Waterhall - Fairwater

Not sure what Ash's link is supposed to show? If you zoom in the line clearly indicates the track running through the houses on Kirton close. On satellite images you can even see the trees that line the former track bed to the North West of Kirton Close/Fairwood Close, and a handful more immediately adjacent to the north west end of Kirton close itself. So much for good planning. These houses are slap bang in the way and should to go. Unless you're looking at the 1945 google earth images of fairwater, then there is no route from the city line to join the disused track that avoids houses/roads. Sacrificing a couple of dozen houses to provide much needed infrastructure for 6000 future homes, plus all the existing areas that will also benefit? Not much of a price to pay. Obviously owners of these homes should be compensated appropriately - its not their fault their homes got built in a stupid location.

Not sure what Ash's link is supposed to show? If you zoom in the line clearly indicates the track running through the houses on Kirton close. On satellite images you can even see the trees that line the former track bed to the North West of Kirton Close/Fairwood Close, and a handful more immediately adjacent to the north west end of Kirton close itself. So much for good planning. These houses are slap bang in the way and should to go. Unless you're looking at the 1945 google earth images of fairwater, then there is no route from the city line to join the disused track that avoids houses/roads. Sacrificing a couple of dozen houses to provide much needed infrastructure for 6000 future homes, plus all the existing areas that will also benefit? Not much of a price to pay. Obviously owners of these homes should be compensated appropriately - its not their fault their homes got built in a stupid location.

Did you read my post immediately before yours? 15 homes demolished according to the LDP, with many more affected. An alternative would be to tunnel through the cliff above the Taff, north of here, on the City Line and create a new line, arcing anticlockwise and rejoining the Waterhall line about half a mile west.

The problem for the Labour group is that public transport will have to be massively improved to serve Plas Dŵr or traffic will become a real problem. Heavy or light rail will require demolition of those homes on Kirton close with many more badly affected by the noise of 8tph for 16 hours per day (unless my suggestion is followed, and I have no idea how practical that would be).

The alternative is Bus Rapid Transit but Labour know that would be hugely unpopular in the Canton and Riverside wards and would probably lose them those seven seats on the council for many years to come.

I did read your reply. The report doesn't actually specify that "many more will be affected". It states the line would be in close proximity to other houses. But there are plenty of homes that front onto the existing railway line all the way down into Cardiff. By the time the line is restored it would form part of the upgraded electrified metro anyway, so scaremongering about noisy trains is irrelevant. I don't really understand the alternative route you are proposing, but safe to say anything involving tunnelling will not be considered and would be many many times more costly than compensating for the loss of a few homes.

Edit. To add, I live adjacent to the city line, and there is little (if any) disturbance from the normal operation of the railway. Maintenance work at 2 am is a different matter, but such occasions are few and far between.

I also doubt your suggested frequency of 8tph. The City line operates 2tph in each direction, so 4tph total. I doubt there would be the capacity to put much more down the line running into central.

I don't know what it is - a culture of using the bus much more than the train? There seems to be a lot of spare capacity on Cardiff's rail network. Travelling north on the valleys lines they seem to be much better used. The buses stop at more locations but I'm not sure there is a huge difference in price nowadays.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing but I have that spur running parallel to Keyston road which is very much fairwater.

If you look on Google maps it's pretty clear where that spur is and it splits fairwater from West Llandaff

If you're looking at the line of trees running almost North/South along Keyston Rd, I don't think that is the alignment that would connect with the track bed, as the angle where it joins the disused track running East/West through the development area is far too acute to work.

If you're talking about where Keyston Rd runs E/W, then yes, thats the track. It continues along and follows a natural curve to join the city line passing through Fairwood Cl and Kirton Cl.

It would be much easier to label an image and upload it... but my skills don't stretch that far/my low tech life does not include and image hosting accounts etc!

@George

I was referring get to the east West route as you've described. I'm with you in that I'd love to put an image on here but my efforts would resemble a pollack

@George

I was referring get to the east West route as you've described. I'm with you in that I'd love to put an image on here but my efforts would resemble a pollack

Guys for posting images I use http://postimage.org/ - really straightforward.

For creating images from web pages I use Google Chrome lightshot extension - a screenshot tool that allows basic mark-ups.

@George

I was referring get to the east West route as you've described. I'm with you in that I'd love to put an image on here but my efforts would resemble a pollack

Here's a rough image of where the line went - It may have been marginally south of this, but there are houses in that area that were built before the line was taken out (and obviously about a dozen or so directly in the way of the line which would need demolishing).