves when they’re paying that sort of money to come to the city.
[391] Rhun ap Iorwerth: Obviously, it’s a fantastic venue. Presumably, you wanted to use the venue, if at all possible; in rugby terms, it’s a cathedral. Just so we know the extent of the concerns that you had, was there any point during the application process to be host cities that you considered that maybe Cardiff wasn’t up to the job?
[392] Mr Snowball: I think the short answer is ‘no’—not to that extent. The inclusion of the Millennium Stadium was involved from the bid right the way through. We always knew that we wanted to be using it, as you said, because it’s such a great stadium, and we also knew that we could create that festival of rugby within Cardiff. The number of games was under constant debate, as to just how many we would actually have here, and also whether we would have the quarter finals here, but in the end, we settled on the figure of eight, and as you’re probably aware, there was quite a debate about how many of those would involve Wales, and how many wouldn’t, because we knew of the challenges where you had an increased percentage coming from outside of Wales. Now, obviously, from our point of view, part of us wanted that because of the whole relationship with the Welsh Assembly and Welsh Government—they wanted people coming from outside of Wales to Wales, and so did we, but at the same time, it was a concern. So, I think we settled on the figure of eight matches with a certain degree of trepidation, particularly because of some of the concerns. But I don’t think there was ever a question of whether we would have it or not—it was just about the number of matches.
[393] Rhun ap Iorwerth: And the final question from me in terms of a scene setter, if you like: you had a series of expectations for what you wanted Cardiff to deliver and what a transport plan for Cardiff could deliver. Were expectations placed on you, then, or were demands placed on you to perhaps alter your plans in order to help with challenges? I’m thinking, for example, about kick-off times. Was there pressure on you to try to avoid too many evening games because of the challenges that that posed? Were you able to change your plans in order to accommodate those challenges?
[394] Mr Snowball: I’ll touch on the actual schedule and the kick-off times first and then Mick can probably cover the others. The whole development of the schedule and the kick-off times was a pretty extensive process that we worked on with World Rugby very closely. I think there’s a couple of major factors there. One is obviously the broadcast and their particular requirements with an international audience, but also World Rugby are very, very strict about having matches sequentially, so there’s never any matches running at the same time. Therefore, if you’ve got four matches in one day, you’re going to have one at 12.00 p.m., one at 2.30 p.m., one at 4.45 p.m. and one at 8.00 p.m. and it’s a question of which is which. We were very thoughtful about where the 8.00 p.m. games were, but having said that, obviously, the two that were at 8.00 p.m. in Cardiff went very well. The challenges that we had were ironically with the 2.30 p.m. and the 4.45 p.m. ones, which were the ones that we thought would be less challenging. So, I think that’s the bit on the actual schedule side and in terms of the other bits, Mick—
[395] Mr Wright: I think it’s fair to say that it’s no secret that we wanted this to be the best Rugby World Cup ever and we wanted to deliver a fantastic experience for all client groups, whether that was spectators, broadcast viewers or any of our client groups. Featuring in that were the key objectives we have for transport, which are getting everybody to and from the games safely and that they would have a major international event experience, which we believe was achievable at all the venues that we chose and I think that’s been demonstrated. So, we were pretty clear right up front that, on kick-off times, regardless, we believed that it was possible to work with everybody to deliver an absolutely outstanding event, which, in the end, we achieved. So, if you looked right across the 48 matches, from a transport perspective, we only had three games that didn’t meet our objectives and all three were the first three matches here at Cardiff.
[396] With Twickenham, if you go to a normal 6 nations match in Twickenham, you’ll know it’s not a great experience getting in and out from a transport point of view and we set our sights on improving that and getting it to an international standard. I’m fortunate enough to have worked on a number of events—I have a role with the International Olympic Committee as well, so I’m pretty up to speed with what is expected. In the Olympics, they expect a 90-minute opportunity to egress. So, you don’t have to leave the city, and obviously it’s great if people stay in the city, and they did in Cardiff. Only three matches didn’t meet it. At Twickenham, we invested heavily, and here we invested heavily to try to achieve that time. The only time that Twickenham looked like it might not was on the opening ceremony night, which, as you know, was 7 o’ clock on a Friday night in south-west London—it was pretty challenging. We had a fantastic night’s transport operation, where we were getting everybody away at a projected time of one hour and 37 minutes, until somebody fell on the line and the train station closed. But we still achieved an objective—we still had everybody away in two hours.
[397] So, I don’t think that we were put under undue pressure to achieve that. I think it’s a fairly standard expectation: that if you’re going to hold an international event that that sort of opportunity is provided for people because if you remember and think about it, a rugby game only lasts 80 minutes and some of our spectators were standing around for twice as long as that—at least, not standing around necessarily, but it was taking twice as long as the match to actually have the opportunity to get on transport and away.
[398] Rhun ap Iorwerth: In terms of performance indicators of how Cardiff coped, is it just on the egress time that Cardiff fell short?
[399] Mr Wright: Cardiff was probably one of the best venues for the tournament, I would say. The Fanzone was absolutely amazing and contributed to the spirit of the tournament. The matches in themselves were all fabulous. The stadium performed as we knew it would, as it does almost every time that I’ve been here—in fact, every time I’ve been here; it’s a fabulous stadium. The city is probably one of the best that we had in the tournament, and actually, for the last five games of the tournament, the transport was very successful as well.
