Llantrisant Road Development

Just an update on this. Looks like there is a major development before the committee this month - the first phase of Plas Dwr / Waterhall, in effect, which directly abuts Radyr and the northern part of Fairwater.
http://cardiff.moderngov.co.uk/document ... ardiff.pdf
Its the part which is the most obvious urban extension of Cardiff, most notably filling in some gaps by the Radyr Park development from the turn of the Millennium.

There is also an outline planning application for 300 homes filling in a gap on the Plas Dwr site, next to Llantrisant Road:
http://planning.cardiff.gov.uk/online-a ... APR_115025
While I think it makes sense to continue development in this area, I'm not sure opportunities for links between this small development and the wider Plas Dwr one have been maximised. In particular the so-called "main street" running through Plas Dwr could have continued through this development to join up with Llantrisant Road. Although they will interconnect, it doesn't really provide the direct through route through the two developments, bypassing bits of the Llantrisant Road. Now this may be by design to prevent it being used as a rat run. But with the plans to narrow and slow down Llantrisant Road, a second direct route through the site might have been helpful. One thing I will say is that the interlinkage is better than what was initially in the Plas Dwr website - no link whatsoever to Llantrisant Road at this point (again to avoid rat-runs most likely).

And lastly, it mentions that Plas Dwr (http://plasdwr.co.uk) has now been with the council without determination for 14 months. Thats a long time. I'd be interesting to know whats been going on in the interim - is it partly commenting on and revising/improving plans, or is just a very slow process?

There seems to be a few of these before the planners recently, hopefully at least one or two of them and the St.Edeyrn site will involve actual houses getting built instead of just getting through planning and then sitting on the land.

At the same time as we've been talking about the St.Edeyrn development on here Persimmon have cleared the whole Panasonic site in Newport and have built loads of houses, to a point that they can't have many more to build. I get why they might choose to sit on the St.Edeyrn site for a while until they are ready but it's bloody frustrating to see them do that when just a few miles down the road they are motoring on. Maybe it's a case of them not wanting too many developments on the go at once ?

EDIT: Drove near the Newport site I mentioned above and hour ago on lunch, they are around 50% to 70% of the way towards filling the site, although they are busy sorting out the bottom end of it already. They really have moved quickly.

Buried away in those plans is the intention to have a pinch point / queuing system back up Llantrisant Road from the junction of Llantrisant Road and Heol Isaf. The intention seem to be to hold traffic there at peak times (ie the morning rush hour) and drip feed the cars into Llandaff. There are a few of obvious problems with this.

A. Unless you have similar controls on Heol Isaf and Bridge Road the idea simply won't work. There's enough traffic on those two roads alone to clog up Llandaff.

B. You drive traffic on to a rat-run from Rhydlafar through Saint Fagans and Fairwater.

C. Standing traffic is more polluting than moving traffic raising air quality issuses for the new developments.

I'm not opposed to Plas Dŵr but this part of the plan seems badly thought out.

The whole Plas Dwr development would benefit greatly from having a link onto the A4232 - an option which seems to have been completely missed by the planners...

You could even link this new access road to the Llantrisant Road/Heol Isaf junction and divert alot of the strain flowing through Llandaff every morning.

I'm also slightly worried that the whole 'Tram/Train' route through the development appears to have now been reclassified as a cycle route... Encouraging that they seem to be preserving the former railway line corridor, but worrying that it isn't really being mentioned.