Flying South

In the business section of today's Daily Post there is a profile of Basil O'Fee the commercial director of Highland Airways. Highland Airways is the company that will run the new air link between Valley and Cardiff.

As one can imagine Mr O'Fee is very exited about his new project and enthuses about the huge difference the service will make. He believes that the service will "finally link" north and south Wales and unite the country.

There is no doubt that one of the difficulties that the Assembly has faced from its inception is that Wales is not perceived to be a cohesive nation by many of its citizens, and that one of the reasons for that lack of cohesion is the difficulty in travelling from north to south or south to north.

Unlike Mr O'Fee I can't see the new air link playing a major role in resolving this difficulty. The air service doesn’t link north and south Wales - it just links one point in the north with another point in the south. Great if you want to go to Cardiff from Holyhead, but just as awkward as any other form of travel to somebody who wants to go to Merthyr from Llanrwst or to Porthmadog from Carmarthen.

The much lauded and heavily subsidies north to south rail link suffers from the same problem. It serves the north Wales coast and the south Wales coast but because the actuall north-south part of the journy is through England it provides nothing for the rest of the country.

The only real answer to the problem of north south travel is to grasp the nettle that all parties are too faerfull of the anti-road lobby to propose - to upgrade the A470 to dual carriageway / motorway standard. All other proposals are just money wasting sops that tinker at the edges of the problem.