Hundreds of people were stuck in a multi-storey car park in Cardiff city centre for hours, as people flocked to the city centre on the second day of the bumper Easter bank holiday weekend. Some said they had been stuck for over three hours and others chose to abandon their cars due to the chaos as St David’s car park had come to a “standstill”.
The situation was still not resolved by Saturday evening, with people complaining that they had been queuing for hours. St David’s said on social media that the gridlock was due to “the heavy congestion on the road the car park exits into” and the “council-controlled traffic lights” which it said were “still only letting traffic out of the car park very slowly”.
They added that they “have asked the council to change the lights to prioritise letting people out of the car park” but not before people chose to leave their cars behind and get taxis or public transport home.
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But video footage sent to WalesOnline appeared to show no congestion outside the car park and traffic moving freely. Meanwhile footage and pictures from inside the car park showed queues all the way up the six-story car park, which has 2,000 spaces.
Drivers could be heard honking their horns in frustration, while car park staff on the lower level could be seen waving them through the exit. A 26-year-old woman, who had come down for Easter from Brighton to surprise her family in the Vale of Glamorgan, told WalesOnline, said the situation in the car park was “mental”.
She had come to spend some time in the city centre before visiting her family. She said she entered the car park at around around 2.30pm and noticed drivers were queuing to exit the car park as she entered it.
“I thought: ‘Oh, that’s weird’ but didn’t think anything more of it.” But by the time she arrived back in the car park just before 7pm she spotted there was “gridlock all the way up” the car park and people were beeping their horns and standing outside of their cars.
“We got to our car on level six and couldn’t even back out of our spot,” she said. “I knew someone on level seven and they’d told me they’d been there for an hour. There were people there with their kids in the car…it’s absolute chaos. They’ve got security on the ramp letting one person through at a time, but there must be hundreds of cars all queuing.
“We walked past the exit to see if there was a traffic light issue, or an accident, and there was nothing. Traffic was moving fine…we couldn’t see any reason why there was such an issue. I’m getting the train back home to see my family and we’ll come back tomorrow to pick up the car. Because we’ve seen people tweeting that they’ve been there for three hours…I don’t particularly want to sit in the car for three hours.
Tony Woolway from Fairwater in Cardiff was said he only managed to get out of the car park after three hours. He said: “It was gridlock. Nothing was moving. We went 30 yards in two hours and we were on the sixth floor. It was just clearing when we left after 3 hours. People were beeping their horns and many just left their cars and headed off to get food and drink to comeback later on.
“We rang the car park number and was told it was down to the traffic lights staying on red for too long blaming the council. They said the there was an unusual amount of people leaving at the same time which was unexpected and helped make the problem worse. They also advised that we leave and come back later.”
A message from South Wales Police on Twitter said: “There is significant congestion around the Cardiff City Centre area this evening, particularly around the car parks close to the Motorpoint Arena. Efforts are being made to ease the congestion. Motorists are advised to allow extra time for their journeys.”
St David’s Cardiff and Cardiff Council have been approached for comment. St David’s shared on social media that the situation had been cleared by 8:30pm.
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