Rail Connectivity

The Western Gateway 2050 Rail Vision promotes increasing capacity to allow up to four trains per hour between Bristol and Cardiff, reducing journey times between the cities from 50 to 30 minutes. It also suggests that journey times between Swansea and Bristol could be dramatically reduced from one and a half hours once an hour to 60 minutes with three trains an hour, through funding Transport for Wales proposed improvements to the South Wales Main Line and upgrading the Severn crossing.

The plans estimate that improvements would cost between £1-2bn in the short term to deliver already committed and planned developments up to 2035. In the long term, the full range of development up to 2050 has been estimated to cost a further £7-8bn.

“Good rail services support modal shift and carbon reduction, they support and sustain the local and regional economy and they promote equality of opportunity and access. They are essential for delivering prosperity and sustainability and we need the strength of ambition set out in the Western Gateway’s Rail Vision 2050 to keep the communities of the Gateway thriving”

Mark Hopwood

Managing Director, Great Western Railway

A fully functioning and efficient rail system is essential to reach carbon emission targets and improve the region’s productivity and growth. Our goals are to:

Provide transformational benefits for local communities at risk of being left behind with travel times between urban and rural centres nearly halved and greatly improved connections to London and beyond.
Offer a deliverable programme of work – with a new robust strategic partnership and a pipeline of schemes already in planning and business case phases, deliverable by 2035.
Provide the opportunity to unlock huge potential. If we can overcome productivity hurdles, our research shows we could add at least £34bn to the UK economy by 2030.
Become a leader in rail innovation with the new Global Centre for Rail Excellence, Bristol’s Station Innovation Zone plus industry leaders like CAF (Newport) and SIEMENS (Chippenham).