Inside Cardiff's new bus station as it opens after seven-year delay

• ITV Cymru Wales reporter Megan Boot paid a visit to the Cardiff Bus Interchange.

Cardiff's new bus station has officially opened after a seven-year delay.

The Welsh capital has been without an official bus station since the former one was demolished in 2015, as part of the Central Square redevelopment plans.

Officially named Cardiff Bus Interchange, it's located next to Cardiff Central railway station in the city centre, and opened for the first bus services on the morning of Sunday, 30 June.

It had originally been planned to open in 2017, but after a number of setbacks, a new plan was approved in 2018, which was followed by delays and the Covid pandemic.

Cardiff Bus says a "proportion" of its services will now start and end there.

Coaches will not be running from the bus station, but TfW said it is exploring how this service can be delivered in the future.

Marie Daly, chief customer and culture officer at Transport for Wales, said the team are "very, very excited and proud.

"We'll see our first service operate from here at 7:10am on Sunday, 30 June, and we're just all really proud to see that moment happen.

"We'll have customer ambassadors that work across both and offer a seamless service for our customers from rail to bus and bus to rail.

"There are customer information screens that are around the building - they will have the bus information and timetable, and they'll also have the rail information and timetable which creates that connectivity between the two modes of travel."

Ms Daly explained how TfW has worked to try and make the interchange more accessible.

"We do a lot of work around behaviour change and we have our customer insight panels to understand the barriers to using transport and how we can make that customer experience and that travelling experience much better for a range of passengers.

"This facility offers that greater connectivity with rail and bus so from a customer's point-to-point journey, we're able to offer a more integrated and seamless service, and also this facility offers a wider opportunity for accessibility customers to be able to use transport and that's been really important to us as part of the build and design.

"What we've been looking at as well is about how we share information about onward journeys and where people need to catch buses, so it is about trying to make that journey as seamless as possible and accepting that we can't get all the services that we would potentially like to have operate outside of the station, but we are really focused on making sure that we've got that integrated approach to transport."

Craig Hampton-Stone, managing director of Cardiff Bus, said: "This provides the new focal point for our services that start from the city centre. We have a proportion of our services that will start and finish here now (in Cardiff)."

The multi-million pound facility has 14 bus bays, with more planned for the future.

"We'll be taking a phased approach to our use of this facility," said Mr Hampton-Stone.

"We'll be bringing a number of facilities in when it opens on the 30 June, and then we'll continue to bring them in just to manage what the changes might be to the customers so they can get used to coming to this facility in the first place.

"We will always have the same services that will be departing and finishing at the same stands, we will always aim to provide as much consistency as we can for the customers."

He added: "We've continued to see a really positive increase in patronage over the last couple of years post-pandemic, year on year and we're seeing more again this year as well week on week and I think this facility will only be supporting this increase we're already seeing."

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