Pictures reveal what new £120 million Cardiff Parkway train station will look like
Alex Seabrook, local democracy reporter
New pictures have been revealed of the plans for a train station and office development in east Cardiff.
Cardiff Parkway is expected to cater for about 800,000 passengers a year, with journeys to Cardiff Central or Newport in just seven minutes. The plans also include a business park with up to 90,000 square metres of office space, with space for thousands of jobs.
Cardiff council’s planning committee is expected to vote on approving permission for the £120 million scheme in February.
Nigel Roberts, chairman of Cardiff Parkway Developments, said: “Our proposals are for a sustainable, well-connected garden business district with public transport and active travel at its heart.
“This unique development will bring investment to an area that has long suffered from underinvestment, create new employment opportunities, and better connect people in this region of south east Wales.
“We are aiming to deliver convenient and quick services, with a high-quality customer experience, particularly for public transport and active travel, to encourage sustainable transport to become the obvious choice.”
The train station and business park would be built in St Mellons, on the eastern outskirts of Cardiff, on fields between Cypress Drive and Heol Las. That part of Cardiff is currently poorly served by public transport, with a bus journey into the city centre taking about an hour.
The station is expected to be built by 2024, and will run eight trains an hour to Cardiff and Newport. Four intercity-length platforms will serve local routes and mainline journeys to London, north Wales, Manchester, Bristol and the West Country.
Cardiff Parkway would deliver a key part of the landmark Burns report, which explored alternatives to the M4 relief road. The Burns report recommended six new train stations built between Cardiff Central and the Severn, as well as new bus routes and cycling infrastructure.
Mr Roberts added: “While the unprecedented challenges we’ve all had to endure over the last two years have impacted our programme, our team is as motivated as ever.
“We have been working hard with key stakeholders to prepare to deliver the scheme, and we’re delighted that Sir Peter Hendy has endorsed Lord Burns’ report where Cardiff Parkway is one of the key recommendations.
“We are really looking forward to making that recommendation a reality for everyone by starting on site next year as soon as our planning application is determined.”
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“Pictures reveal what new £120 million Cardiff Parkway train station will look like” – Yep, looks like a train station to me! 😀 In all seriousness… This development is definitely welcome; as pointed out in the article, the public transport in this area of Cardiff is absolutely woeful. It is literally quicker for me to drive to Abergavenny than it is to get a bus into town from here. This is great for Cardiff and the surrounding area, but there’s a much bigger picture here: what about the rest of the country? Why does it take ~4hrs to get from… Read more »
London and Newcastle are connected by a major intercity trainline built due to their size and population flows.
I’m up for talking about reopening Aber-Carmarthen, but do you really want an East Coast style railway running either diagonally between Cardiff and Aber or in an L shape swinging by Carmarthen?
There were proposals (not by a government I should add) to straighten the track between Bridgend and Swansea to speed up journeys but people in Neath complained because the proposed new track would by-pass the town.
Cardiff to Aberystwyth was just an example really, it’s not necessarily something that I think needs to be addressed specifically.
The bigger issue (and my main point really) is that no matter how bad it might be in this area of Wales, the transport infrastructure here is already far better than it is throughout the rest of the country.
120 million, and likely to be more, just like that for the Cardiff network but once you go out of a fairly tight radius they won’t invest a cockle in infrastructure. Tells me that Wales Gov is still dominated by Greater England thinking. Of course it fits in nicely with the pie in the sky stuff about everybody travelling by public transport.
£120million is for the business park and the station and the cash is coming from the private company building the business park, not a penny of public funds is going to this.
This station after Heathrow will be only the 2nd railway station AFAIK to be built 100% free of tax payer money. And why is it being built because it will be of enormous benefit to the business park and the government is so slow on approving/paying for things like this.
Please Cardiff can we have a crumb of a mile long by-pass for Llanbedr off your table…
The problem with rail connectivity in Wales is the result of an original system built purely for Wales to England resource extraction and a quicker journey time to Ireland from London. Nothing had changed by the time of Beeching, there was less rail traffic but the system remained simply a tool of resource theft that had no use for a west Wales service and even less in providing for a servile and self deprecating people. The lesson to be learned is simple enough, we must build our infrastructure without access to anything approaching the Welsh tax-take. This state of affairs… Read more »
That’ll be really handy. Move from Bristol, buy a cheap-ish house in Cardiff, send your kids to the local English-medium school, and commute back to England. Tidy.
Llywelyn ein Llyw Nesaf got downvoted, clearly someone doesn’t understand the concept of irony.
Americans have Train Stations and Railroads. Here we have Railway Stations. £120 Million is an extortionate sum for a glorified halt between two cities. Some of that money could be used for other schemes that are much needed.