You’re being misled about toilets on Welsh trains

Owen Williams

The way governments and public bodies use language really matters. It’s not just about naming things. It’s about helping people understand what’s happening, and making sure the facts are clear and easy to grasp.

When that doesn’t happen, people get confused. And when people get confused, they get angry.

That’s exactly what we saw this week. A post from Jeremy Vine On 5 claimed that Wales’ billion-pound rail upgrade wouldn’t include toilets on the trains.

The post quickly took off, with hundreds of comments accusing the Welsh Government of incompetence, idiocy, and worse. “This is what happens when morons get elected,” one Facebook user fumed. “A third-world service.” “Another embarrassing decision by the idiotic government.” “Of course people need facilities – I can’t believe this!”

But the claim wasn’t true. All trains in Wales still have toilets. That hasn’t changed. The only vehicles that won’t are the new trams being introduced as part of the South Wales Metro network: short, fast, electric services that are more like a cross between London Underground and Manchester Metrolink than a traditional train.

And like the Tube and Metrolink, they don’t have toilets because journeys are short, and space is limited.

Confusion

So where did the confusion come from? Mostly, from one phrase: “tram-trains.” That’s how Transport for Wales and the Welsh Government have described these soon-to-be-introduced vehicles for years.

It’s a technical term, used in transport planning to describe a hybrid system that can run on both tramlines and train tracks. But to most people, it’s just confusing. It suggests a train. And if a train has no toilet, people assume the same goes for all trains. And that’s how you end up with a flood of outrage and headlines that damage public trust.

This might seem like a minor branding problem. It isn’t. Because the anger it stirs up doesn’t stay contained. It gets picked up, passed around and folded into a bigger story: that Welsh public services are failing, that devolution doesn’t work, that things were better before.

Those are the stories that gain traction when communication is vague or unclear.

Bad-faith actors don’t need much to go on – just a phrase, a post or a headline that can be taken the wrong way.

Ammunition

If public bodies don’t take language seriously, they’re effectively handing them ammunition. Simplicity isn’t the enemy of detail. It’s what allows detail to land.

When public bodies use clear, everyday language, they’re not patronising anyone. They’re respecting people’s time, their attention and their right to understand what is being done in their name.

Plain-speaking is a public service in itself. Too often, official messaging gets tangled in jargon, acronyms or branding language that may make sense internally, but falls flat in the real world.

Communication shouldn’t feel like a puzzle. If a sentence needs unpacking, re-reading or deep background knowledge to make sense, it’s failed, and it’ll continue to fail.

The goal isn’t to sound clever. The goal is to be understood. Wales has made good progress in this area, especially through Cymraeg Clir and the push for clearer bilingual communications.

But the principle applies to English just as much. Whether it’s signage, policy announcements or everyday updates, clarity must come before branding. Trust relies on it.

Public trust

Wales is a small country. Public trust is hard-earned and easily lost.

If we want people to believe in our services, in the institutions that run them, and in the principle of devolution itself, then we have to be better at explaining what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Clarity isn’t a luxury. It’s the foundation of trust. If we want to defend public services from cheap shots and bad-faith attacks, we need to speak plainly. Call a spade a spade. And a tram a tram.