Fans who left Ed Sheeran’s concert said they couldn’t get on their train at Cardiff Central Station because of the crowds.
Although the feedback from the concert itself has been totally positive, the trip to and from the event has caused outrage among some people attending the concert. Images outside the station show thousands of people even waiting to enter. However, while many expressed frustration, others praised Transport for Wales for handling the crowds.
Abi Bawden had attended the event and was caught in the crowd trying to get inside. He tweeted directly to GWR, saying: “Really? Tickets are coming for a service you can’t commit to. Come to Cardiff to see @edsheeran and wait a while. Time for a train and no one came. Thousands of people in line without staff saying anything. Absolute farce, don’t take people’s money. ” You can get more traffic and travel news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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He told WalesOnline: “It was a disaster. We ended up taking a train to a different station miles away from where we had to go just to get out of the city center. Honestly, it was the worst. The app he told me the trains were on time, there were no trains, I didn’t move for an hour! they just checked my tickets, so I couldn’t pay. “
This video was taken outside the station:
However, there were some supportive tweets for the railway company, including this one:
Carol Gladwin wasn’t impressed, though, adding: “We ended up walking back to our Airbnb, three miles … but at least walking was an option for us. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Shaun Richards replied, “I was one of those people! Two hours of waiting in the freezing cold after seeing Ed Sheeran, they were even pushing people and accompanying people to and from the toilet.”
And Elliot Luke tweeted to Transport for Wales saying, “I’m currently crammed into a Transport for Wales train where I can only be in one direction without stealing the lady behind me. An absolute joke.” – You can read more stories about Cardiff here.
TfW responded to Elliot by saying there were “10,000 more people compared to last night” and added “We are doing our best to get all our customers home.”
When several passengers asked them why they had not planned to increase the number of users, Transport for Wales said it had limited cars due to an incident. He wrote: “We anticipate services would be busier, but we are short of 4 cars after the Craven Arms incident on Sunday. We are working with our industry partners to get any additional trains available to cover the damaged units.” .
A spokeswoman for Transport for Wales said: “Tens of thousands of passengers traveled to our services for the Ed Sheeran concert, as well as other major events that took place on the network yesterday, with no major incidents reported. We would like to thank our passengers for their good cooperation with our queuing system and our teams who made it possible for passengers to move around the station as quickly and safely as possible.
“We are currently facing some capacity limitations and some of our trains are still out of service due to an incident at Craven Arms earlier in the week. We are very relieved that this incident is not more serious; the impact of this serious criminal act will continue for a while. “We are working with our industry partners to obtain any additional trains available to cover the damaged units and look forward to announcing a temporary agreement soon. In the meantime, we advise customers to check before they travel and use our Capacity Checker, an online tool that allows customers to see which trains have more space available. “
WalesOnline has contacted Great Western Railway and Transport for Wales to comment.
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