[400] Jeff Cuthbert: Just to be clear on one point that you mentioned there—because we’ve raised this with other presenters, other witnesses—. When you say that the last person was cleared after double the match time, do you mean that they were actually waiting that length of time, or that’s when they happened to go? They could have been somewhere else and then turned up late.
[401] Mr Wright: Our objective was to give everybody that wanted to leave the city—not just this city, whichever city it was—an egress opportunity within two hours. In Cardiff, we know that on the Saturday, and on the Sunday and on the Wednesday, people were queuing for longer than two hours themselves. They might not have been in the queue themselves for the full four hours that it was taking to actually get to the egress, but we did a trace test at just about every venue, where we stuck somebody in the queue to see how long it was taking them to get through it, and it was taking longer than two hours to get through the queue.
[402] Jeff Cuthbert: Have the rail companies—Arriva, for example, Great Western—been informed of that?
[403] Mr Wright: They’re fully aware of it, yes. We’ve had a number of pretty focused discussions with those guys, certainly. On 22 September, Tom and I and Christopher attended a review meeting at Arriva Trains Wales following the first weekend, where we made it clear that we expected a step change in the performance, because the media, I don’t think, quite got it right, in that they were blaming Great Western Railway for not providing enough trains and that wasn’t the case. There were sufficient trains; the issue was how the trains were being managed and how the queues and the loading were being managed. So, trains were unfortunately not being maximised through the station, which led to the longer queue times than we would have wanted to see. I have noted from the submissions from the train companies that they’d been calculated—they were working on the basis of capacity being provided. That’s quite an interesting concept, because, clearly, we were looking at capacity as well. One of the elements of a calculation of capacity is timescale, otherwise how long do you give somebody to actually provide the capacity?
[404] We’ve been very clear all along that our target was sub-two hours. I think that possibly got lost in Cardiff on the basis that there was some concern, because of previous performances, about just making sure people could get home and weren’t left on the platforms—as they had been during the Heineken Cup final, for example, in 2014, when we were here and observed that. So, I think our aspiration for a major international event somewhere got lost in that, because, actually, there were concerns at some points in time that that minimum objective of making sure nobody was left behind might not be met.
[405] William Graham: Okay. Joyce Watson.
[406] Joyce Watson: Good afternoon. You’ve talked about—and we heard it from the transport operators all the way through this morning’s evidence that they focused on capacity, and you’ve quite rightly pointed out there are two parts to that. Did you raise those at the meetings before the event?
[407] Mr Legg: From my perspective as the transport manager for the tournament, I felt we were pretty clear on the sub-two hour clearance time. Certainly, the demand forecasting tool that we created calculates all of the shortfalls in capacity based on that two-hour clearance time. I was responsible for the transport arrangements for the London 2012 games down here in Cardiff. We had a clear objective of 90 minutes; we knew that we were well supported—we had a lot of resource behind us during the Olympic Games. We didn’t have quite that same level of resource for the Rugby World Cup and we did adjust that time from 90 minutes to two hours. We knew that, from previous operations in other parts of the country, there was technically enough capacity in Cardiff to cope with those clearance times, and we needed to make sure that we were moving the demand between the different transport modes so that we could meet that two-hour clearance time. But it was a very clear objective of ours, right from the very beginning. It was voiced in the national transport core nation groups, and it was clear and it was achieved in all other venues as well as Cardiff, other than the three games at the very beginning of the tournament.
13:15
[408] Joyce Watson: Okay. So, when it was pretty obvious that things weren’t meeting those objectives and other modes of transport were brought in, had there been any discussions before about using other modes of transport—buses, obviously—and not just relying on trains?
[409] Mr Wright: Yes. So, again, we’ve seen from other parties’ submissions that there had been some criticism of our journey planner, which I think we need to put the record straight on. So, our journey planner—. Actually, we’re one of probably only two events in the world that have created a journey planner so that our spectators could have a single source of truth. That information was all provided via Trainline, so anything to do with trains came through there, and it actually promoted, first of all, park and ride for Cardiff, because we actually had concerns around the capacity that we’d be able to achieve for Cardiff through rail.
[410] We did a number of things to try and manage down the expectations of the spectators. So, first of all, if you went onto our journey planner, the first thing that you’d be recommended was park and ride; the second thing you’d be recommended was National Express, who were kind enough to put a dedicated National Express network on just for the Rugby World Cup; then, the final option was the train. There was some talk about it only showing four trains; that was dependent upon what time somebody entered into the journey planner as to when they wanted to arrive. So, we wouldn’t let anybody suggest on the journey planner that they wanted to arrive fewer than 90 minutes before the game, and then the trains that came up, just like they do if you go onto the National Rail or Trainline apps—it brings up the first four trains that would get you there for that time. What we probably didn’t do in the initial release of that app was to have ‘later’ or ‘earlier’ buttons, and we did add those after that first weekend, but we were very much focused on a balance of how you might get here to Cardiff.
[411] Of course, there were some concerns about promoting too much of car travel, because we’ve also seen experiences, when we’ve been observing, of the Brynglas tunnels and the Severn bridge being choked up. I personally sat coming over there when the One Direction concert was on—I wasn’t coming to the concert, but I did sit in it. We were concerned, which is why we worked very hard with National Express to try and promote coaches.
