Major traffic in the surrounding area meant shoppers were stranded in queues to exit the car park for almost four hours – with stressed and angry drivers shouting and beeping their horns
Anrgy drivers were left queueing to exit a car park for almost four hours after gridlock traffic spread through a UK city centre on Saturday night.
One man said he tried to leave St David’s car park in Cardiff at 4.45pm but couldn’t get out until 8.30pm after a shopping trip with his partner and one-year-old baby. The driver, who chose not to be named, also heard other stressed and furious shoppers beeping their horns and shouting, while one couple simply accepted their fate and put Netflix on in the car.
The man had parked his vehicle on level seven of the multi-storey and returned to find queues of traffic reaching the highest levels. Images showed stationary cars lined up and down the length of the car park, with the issue not resolved until after 7pm.
It is not the first time the centre has had problems reported in its car park. Other incidents over Christmas, and on several other occasions, have caused the area to become gridlocked, WalesOnline reports. The man said: “We went to leave at about 5pm, paid our ticket and went up to the car. We could see it was quite busy from that point. We were on level seven, parked furthest away from the exit.
“We could see the queue was huge so we decided to go for a coffee and get our one-year-old son fed, bearing in mind it was a Saturday night and Cardiff was starting to get rowdy.” When the family returned around 45 minutes later, nothing had changed. The driver noticed some cars had not moved at all while they were gone. “There was even a couple watching Netflix in their car because they were fully committed to being there for a long time,” he said.
The man said they struggled to even reverse out of the parking space due to the backlog of traffic, however were let out after explaining to the person behind them in the queue that they had a baby with them. Even then, it took another two hours to exit the area.
During that time the driver said he felt “helpless” and walked outside the car park to see what was causing the issue. He explained: “As you go into St David’s two, you can turn right at the Admiral building [on to David Street]. Before you turn into that you come by the [Utilita Arena] and there there were ‘no through road’ signs, so they were trying to tell people it’s a dead end.
“But all the traffic was going to that dead end, realising they couldn’t get anywhere. because they didn’t pay attention to the signs, [and turning around]. So because of the traffic coming from the Admiral building, the car parks, and the people who were turning around, it started backing up the car park. Because the volume of the car park is so high, any delay causes massive queues up the spiral.”
Car park staff continued letting people into the car park despite the issue, which he said exacerbated the issue. He said: “People on level six and seven couldn’t get out anyway because everyone below them were on the spiral and not letting them in. Then, because they were letting more people in, people on level one, two or three were maybe popping in for a bit of food and getting out before the people on the higher floors.”
The driver said the situation only eased at around 7.30pm when police officers blocked off Mary Ann Street near its junction with the A4160. This prevented people accessing the blocked road on David Street. “This was far too late,” he said. “Bearing in mind there were a lot of people stuck with children and families. There was someone on our floor with a six-week-old-baby.”
St David’s and South Wales Police have been contacted for comment.
