A mother has talked about her disappointment after being stuck in traffic and consequently missing Ed Sheeran's concert in Cardiff over the weekend. Suzie Andrew and her children from Sandhurst were stuck in traffic for three hours on Friday in the lead up to the sell-out concert.
It comes after fans complained about long traffic jams on the way to see the singer perform at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on Thursday, May 26, Friday, May 27 and Saturday, May 28. Footage has also emerged showing huge queues of people waiting to get on trains outside of Cardiff Central station. Saturday was a particularly busy day the city as Ed Sheeran's concert took place the same day as American rock band My Chemical Romance were also performing at an outdoor gig.
Read more: Huge crowds at Cardiff train station as thousands of Ed Sheeran fans try to leave city
Following the weekend, the Welsh Conservative party leader, Andrew R T Davies, has called for better transport infrastructure in Wales. On Twitter, he wrote: "Serious questions must be asked about how three big gigs in Cardiff have ground south Wales to a halt. This simply isn’t good enough. We need modern transport infrastructure in Wales."
Suzie and her family were travelling to the capital on the Friday. Speaking to BBC Breakfast with Clare Summers on Monday morning, the disappointed mum explained that she was stuck in traffic for so long that she missed the entire show.
Intending on taking her children and their friends to the concert, she said: "We had got tickets in London but my daughter's school had put a mandatory geography field trip. So we had to sell those tickets and we thought we'd do Cardiff - it's 120 miles from where we live, it's a motorway all the way.
"We set off early afternoon on the Friday, flew down the motorway for the first 80 miles and then we sort of hit traffic about 40 miles outside of Cardiff. We were fairly back to back on the motorway, but the issue was more that we were directed off the motorway and the Sat Nav took us off the motorway, that's where the problems really started.
"So 40 miles out, we were literally stop-start, stop-start. We got to within three miles of the Severn Bridge and it became very apparent that we were going to miss the support act, but that was okay because we would still get to see Ed. And then, it took us three hours to get across the Severn Bridge.
"We got across the Severn Bridge at around 9-9.15pm, and so we thought, okay we might actually get to see the last half hour and the clock is ticking down. We got to our outer Cardiff car park where we were supposed to get our shuttle bus in, but of course, by the time we get there at 9.45-10pm the shuttle buses have stopped running and these girls are distraught.
"They've spent their Saturday job money buying these tickets, I lent them money - I can't ask for that money back from them, because they haven't had the experience or seen anything. We are all £355 pocket short. It's just terrible".
She added: "We gave it a really good go, but they are just gutted. Twice now we've tried to go and see him and now - well I don't know what we are going to do, because we are £355 down on the tickets plus petrol, plus seven and half hours to get there".
When asked by Clare Summers if it had put her off coming to Cardiff for future events, Suzie replied that it had. She said: "We go to a lot of football matches and a lot of other concerts around where we live and around London... I just felt like the city wasn't equipped for this. To have a concert the same night as My Chemical Romance concert as well just seemed like madness".
In response to Suzie's experience, Professor Mark Barry - a professor of practice in connectivity at Cardiff University said: "It's really disappointing to hear that, nobody wants to experience missing an event having travelled all that way. But it's a bit of a stark reality for these massive events and we've complicated the situation by having multiple events at the same time. Unlike the rugby, where you have people coming from all directions to Cardiff, for these big concerts, they generally come from the east - you'd probably get around 100,000 people getting to Cardiff at a very narrow time window.
"The stark reality of it is there is no way you can avoid congestion. I think what needs to happen is that people, who are coming to these events where there are lots of people, need to be aware that you probably need to leave earlier. There's no way you can provide the road capacity or public transport capacity to deal with that number of people in that short period of time.
"It is a problem. My sense is that maybe the event managements on a tractable side need to be looked at... It's not just shuttle buses in Cardiff we've got, but shuttle coaches near the Severn Bridge or east of Newport or even on the other side of the bridge, where you' can move enough cars on the road.
"Having people in cars is going to lead the problem, as we've just seen described, and it's really disappointing. Different management processes need to be required with that size of event." He added: "I think it was a huge mistake to put multiple events on at the same time." Get the latest news from across Wales straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
