South Wales Metro

The Cardiff Capital Region is made up of ten local authority areas:

• Blaenau Gwent
• Bridgend
• Caerphilly
• Cardiff
• Merthyr Tydfil
• Monmouthshire
• Newport
• Rhondda Cynon Taf
• Torfaen
• Vale of Glamorgan

Building the South Wales Metro

Building the South Wales Metro is an ambitious, multi-million-pound project, and our current plans will take us around five years to complete.  We have a significant amount construction, engineering and infrastructure work to do to upgrade our rail network so that it’s ready for the South Wales Metro.

We’ll be:

• Electrifying around 170 km of track.
• Upgrading all our stations and signalling.
• Building at least five new stations.
   

We’re investing three quarters of a billion pounds to upgrade the railway lines to Aberdare, Coryton, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhymney and Treherbert, which is an important part of the South Wales Metro.  These lines are also known as the Core Valleys Lines.
A number of South Wales Metro projects have been part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government.

What progress are we making?
We’ve already started work on the South Wales Metro, with the construction of our new £100 million depot and Metro Control Centre in Taff’s Well, Rhondda Cynon Taff.  

Our Taff’s Well depot will be home to our new Metro trains as well as 400 train crew, 35 maintenance staff and 52 Metro Control Centre staff. 
 

What improvements can you expect from the South Wales Metro?
We’ll be running more weekday and Sunday services than ever before:

Weekdays

• four services per hour between Cardiff and the Heads of each Valley 
• two of the four services from Treherbert, Aberdare and Merthyr Tydfil will extend from Cardiff to Cardiff Bay
• an extra service per hour between Cardiff and Bridgend via the Vale of Glamorgan Line from December 2023
• two services per hour between Cardiff and Shrewsbury via Abergavenny from December 2022
• an hourly service between Cardiff and Cheltenham via Chepstow from December 2022

Sundays

• two services per hour on Sundays between Cardiff and the Heads of each Valley
• the first ever Sunday service on the Coryton and City Lines, with an hourly service from December 2023
• the first ever Sunday service on the Maesteg Line, with one service every two hours from December 2019, increasing to an hourly service from December 2023
• an extra service per hour between Cardiff and Bridgend via the Vale of Glamorgan Line from December 2024
• an hourly service between Cardiff and Cheltenham via Chepstow from December 2023

While you can expect more frequent rail services across much of our network from 2022, we’ll be introducing a number of improvements in the Cardiff Capital Region before 2022.
 

New Metro trains
We’re investing £800 million in new faster, greener trains for the South Wales Metro and the Wales and Borders rail service.
We’re busy behind the scenes building these new, more comfortable trains that will provide our customers with a modern, effective, turn-up-and-go Metro service.

South Wales Metro Map 

The South Wales Metro will make travelling easier throughout the Cardiff Capital Region with faster, more frequent and more joined-up public transport.
Find out more about how you can benefit from Metro from our latest South Wales Metro rail map: Metro.