[412] If you were then referencing our provision of coaches, I think you’ll find in our submission that we, before the tournament, committed to spending £2.1 million on a number of different things. One was the hiring of additional trains, which we did and were recommended to do by Great Western Railway when we discussed putting on additional capacity, because they claimed they were utilising all of their trains, and we believed them, and we believe they were probably doing everything they could whilst protecting their normal business. So, it was trains rather than buses that were suggested to us that we should invest in.
[413] We clearly invested in park and ride, because we gave Cardiff city council a revenue guarantee, because they don’t necessarily have a budget that enables them to just go and secure the land. So, we provided a revenue guarantee for park and ride. We then also invested in additional stewarding. So, we think that we’d put quite a lot of investment in, which was one of the reasons why, when we came to the Australia-Fiji game, and we’d committed to putting on extra buses—100 extra buses—and found that because of the queuing arrangements we weren’t able to maximise use of them, we decided we needed to take a more serious stance around wanting a step change in performance from everybody.
[414] Joyce Watson: Okay. What we all sincerely hope is that we’ll have it all back here again. There were different patterns of people’s travelling behaviour, shall we say, between this and the 6 nations and other events. So, what sort of learning—what sort of projection—will you take from that, and could any of it, perhaps, have been foreseen beforehand?
[415] Mr Legg: Yes, very much so. The journey planner was a key part of the communications to the audience. We spent a lot of time investing in that system. There were some comments from transport operators earlier on today that there was a feeling that that generated additional rail demand. We take a very different view to that. We think that it suppressed rail demand, and the movement from 30 per cent to 44 per cent was pretty much what we were forecasting. It’s very difficult to see that full picture until you get all of the postcode data into the model, but we think that, without the journey planner, that rail demand would have been much, much higher because we wouldn’t have had the ability to spread that demand onto other modes.
[416] In terms of moving forward, the TRACME demand forecasting model is absolutely critical for this venue. It’s very important for you to have a robust mechanism to be able to manage where that demand is coming from and then put measures in place to improve additional capacity. Without that, you are going into the event blind.
[417] Mr Wright: I think it’s also worth pointing out that the train operators have all agreed that the TRACME tool was extremely useful and that, although the data and forecast numbers changed—I mean, that’s the nature of forecasts—when we first developed it in 2014, we were making estimates based on previous history and some assumptions; as we moved forward into 2015, we used actual postcode data for ticketholders; and then, as we moved forward from that, we introduced three surveys that went out to our spectators, our ticketholders, asking them progressively honed questions on how and when they intended to travel to Cardiff and to all the other cities. That’s why the numbers changed.
[418] It was mentioned this morning, and it’s absolutely factual, that people don’t make their minds up about how they’re going to travel to a match—not just to a match; to an event—until very close to it. Essentially, the last forecast was based upon people having told us what their intentions were likely to be, and it was very accurate in most cases, and certainly the numbers of spectators travelling from the east were within 5 per cent on some occasions and 10 per cent on others. That is pretty accurate for a forecasting model.
[419] Joyce Watson: Okay, thank you.
[420] William Graham: Thank you very much. Oscar, please.
[421] Mohammad Asghar: Thank you very much, Chair. My question to the panel is regarding match travel communication. Was the communication of transport arrangements effective, given the suggestion that the RWC app and website did not manage expectation effectively and did not list all available trains for travel on 19 and 20 September, even though Arriva Trains commented that, during the planning process, it constantly reminded RWC of the need to include realistic customer information on queuing arrangements and queuing times within the travel guidance? Have you learned any lessons from there or—?
[422] Mr Wright: I think we’ve got a number of things to say about that. Firstly, I think we’ve already answered the question about the travel app. It did list all train times. It did have a feature missing at the start that would have made it a bit more obvious to people, but, actually, that was really referring to ingress and, although there were some complaints about ingress from Paddington on 19 September, actually, that was minor in comparison with the egress. So, I don’t think that, really, it’s a feature of any of the real concerns that we had.
[423] In terms of communications, we could point you to a whole raft of communications that took place during the build-up to the tournament, where spectators were receiving e-mails on a regular basis, text messages on a regular basis, text messages on the day, real-time updates via text message, and real-time tweeting as well on Twitter. So, we’d be pretty confident that, actually, the communication was as robust as it could be. On top of that, I think you’ll find that, if you were driving down the M4 for the weeks leading up to the tournament, it was pretty clear that the Rugby World Cup was coming to town and that you should plan your journey accordingly.
[424] I think it’s also pretty clear that, in Wales, in Cardiff, there has been an assumption that it is okay to ask an audience to wait for three to four hours. I can tell you that, on 22 September, we were actually told that we should tell our audience that they should expect to queue for three to four hours, and I can tell you that my response that day was that we would not do that because that is not acceptable and our audience was telling us it wasn’t acceptable, because we did a customer survey after every match. After the first match, 53 per cent of people told us that their transport experience was either poor or unacceptable. After the second match, it was slightly better because there were a lot more Wales fans here, because it was the Wales-Uruguay game, if you remember, but, after the Australia game we were still at 50 per cent of people telling us that it was unacceptable. What was unacceptable about it, actually, was the fact that the queueing systems and the loading systems were not effectively moving the audience through. Our experience with audiences is that if they’re moving, they’re happy. If they’re stood still and stood still for any length of time, they’re unhappy.
