Will the Minister confirm whether Transport for Wales has a duty of care for passengers left stranded as a result of travel disruption and will the Minister provide assurances that Transport for Wales will improve its communications and assistance offered to such passengers?
Passenger safety is paramount to TfW and even more so during adverse weather events. It was a very challenging and rapidly changing situation as Storm Arwen progressed from Friday morning into Saturday. The impact due to damage to trains is still impacting services.
TfW advised passengers that trains were not running at all on Saturday morning.
TfW wanted to avoid a situation where people would be making their way to stations only to find their trains were cancelled or severely disrupted, creating a risk to their personal wellbeing travelling to/from stations on roads that were also severely affected. TfW did issue a press notice to media including the BBC early on the Saturday morning, used social media, and updated their website and app to try and ensure this positon was communicated to members of the public looking to travel.
Unfortunately on this occasion TfW were also not able to provide road transport due to several operators not willing to run coaches/buses in the adverse weather conditions, posing a risk to their vehicles and drivers.
TfW extended the validity of tickets issued for travel over the weekend into the following week to allow passengers to make those journeys when it was safe to do so.