Of course, what you miss out here is how that money was spent. Countless UK government's have shown they have had no interest spending money on the areas where EU grants were given. Think lots of Wales, Cornwall and the North of England. So those specific areas very much did benefit from EU money, much more so than what they are now (and were previously) from UK government spending.

It is worth adding context that the normal capacity of the current ground is less than 10k and even for international games where they add temporary seating it is still less than 20k. Nowhere near the grounds places like Twickenham etc get.

The existing ground is also pretty well served by buses, and has an existing train station within a mile (and the previously mentioned new station opening in 2024 about 500m away). It obviously is also incredibly accessible for those people who live in the general North Bristol area (and is within walking distance for tens of thousands of people).

You basically lose all that by moving away to a motorway based ground where driving will likely be the main transport option with potentially some buses if we are lucky (but not as many routes as the existing ground is served by). Essentially baking in car dependency for travel to the ground for at least a large percentage of visitors. Not something we should be planning for in 2023 IMO^▸ (in my opinion).

Of course the existing ground is within months of having a station open within a 5 minute walk!

And even for those using the replacement bus, I'd hazard a guess a significant number of those journeys are being done without tickets given the bus drivers have nothing to do with ticketing and there's no staff checking tickets.

Good to see them keeping the old Avon traditions alive!

Is this potentially something a bit more silly? Like the next departure AFTER the 18.24 would have been the ones announced. So not the next fastest at the time of the announcement, but the next fastest after the time of the original service. Obviously not customer friendly if there's an option between the time of the announcement and the original service, but I can see why an auto announcement would work like that! (there's also the issue of advance tickets, and I believe technically they'd only be valid on services after the original time and not before).

Not sure I'm a fan of it seemingly only being able to be accessed via scanning a QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code) code.
Some of the information provided would be useful before you get to the station too, and whilst those of us in the know can still access that via existing platforms and services, it seems a bit of a miss to not just bake it into the existing GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) app or similar!

I was tempted to pop over too (have literally just moved to this bit of Bristol), but given the coverage on their Twitter feed I didn't feel the need to!

I'm not sure how much audience the various NR twitter accounts actually have, or if anyone apart from us lot really pay much attention, but I do think the wider industry could learn a fair bit as I am pretty sure the more the general public sees of what actually gets done when lines are closed (or in this case partly closed), the more understanding they would be of the disruption caused! (Maybe I'm wrong but being more on it with showing what is actually being done can never be a bad thing in my eyes).

Ignoring the obvious impact of short forms (services end up being busier and you are less likely to get a seat), this bit is one of my main pet peeves when travelling at the moment. At some platforms it seems basically impossible to know where to wait because there is zero consistency in train lengths due to regular short formations. Those of us in the know can use Real Time Trains, but even with that I've had issues where formation changes (additions or removals) aren't reflected on there.

The idea of building new stations is great, but serving existing stations better also needs to be a priority. I can't be the only person who thinks Parson Street and Bedminster getting only an hourly service for much of the day is a bit of a joke.

Its worth noting that whilst probably not timed well enough for commuting, Megabus provide a pretty decent and usually well priced (often cheaper or around the same price as the train) service between Cardiff and Bristol that has a much better arrival / departure location for Cardiff City centre than National Express do, and arguably a better arrival / departure location in Bristol than Temple Meads is. Certainly since I have started spending more time in Bristol (thanks to my other half living there) rather than where I live in Bath, I have started using the Megabus to travel to Cardiff for football games instead of using the train, partly because of how more convenient the location is in Bristol!

Having only known Queen Square it as it is today, I am totally bamboozled by the pictures of it with a dual carriageway running through the centre of it! Utter madness. Of course, there is an element of it being "of the time" as in that era, and especially in Bristol, the car was king. But it still totally baffles me that anyone thought that was a good idea.

In strikes me that there are quite a few stations like this, and this may just be confirmation bias, but resignalling projects that end up moving the stop markers tend not to consider how the changes affect passengers (a great example is the changes that were made at Temple Meads as part of last years resignalling where for some of the platforms the stopping zone for the shorter DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit)'s seem to be much further from the subway than what they used to be).

In terms of the kitchen location, isn't it mainly just good use of space that wouldn't be available for public use anyway (due to rules regarding space use in leading vehicles above certain speeds)? Or is that just something I read that isn't true?
Edit - turns out this isn't actually the case! Sorry for that and thanks to those who corrected me

When you apply for 3-5 universities, and fares to get to them can easily total in the hundreds of pounds once you add it all up, I'd say it is a very costly endeavour and very much can affect someone's choices!