[425] We hadn’t submitted it in the papers to you—we did intend to, but took it out—but we have a picture of the queue on the Australia-Fiji game when both Tom and myself were stood actually there taking abuse from our own spectators, being told that we were a disgrace to Wales and to the UK because the queue system was non-existent outside of the actual forecourt of the station. That was what was causing the distress. So, the police were quite right: a pretty orderly audience, and I didn’t get spat at, like I did at Twickenham on the night of the opening ceremony when the train station closed, but I can tell you that they weren’t happy. Some of them were distressed because it looked like there was a crush. People were pushing in; there was no clear delineation of the queueing system. So, that’s why we were pretty upset for our audience. We did have people in the queues at that point in time, and they were taking over two hours to get to the train platform. So, I think we’d be pretty robust in saying we weren’t prepared to tell people that it would be a three to four-hour wait, but I could point you to all the e-mails that we sent that did point out that there would be queues, that did point people to the train companies’ websites that they were talking about this morning, to look at queueing arrangements, and we did help with the train companies in trying to make sure that the revised queue systems were all communicated effectively.
[426] William Graham: Thank you very much for that. The physical constraints of Cardiff station are well known. Obviously, you did your recce; you worked out how, why and when. So, what do you think went wrong there? Why was it such a problem? Clearly, the station was incompatible with the numbers using it at that particular time, and which led to the queueing, which we’ve already described. So, no doubt, you must have told Cardiff this.
[427] Mr Wright: Well, there are problems with the infrastructure, clearly. It could be much better. You know, if you go to the Olympic stadium, they can move 900 people per minute away. On the day of the Australia-Fiji match they were moving 900 people in every 20 minutes. If you look at the actual spectators’ experience survey results, I think it’s been demonstrated that it is possible to move people away from Cardiff in the sort of expectations that we were setting. So, when you look at the transport experience results from the France-Ireland game, you see a significant drop in the number of people who considered their experience to be unacceptable or poor—it drops to 27 per cent. You get 41 per cent of people now saying their experience was either excellent or very good, and you’ve got a further 31 per cent of people saying it was good. So, 72 per cent of people, suddenly, are finding themselves with an experience that was good.
[428] If you look at the basic logistical principles of this, the key challenge for any operation is to make sure that each bit is integrated and you get flow. It’s a word that, in logistics, you would use a lot. Can you get flow? That means creating enough buffer space when people leave the stadium, because there isn’t much. It means having organised, delineated queues, which we provided after the Australia-Fiji game. It means moving the queue through onto the platforms ready for the trains to be loaded, and the trains being brought in in such a way that they can be loaded, as you would see at most host cities—most major events. You go to London—and I’m sure that you all have—and you will see how they load platforms and load trains. There’s not much hanging about. Actually, that was the big difference between the first three matches and the last five matches. People actually, together, worked together to come up with a step-change solution that challenged a lot of the principles that had been in the previous plan, but actually worked effectively and, as they told you this morning, safely.
[429] Mr Legg: That was the big issue from my perspective. There was always the theoretical capacity, but the loading operations at the station didn’t meet that demand. So, we were sending trains back half empty because we couldn’t physically get the throughput of the station working properly, and we couldn’t get people up onto the platforms, which is a model that we use in other venues around the country, where you preload the platform.
13:30
[430] The other big, big step change for us on the eastbound capacity was having high-speed train sets on those platforms ready to go right at the final whistle that meant that those 3,500 people were moving away in that very first initial period, which was important.
[431] William Graham: Clearly, we’ll be making very clear recommendations, but—
[432] Keith Davies: On that point, Chairman—
[433] William Graham: I’ll come to you now. What are the priorities for improvement that you feel now that you’d like to identify to this committee?
[434] Mr Wright: We’ve listed quite a few in our submission, as you probably appreciate. I think the first of the priorities from our perspective would be making sure that the approach to any major international event is co-ordinated. I think the Welsh Government has a role to play in that at the bid stage in agreeing who is responsible for what and what budgets are going to be made available to them.
[435] I think an integrated command that we ultimately received and I think was acknowledged this morning, worked much better when everybody was in the same control room. I think we’d recommend that. And then, the big challenge is making sure that the plans that are put in place by the train companies, the council and everybody involved with this, allow them to deliver what they delivered for our event for the last five matches, and not negatively impact the remainder of the network and background demand users, normal users. We are told—and we wouldn’t be experts in this, so we would have to believe them—that the provision of the service for us with the number of trains in the required time frame, whilst it was achieved, did have some implications for them outside in other areas, and I would think that, given the short time frames in which they turned that around, that’s probably absolutely factual.
[436] William Graham: Great, thank you. Keith.
[437] Keith Davies: I have a couple of questions from the report you’ve given us. The first one is that it’s not only Cardiff that had problems; you’ve got here that queueing arrangements were regarded as unacceptable at both Paddington and Cardiff. Perhaps you can tell us about queueing arrangements at Paddington.
[438] The other issue is that you did have a review after the first two games in Cardiff and one of the things you suggested there for improvements in relation to the Australia-Fiji game was the provision of supplementary bus capacity to transport spectators to Bristol and free up capacity for London-bound trains and passengers. Well, if they accepted that, why did we have such a problem, then? You saw that as a solution to stop the problem on the Australia-Fiji game. The first question is on Paddington and the second question is about that.
