From the Boardroom

Chief Operating Officer Chris Pearlman brings fans up to date on events and progress made off the pitch at Swansea City in today's matchday edition of Jack Magazine.

An important area of focus for the club is exploring ways to enhance your overall matchday experience.

We are of the belief that your experience on matchday begins when you leave home and does not end until you return

To that end, we want to make getting to and from the Liberty Stadium as easy as possible.

We recognise that for many of you there are several hurdles to address in order achieve this goal, so the club has formed an internal travel plan committee with key stakeholders from different areas of the club to examine the current travel plan and how we can improve upon it.

Many of you may have seen an online matchday travel survey that we put together recently where we asked about supporter travel habits and sought input on matchday travel more broadly.

We wanted to thank those who took the time to fill it out and provide feedback.

The response rate was incredible, and the results are extremely helpful as well as quite interesting.

The survey was completed by nearly 1,000 fans, 84 per cent of whom attend at least 13 home matches per season.

I thought I’d share with you some of the key takeaways from it and the steps the club has begun to take, and will look to implement, moving forward.

The area which seemed to garner the greatest interest was around the potential impact of a functioning Landore railway station.

Over 25 per cent of respondents were ‘Highly likely’ to take the train to the stadium if there were a dependable matchday service at Landore, while over 50 per cent of respondents were at least ‘Somewhat likely’ to take the train if it stopped at Landore on matchday.

We are very fortunate that there is a trainline that goes directly by the stadium, and that there exists the potential infrastructure to open the station without what appears to be a significant capital investment.
Ken Skates, the cabinet secretary for economy and transport, has informed the club that a proposal for re-opening Landore station is being considered as part of a Welsh Government assessment of proposals for new rail stations.

The Landore station proposal is being considered as one of 12 shortlisted locations as part of the second stage of a three-stage process.

The club encourages the Jack Army to publicly support the Landore station proposal – and we will give you more details of where you can help going forward.

Another area where we received good insight was around coach service.

Over 45 per cent of respondents were at least ‘Somewhat likely’ to take a bus to the Liberty if there were a more consistent service.

Many fans mentioned a greater willingness to take a bus to the Liberty if there were specific matchday pick-ups in strategic areas around Swansea.

As a result of this feedback, you may have read that we’ve recently partnered for a trial with a private company called Zeelo, who operate coaches by using technology to understand where there are large numbers of fans who have difficult journeys to matches.

124 fans used the service on its introduction around the West Ham match and the feedback was fantastic.

For today’s match, Zeelo is operating routes from Three Crosses, Dunvant, Killay, Bishopston, Oystermouth, Mumbles, Abderdare, Cwmdare, Aberdulais, Neath, Llanelli, Loughor and Gorseinon.

We also received good and actionable feedback around the park and ride car parks, disability access, pedestrian walkways, suggestions around traffic flow, signage and across various other areas. Additionally, many fans noted a lot more frustration and difficulty leaving the Liberty after matches than getting here.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make the travel plan more effective.

If we do move forward with a likely expansion, while potentially complicating things a bit further with greater capacity, the works will likely allow us to take a step back and address several areas around the ground more holistically.

We’ll provide further detail on a lot of this in the coming weeks.

Enjoy the match

Chris