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00:00 this is talking about December, you're talking about March.
00:02 Yeah, well I'd be interested because I suppose my initial interest was the
00:07 particular service from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury and onwards and I have a few
00:13 concerns about that specific service. You know, the fact that there has been a
00:18 commitment of introducing an hourly service, now that is all well and good to
00:22 make the commitment. I think at the moment many of our constituents would
00:26 just appreciate it. To operate properly. Yes, and so I suppose we will go on to
00:31 the broader issue that you just mentioned there, but just specifically
00:34 in the Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury line, are there particular issues and pieces of
00:40 work on that line being done to improve the reliability of the service and also
00:46 the capacity? Because a common complaint that I receive is, and I've experienced
00:51 it myself, especially when changing at Shrewsbury, you might have been on
00:53 another service and people are then having to be loaded on, it's no better
00:59 than a cattle truck actually, from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth. We've heard a
01:02 lot about promises of new rolling stock. I remember in 2018, and I'll come on to
01:07 that in a moment, promises of new rolling stock that have not, well they don't
01:11 appear to have materialised on the mid Wales section of the Wales and
01:16 Borders franchise. So are there particular things you can tell me to
01:19 give me some reassurance on the Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury line? If I can, I need to
01:24 start wide and then hone in if that's okay, because it all links. So the new
01:30 rolling stock that was promised is still all happening, every single bit of it.
01:35 In fact there's more rolling stock than we originally talked about. Right.
01:40 Figures on that would include that we will have something like 67% more
01:49 carriages in service when we have completed all of the transformation than
01:54 today. When do you expect that? Well, a vast majority of it will happen this year.
02:00 Right, okay, because I recall that in evidence submitted to the Cenedd
02:06 Climate Change Environment and Infrastructure Committee back in March of last year,
02:10 Transport for Wales stated there'll be 30% more services by 2025 in 2018,
02:18 and that 95% of all rail journeys will be on new trains. That's broadly
02:24 speaking still correct. It's on track. What has happened is probably the dates
02:29 have slipped by six to nine months, depending on where you are in Wales, and I'll
02:34 come on to that.