In the three years since a new railway station was opened by Transport for Wales at Bow Street near Aberystwyth in West Wales, passenger numbers have increased by over 2,000 each month.

The station opened in 2021 following ten years of work and campaigning by local groups in Ceredigion.

Since then, the number of passengers using it has continued to grow, from 12,563 passenger journeys during 2021/22, and 23,156 in 2022/2023 with some of the increase partly because of the relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions.

In 2023/24, the number increased again to more than 29,000, equivalent to an average of more than 2,400 passenger journeys per month.

The latest figure shows that 34% of all journeys from the station were to Aberystwyth, followed by 13% to Shrewsbury, 8% to either Birmingham New Street or Birmingham International and 7% to London.

Customer facilities include a free 70-space car park covered by CCTV and provision for cycle parking, and a bus stop used by local buses and the T-2 bus from Aberystwyth to Bangor.

Active Travel connections were also completed in 2021/22. They have seen a considerable increase by pedestrians and cyclists, both within Bow Street and between Bow Street and the neighbouring community of Penrhyncoch via Aberystwyth University’s Plas Gogerddan campus.

Soon after it opened, the station was shortlisted for an award in the Constructing Excellence in Wales awards

Customers have been really positive about it and certainly we seem to see a lot of people using it particularly to get into Aberystwyth where parking in the town can be limited.

We were really proud that the first new station as Transport for Wales was here on the Cambrian line and it is great to see its ongoing success.

David Crunkhorn, Transport for Wales Station Manager

Tirymynach ward councillor Paul Hinge was heavily involved in the campaign for the station, which eventually culminated in the Welsh Government commissioning a study into the reopening of the station and securing funding from the Department for Transport for its construction.

People are definitely using it more and more, not just from the village of Bow Street but from communities like Penrhyncoch, Talybont and beyond, he said.

A big part of that is the free car park and many people will prefer to travel from here when heading to Birmingham or London because they know they can leave their car safely.

For me, it was a real labour of love as my father-in-law worked on the railway for about 50 years and he asked me to push for this shortly before he died.

Paul Hinge, Tirymynach ward councillor