Fans leaving the Ed Sheeran concert said they failed to board their train at Cardiff Central Station because of the scale of the crowds.
Though the feedback from the concert itself has been roundly positive, the travel to and from the event prompted anger among some people attending the gig. Images from outside the station show thousands of people waiting to even get inside. However, though many people expressed frustration, others praised Transport for Wales for managing the crowds.
Abi Bawden had attended the event and was stuck in the crowds trying to get in. She tweeted to GWR directly saying: "Seriously? Selling tickets for a service you can't commit to. Come to Cardiff to see @edsheeran and waited over an hour for a train and none came. Thousands of people in queue no 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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She told WalesOnline: "It was a shambles. We ended up getting a train to a different station miles away from where we had to go just to get out of the city centre. Honestly, it was the worst. The app was telling me the trains were on time, there were no trains, I did not move for an hour! Ended up just getting on the last train back to Parkway in Bristol which was miles from where I needed to go . They didn't even check my tickets so I could've not paid."
This video was taken outside the station:
There were however some supportive tweets for the rail company including this one:
Carol Gladwin was not 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 them people! Two hour wait in the freezing cold after watching Ed Sheeran they were even refusing people and escorting people to and from the toilet."
And Elliot Luke tweeted to Transport for Wales saying: "Currently crammed into a Transport for Wales train where I can only stand in one direction without clotheslining the lady behind me. Absolute joke."- You can read more stories about Cardiff here.
TfW replied to Elliot saying that there were "10,000 more people compared to last night" adding "We're doing our upmost best in getting all our customers home. "
When challenged by several passengers about why they allegedly hadn't anticipated the increase in users, Transport for Wales said it had limited carriages due to an incident. It wrote: "We did anticipate services being busier, however we're short of 4 carriages following Sunday's Craven Arms incident. We’re working with our industry partners to source any additional trains available to cover for the damaged units."
A spokeswoman for Transport for Wales said: "Tens of thousands of passengers travelled on our services for the Ed Sheeran concert, as well as other major events taking place on the network yesterday, with no major incidents or safety events reported. We would like to thank our passengers for cooperating well with our queuing system and with our teams who managed to keep passengers moving as quickly and as safely through the station as possible.
“We are facing some capacity constraints currently and some of our trains remain out of use due to an incident at Craven Arms at the start of the week. We were hugely relieved that this incident was not more severe – the impact of this serious criminal act will however continue to be felt for some time. “We’re working with our industry partners to source any additional trains available to cover for the damaged units, and hope to be able to announce a temporary arrangement soon. In the meantime, we advise customers check before they travel and use our Capacity Checker – an online tool that allows customers to see which trains are likely to have the most space available.”
A GWR spokesman said: "We operated an additional 13 services from Cardiff Central following last night’s concert, providing more than 8,000 seats. All of those services bar one ran to time.
"Transport for Wales puts a queueing system in place for big-ticket events at the Principality Stadium which is well publicised in advance. This is a tried-and-tested crowd control system and by 23.45 the majority of customers had boarded trains and platforms at the station were flowing freely."
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