[439] Mr Wright: On Paddington, there were some concerns about the queues because, at the time, more people concentrated their removal from Paddington into a short time window, and the queues received a lot of complaints. From our perspective, actually, the ingress and the Paddington arrangements were rapidly addressed and it’s fairly normal for train companies to have to react quickly to situations that develop, and, actually, they reacted very quickly to that and we received no other complaints about Paddington subsequently.
[440] In terms of the supplementary buses, it was one of a number of ideas that we put forward at that meeting, because we were pretty anxious to make sure that we could do everything that is in our gift to be able to contribute to any resolution. That was one way we could. We decided to invest again, and that finished up costing us, along with some other measures, like the queueing system on Wood Street. If you saw that, that cost us a significant amount of money to put in. We paid for that; it wasn’t paid for by the council as was suggested in one of the submissions. We paid for it. So, the buses didn’t work for the point I made earlier and that was that the loading system and queueing system that was in place prevented us from getting people through the station to the load zone for the buses, and it’s one of the reasons why we were pretty indignant on the Thursday morning, because we only used half of the bus capacity that we had provided, because we weren’t able to load them. That was pretty similar to some of the challenges that the train companies were facing with loading trains actually, when they couldn’t load them through, because of the methodology at the time, which was very focused on safety and we understand that. We wouldn’t want anybody to compromise safety either, and we were very clear about that, but it was obvious to us, as logistics and transport professionals, that something else could definitely be done.
[441] Keith Davies: So, where were the buses, then? Were they on the southern side of Cardiff?
[442] Mr Wright: They were at the rear of the station.
[443] Keith Davies: Where there is a car park at the back.
[444] Mr Wright: Yes, they were at the car park at the back. Arriva Trains Wales and the council very kindly enabled us to bring our buses into there. They enabled us to stage them on Lloyd George Avenue and to bring them in. So, that worked really well in terms of bringing the buses in, and the journey to Bristol worked really well: we used the southern distribution road. That worked effectively; our journey times were 50 minutes to an hour, which is perfectly acceptable. We were pretty pleased with the potential of it and, actually, it worked really well subsequently, when we made changes to the queueing arrangements, agreed with Arriva Trains Wales, which manages the station, as you know. The bus service, actually, once we’d managed to convince people who thought they were getting on a train that it was going to be just as good to get on a bus, worked extremely well.
[445] I would just like to say that Arriva Trains Wales and Great Western Railways, whilst we would be critical in the first instance about the complacency—the same with the council—actually, what they did in turning this around was absolutely fantastic. The staff that they’d put on the ground, some of them from their HR departments, some from their finance departments, were there for every match after the Australia-Fiji game, and they worked tirelessly. They were pretty amazing in how they interfaced with our audience, and we got a lot of very positive feedback about them. We can only echo that. Once the burning platform had been seen, people reacted. It was just a shame, because it also happened in the Olympics, that we had to have a burning platform before we were able to get that sort of galvanisation.
[446] Keith Davies: Thank you.
[447] William Graham: Eluned.
[448] Eluned Parrott: I just wanted to enquire—. We clearly want to welcome people to our capital city, we want them to have a fantastic experience and we are all disappointed when we see on Twitter people criticising the arrangements, people criticising our city. We love this city; we want it to show its best face to the world. But, noted throughout your evidence today and in your report, too, you anticipated that there were capacity issues at the station and, as an emergency measure later, you introduced the bus services to move people to Bristol, which, as you say, really took care of a lot of those problems. I note that you had used those bus services for Twickenham, because you anticipated the same problems at Twickenham, right from the start. So, why didn’t we start by using the buses as well as the train capacity for those first two matches where, perhaps, we could have avoided a lot of the dissatisfaction?
[449] Mr Wright: Well, I think you have to go back to the comment we made earlier and the comments you received this morning, where I think there was a general view that, ‘We do this well, we’ve done it for the last 16 years’ and, therefore, for us, as one party to this—we’re not train operators and we’re not bus operators, we are an event organiser that happen to have expertise in what we think is going to be needed—the main focus that was discussed, and we were encouraged to contribute our finances to, was the provision of extra trains. It’s difficult for a train company to recommend to you that you should take buses, and I think that’s one of the things that, if you go forward, from a learning perspective, and given that I think you do have an infrastructure challenge here, then how you can support the train companies is really important. When the burning platform developed, the provision of buses, as paid for by us, was seen as a useful contribution. Perhaps we should have been more insistent beforehand, but we were being told and assured that we wouldn’t need it.
[450] Eluned Parrott: Could I just follow up on that? I mean, clearly, both Arriva and First have the odd bus available to them as groups, so, potentially, that is something that they might be able to accommodate. But, looking at the experience of those operating companies in delivering major events, you know, they’re right in that they have a lot of experience, but the events are very different. Clearly, Cardiff hosted the Rugby World Cup in 1999. What did we learn about the difference between the audience for that event and the 6 nations, as opposed to the Rugby World Cup this time and the 6 nations, because, clearly, we knew there were going to be different pathways required and different transport routes? Although the volumes have changed, have the patterns changed so much that we couldn’t have anticipated where our passengers would want to go to?
