Shoppers at St David's Shopping Centre in Cardiff spent their Easter Saturday stuck in a multi-storey car park. It was said that a traffic-light failure caused a backlog of cars to stretch all the way up the six-storey building for hours.
Frantic customers were told that the streets outside were 'gridlocked', hence the hold-up, but when they abandoned their cars to take a look around outside, the roads looked relatively clear:
According to customers who ventured into the shopping centre on Saturday, 8th April, the multi-storey car park was bumper-to-bumper.
After waiting anywhere between 30 minutes and three hours in the jam-packed queue of cars, many shoppers opted to abandon their cars in search of food and water, and to entertain bored kids that had started to kick up a fuss.
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Others even decided to ditch their cars altogether and used taxis and trains to make it home before they lost their entire Saturday.
Taking to Twitter to complain about the hold-up, frustrated shoppers asked reps at St David's Shopping Centre what on earth could have been causing such a hold-up.
Tagging the shopping centre in her tweet, one irritated customer asked: "Why can no one get out of your car park right now! Been waiting in a queue for around 30 mins and not moved from p6 !!!"
Another furious driver asked: "Why is no one moving out of your car park? I’ve been stuck in it for 30 mins now and haven’t moved it’s ridiculous! Get it moving!"
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A third shopper, who had left it a little longer before calling out the shopping centre, sarcastically wrote: "Over 2 hours stuck in car park. Zero communication, zero security, zero help. Children, old and vulnerable people left stranded. Nice one."
Replying to increasingly p***ed off customers, a rep for the shopping centre explained that the city centre was 'gridlocked with traffic', resulting in a 'significant backlog for guests trying to leave the car park.'
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But when one fed-up customer abandoned their car to check out the 'gridlocked' traffic for themselves, they were surprised to find everything looked relatively normal at street-level.
"How can you say that the roads outside are gridlocked???" they asked.
"I've been stuck for 2 hours so far on level 6 and still not moved. Just been outside to get supplies and this is the current roads..."
A rep for the shopping centre then explained that, while congestion on the street had eased up, the hold-up was now being caused by 'council-controlled traffic lights' that were 'only letting traffic out of the car park very slowly.'
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The rep added that they had asked the council to 'prioritise letting people out of the car park'.
They also assured frustrated shoppers that, if they decided to abandon their vehicle in the car park, their parking tickets would be honoured whenever they decided to return.
LADbible has reached out to representatives at St David's Shopping Centre for comment.
Ali Condon