In March 1999, BBC Wales TV mounted a mixed programme of discussion and documentary about public transport in Wales. Glyn Mathias hosted "Braking Point" in a transport museum with Peter Hain, then transport minister in a pre-devolution Welsh Office, putting the New Labour government point of view. There were also contributions from an invited audience comprising representatives of transport users and providers.
Unless the corporation has kept a video, no copy of the programme exists in any collection or online. What follows is from a viewing of a DVD which was in turn converted from a domestic VHS cassette. (We are looking at ways of further converting to a YouTube-friendly format.)
Much is unchanged twenty-five years later: Train services were poor, but there was promise of better to come when new train sets were to be delivered. Government anti-pollution taxes on road vehicle fuel were hitting small businesses. There was no integrated ticketing such as shown in an inserted report from the Netherlands. One thing has actually got worse: the availability of any form of public transport in large parts of rural Wales.
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