[451] Mr Wright: Well, the forecast, actually, was pretty accurate in telling everybody where they were coming from and where they were likely to be going to. I can’t comment on 1999, I’m afraid, but I can comment on the Wales matches and the 6 nations, where it is a very different pattern to Rugby World Cup. Even the Wales games held here had a very different pattern, because you still saw more people coming from England, because it was the Rugby World Cup. So, it’s a very different experience. Could it be predicted? It was. I’m not sure that the train companies probably anticipated that the challenge would be as great as it was. I think the one lesson I hope people do take from our experience here is that it is possible to be more aspirational about the service that is provided. It’s pretty true at Twickenham as well that there is a sort of expectation that it’s okay for the fans to hang around for twice as long as the match that they’ve been to attend, and that that’s perfectly acceptable because we’ve got poor infrastructure, when actually I think with will, determination and vision, it’s possible to do it differently—albeit, we would accept, that there would probably have been consequences for the everyday travellers who’ve been impacted by focusing resources onto making sure that the Rugby World Cup was successful.
[452] Mr Legg: Yes, and I’m not sure the operators completely bought into the demand-forecasting work. I think there was an issue about our over-egging eastbound demand, and that probably wouldn’t materialise—it doesn’t normally materialise for the 6 nations games, for example—and we were absolutely certain that that eastbound demand would present itself. It did when I was responsible for the London 2012 games here. For the Millennium Stadium, we had big issues clearing that eastbound demand. We recognised that our audience was pretty similar; it wasn’t the normal 6 nations visitor—family group movements. A lot of our audience is based in London and needed to get to the capital. There were issues around capital accommodation, as a lot of the hotel rooms were completely sold out and hotel room costs were above £1,000 a night in most scenarios in the two weeks leading up to the event. So, we knew that that eastbound demand would materialise and that was the big, big problem: convincing all of the partners involved that it would come in those sorts of numbers was not easy.
[453] Mr Garnett: Could I just comment? I think, going right back to the start of this, when I first got involved in chairing this national transport group, it was always this definition of what is ‘good’? Cardiff always thought what it did was good.
[454] Eluned Parrott: Indeed.
[455] Mr Garnett: And we don’t, and we never did, because we don’t think four hours and saying, ‘That’s how we do it’, is an acceptable way of moving people around. It has been quite a difficult process of getting people to look at things differently. The wonderful thing was that, once we’d got to that burning bridge, suddenly things could be done that we didn’t think could be done. A lot of the initiatives came out of Arriva Trains Wales; Great Western Railway laid on the extra trains; Cardiff city council suddenly started to do things that we’d been talking about all the way through. The question, the challenge, is: how do we keep that going forward so that it doesn’t slip back again to saying, ‘Oh, well, it takes four hours to get away from a 6 nations game’? It shouldn’t take four hours to get away.
[456] I was here, in the control room in Cardiff station, about the last time England won a rugger match, when they beat Wales—it was about the only time that I was being cheerful, but I have to, sort of, say this, and I’m wearing a red tie—and one saw that. Again, we laid on extra trains and, actually, they weren’t heavily used going back to London, because people didn’t know about it and didn’t expect it. We had gone out and said, ‘We are laying on all these extra trains’, but we just took too long to load them in those early days, and suddenly what was good became good, but we did not set expectations high enough in the early days, because they kept saying, ‘Well, that’s how we’ve always done it’. Sorry, I don’t think—. Like Twickenham, the world moves on, you’ve got to look at doing things in different ways and doing things in better ways. If Cardiff wants to become a really successful—sorry, it is successful, but getting more big sporting events and everything else—this issue of how we crack the transport to make it deliver what the city delivers is a challenge going forward.
[457] Eluned Parrott: Indeed. So, you would perhaps suggest—. Well, your response to Cardiff council’s comment this morning that, ‘We had a transport plan and it worked well’, is that that’s not your experience, perhaps.
[458] Mr Garnett: It worked well in the end. It was hard work to get there.
[459] Mr Wright: Sorry, we shouldn’t tell you that, we should go back to our spectator experience survey, which said that, in the first three matches, 50 per cent of the audience would say it didn’t work well, but by the end of the pool stages, 72 per cent of people were saying that it did. Indeed, in the first weekend, we had over 500 negative tweets, which, if you know anything about Twitter—and I’m going to sound like I do, but I don’t really—you have to expand that out in terms of how many people actually see that and how many people might ‘like’ it or might comment on it.
13:45
[460] In the quarter-final weekend, we had zero negative comments about Cardiff transport—none—and plenty of positive comments about Cardiff transport. So, the transformation—the step change we asked for—was delivered, albeit the guys would say, ‘At a price’, because I think it did impact on some of the normal services: trains were in the wrong place, crews were in the wrong place, crews were having to really work hard to make this work, the council was working hard and Arriva Trains Wales were doing an amazing job in actually getting their guys organised and on the ground with us. We were on the front line, so I personally manned the Wood Street queuing system, and I can tell you that that was a very different experience to the one I had when I was being sworn at during the Australia-Fiji game on Wednesday, 23 September.
[461] People weren’t too happy at having to walk past the entrance to the station to come into our queuing system, but once they saw it was organised, even just being able to see something that said ‘London’ and ‘Bristol Temple Meads’, and once they were in it, we had toilets, it was lit, people felt safe and people weren’t pushing in. The distress that was being caused at the Australia-Fiji game was because people were coming out of gates 6 and 7 and coming out of gates 2 and 3 and coming down, and people queuing in the right way were getting put further and further back because people were pushing in here, because it wasn’t delineated and it wasn’t organised. And we did that. All of my team volunteered to come on the ground and were on the ground. We managed the buses at the back, we managed the Wood Street queue, we brought our own people down here to interface and to supplement our own volunteers, if you know about the pack that were out there with the blue coats. And those five matches would rank alongside any other experience in any other city, and probably better, actually.
[462] Mr Snowball: Mr chairman, if I could just add a point to that. I think it’s quite right that this committee’s trying to look at what happened, but also look at how things can go better in the future. And I would just like to say, because it’s difficult for Tom, Mick and Christopher to say this, please don’t underestimate just how much of their time and resource it took to do this turnaround. Mick’s my tournament services manager, which is a lot more than transport; it’s about 50 per cent of the organisation from an operational point of view, and I had Mick down here on the ground for those games actually standing in a high-vis jacket. He’s one of my top guys who had to do that. Tom is actually the national transport manager, not the Cardiff transport manager. So, I had my top two people here just looking after those five games, which was a huge commitment, and then with Christopher’s input as well. So, all I’m saying is that in addition to the £2.4 million that we spent on Cardiff transport, there was an exceptional group of people who worked with all of the other parties to make it work and have that step change from the first three games to the others. But, whatever anyone’s doing going forward, it’s not just the infrastructure, it’s the people on the ground. Don’t underestimate the cost of those people, because it’s significant. That’s the only other point I’d like to make.
[463] William Graham: Jeff.
[464] Jeff Cuthbert: I was to talk about rail services, but I think in fairness it would be sheer duplication if I just posed the initial questions, because I think you’ve made it clear about your concerns, certainly in terms of the flow of the travelling fans through the station. But, can I ask you, as far as you know, about the experience of fans once they were actually on the trains? Were there any issues that concerned you in terms of overcrowding, safety and matters like that?
[465] Mr Wright: We had reports of trains being crowded. We had reports of trains being overcrowded, but it’s a pretty relative term. And I don’t think that Arriva Trains Wales or Great Western Railway would put themselves in a position where safety was compromised. They’ve got a very good track record. And, actually, our experience from working on major international events is that fans in the vast majority of cases prefer to be moving—they’d rather than be on a train and crowded than stuck on Wood Street wondering when they’re going to get on a train. So, I think the system that Arriva Trains Wales used to put people on to the platforms and on to the trains, once that’s synced up and integrated, it’s pretty effective, actually, because what they do is they make sure they’re only loading the right number of people on to a specific train. So, the reports of people up in the luggage racks—
[466] Jeff Cuthbert: I’ve seen that sort of thing over the years.
[467] Mr Wright: —that’s just people who are in high spirits and they’re doing it to make a point. People stood in toilets—I’ve seen that as well. If you go to Twickenham, the Olympic Stadium or Wembley, they’re all crowded trains. If you looked at their spectator experience scores, they all scored over 70 to 80 per cent in terms of good, very good or excellent. So, I don’t think the train crowding is particularly an issue; it certainly wasn’t a concern for us.
[468] Jeff Cuthbert: Okay. You mentioned before that the actual number of trains was adequate; it was more a question of scheduling and issues like that. I understand that you did ask—and correct me if I’m wrong here—about additional rolling stock, and there could be none provided. Is that true?
[469] Mr Wright: Well, it wasn’t that none could be provided. It was very difficult for us to hire additional stock. So, if you—
[470] Jeff Cuthbert: In terms of cost, or other factors?
[471] Mr Wright: No, no; in terms of availability. So, there’s only one train company; Tom should really talk to that bit. There’s only really one train company that we can hire trains from. Great Western Railway assured us that they were putting everything on that they could possibly could without damaging their existing business. We have to take them at their word, and, in fact, we would believe that. We worked with them to then go and hire additional trains. We finished up hiring additional trains from a company called Riviera; we did that through Great Western Railways, but, actually, train hire is pretty difficult, and there’s a limited amount of stock available.
[472] Mr Legg: We worked closely with the Department for Transport. We agreed that the contracting model was best through Great Western. We’re obviously not a train operator, and it was more appropriate for Great Western to physically charter those train sets from Riviera, and then we funded that. So, we had a contract with Great Western to bring in three charter sets for each of the eight games down here, which were heavily used. It was proving very, very difficult to hire more than those three sets.
[473] Mr Garnett: Just to add, when we hit the burning platform, things changed.
[474] Jeff Cuthbert: Sorry to hear about this burning platform.
[475] Mr Garnett: Well, it was very exciting.
[476] Mr Wright: It’s a very unfortunate phrase for trains.
[477] Mr Garnett: But, anyway, when we hit that crisis time, FirstGroup then took much more action. We spoke to the Department for Transport to say, ‘Look, this is a problem; it’s going to have reputational damage; they are going to have to move trains off other routes and some other services will suffer.’ And I have nothing but admiration for the way FirstGroup and Arriva Trains Wales, who I had 10 years running a role with myself, set about then rescheduling and getting all those trains in, and they did everything they could. Going back to the charter trains, it wasn’t possible to charter more trains because the problem was getting the locomotives, the Deutsche Bahn drivers, to come and pull those because they’re also doing other work at the time. So, we could only get that limited number of charter trains. Great Western made more high speed trains available than we ever thought they could, but that was at the sacrifice of some other services.
[478] Jeff Cuthbert: Okay, but wasn’t that anticipated much earlier on? Couldn’t that have been part of the planning? I know we had this particular issue for travelling Welsh fans who went to the England match at Twickenham, which was a late kick-off, and then tried to get back, and, probably, for most of them, getting back, or leaving Paddington, on the same day was difficult. Isn’t this the sort of thing that could have been dealt with much earlier, about the availability of drivers as well as units?
[479] Mr Garnett: The issue of chartering the trains in lay with the third party, which wasn’t FirstGroup, altogether and it was just simply about what we could get out of the people who provide that, and that was all that they could make available. We started discussing with them nine months, 12 months, before the event to try to get more trains in.
[480] Just going briefly onto the issue of people getting back to Wales from Twickenham, there have never been trains back—
[481] Jeff Cuthbert: I know; scheduled trains.
[482] Mr Garnett: Scheduled trains. But, in the end, they did put on an extra train that had to run up around Gloucester, because of the Severn Tunnel—one person was on it, running through from Gloucester down to Cardiff.
[483] Jeff Cuthbert: Did people know about that?
[484] Mr Garnett: Well, it was there in the timetable. But, actually, the research showed that that wasn’t actually a big issue. People know that that’s what it is and plan. I, funnily enough, was going back to Paddington on the Friday, having had one of our many meetings that we were having down here at this stage, and I was talking to a group of them about, ‘Well, when are you planning to come back?’ and they said, ‘No, no, we’re planning; we’re making a weekend of it. We know that’s what it always is.’
[485] So, going back then to your other point about could we have got more trains early on, we were satisfied that what Great Western were providing was all that they could. Then when we saw, in the latest run of the TRACME figures, that there were going to be even more, that’s when Great Western got hold of more trains and did a fantastic job making them available.
[486] William Graham: Okay. Thank you. Dafydd.
[487] Lord Elis-Thomas: You will have heard some of our exchanges this morning about the physical infrastructure of Cardiff station and the fact that there are only two eastward platforms of any size, and they are not always functioning properly. Would you say that for the future of Cardiff as a venue—and you’ve all expressed from the evidence that you have, the value of the place—. Would you say that serious substantial investment by Network Rail, by Welsh Government, by the UK Government even, in the infrastructure of Cardiff Central station—the rail infrastructure and the station building—is essential for the future of Cardiff as a major sporting venue?
[488] Mr Garnett: I think that there does need to be investment in the station, but what we did show was tha,t with the better planning, you can move people a lot better than we have been doing. We did also push the issue of whether they should look at using Queen Street for people going up the Valleys to create more space. You are right in what you say about the limited capacity going eastbound, and, if you bring trains off certain platforms, you completely lock the station. So, yes, investment needs to go into the station, but, actually, as we showed, by better planning, there are things that can be done today to make the experience better. But keep pushing for an improved station.
[489] Lord Elis-Thomas: So, we need both.
[490] Mr Garnett: You need both.
[491] Lord Elis-Thomas: We need better short-term planning and major long-term planning.
[492] Mr Garnett: And you need a better station.
[493] Mr Wright: I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s better short-term planning, because the plans were being developed; I think it’s about having the will and determination to make the best of what you’ve got. But demands from major international events organisers are only going to get stronger and the audience is becoming much more sophisticated, therefore, doing something about the infrastructure is probably a must as a result of what’s going to happen going forward with the types of events that I think Cardiff is looking to bring here, like the Champions League, like other UEFA tournaments and like concerts.
[494] William Graham: Lastly, Eluned.
[495] Eluned Parrott: I’ve almost a request rather than a question at this point. With regards to the economic impact of the event, I assume that, as part of the round-up report after the event, you will be looking at the economic impact. I wonder if you’d undertake to produce a breakdown of how that has impacted in different places for different venues, but also by sector in terms of separating out, say, hoteliers, restaurants and bars from other kinds of businesses because, clearly, in a city-centre location, there are differential impacts in different sectors.
[496] Mr Snowball: I’ll take this. We did do an economic impact prior to the start of the tournament and it is the plan to do one afterwards and it will definitely be broken down by city across the country. Also, it does go through the sectors. I don’t know if they are all of those specific sectors that you’ve mentioned there, but it is fairly comprehensive. We’ll make sure that you get a copy of that.
[497] Eluned Parrott: Thank you very much.
[498] William Graham: Thank you very much for your evidence today—much obliged to you all.
13:58
Papurau i’w Nodi Papers to Note
[499] William Graham: Could I ask you to look at item 6, please, which is ‘Papers to Note’? I see agreement. Thank you very much.
Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o Weddill y Cyfarfod Motion Under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve to Exclude the Public from the Remainder of the Meeting
Cynnig:		Motion:
bod y pwyllgor yn penderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod yn unol â Rheol Sefydlog 17.42(vi).		that the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi).
Cynigiwyd y cynnig. Motion moved.
[500] William Graham: Item 7, motion under Standing Order 17.42: I propose, under that Standing Order, to hold the remainder of the meeting in private. I see agreement. Thank you very much.
Derbyniwyd y cynnig. Motion agreed.
Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 13:58. The public part of the meeting ended at 13:58.