To Encourage the Others

I've spent the past few days travelling around South Wales (and beyond) with a Megarider Gold ticket issued by Stagecoach. It's surprising how much ground you can cover when you put your mind to it. Having been in and out of several county boroughs, I've been able to compare their respective approaches to bus information. It's a fairly uneven picture, unsurprisingly.

I went into some detail about Rhondda Cynon Taf's timetable displays (or lack thereof) in Misinformation, Disinformation and Non-Information. My observations were mostly made in and around Aberdare. After spending some time in Pontypridd Bus Station I can report that the situation there is pretty similar. Unless I've missed it, there doesn't seem to be a single at-a-glance notice listing the various destinations and service numbers. Instead, I had to traipse from one end to the other while hunting for the right departure bay. It's far from ideal, especially when there are a large number of services run by different operators.

The situation is the same in Merthyr Tydfil, in the neighbouring local authority. The bus station is constructed more or less like a lower-case omega – ω – with a Stagecoach information booth in the centre. There doesn't seem to be a centrally-located list of places served and the corresponding bus numbers. As in Aberdare and Pontypridd, you have to walk from bay to bay to find the service you require.

There's recently been a public consultation about the future of Merthyr Tydfil Bus Station. The deadline for submissions has passed, so I haven't looked at it in detail, but it seems to revolve about whether to retain it at its current location or to build a new one somewhere else in the town centre. Logically, you'd expect a new one to be adjacent to the railway station, but that seems to be out of the question. The most convenient spot would be in the middle of Tesco's car park, and I somehow can't see the company relinquishing part of that for a public transport interchange.

In the picturesque little city of Brecon, there's a so-called 'Interchange' a short distance from the main shopping area. This has a large bilingual wall map and listing of the destinations served, with individual bus timetables adjacent to the map and in the bus shelters themselves. (Quite what it's an 'interchange' between is a mystery, however; trains last served Brecon in the 1960s, and the canal is about five minutes' walk away.)

The situation is less clear in the city centre, where the road layout means that the through bus routes and the stops served are rather confusing, to say the least. Yesterday afternoon, I was approached by a young lady who was looking for the T4 service to Llandrindod Wells. Fortunately, I'd just left the Interchange, so I was able to point her in the right direction.

Tredegar, in Blaenau Gwent County Borough, seems to be the most ill-served place I went to in the course of my rambles. There's a bus station (of sorts) adjacent to the main shopping centre, and two bus stops near Lidl, a few minutes' walk away. I had arrived on the 56 service from Blackwood, and was looking to connect onto the X4. It had travelled through the 'bus station', dropping off a couple of passengers, before terminating at Lidl. There was no indication at all of what services left from that point, so I walked back to the three bus stops near the shopping centre. There were timetables on display, but none of them were for the X4. I walked back to Lidl, just in time to see the X4 pulling in. It hadn't been near the bus station, and didn't call there on the way out of town. I was lucky I'd followed my instincts.

Caerphilly Interchange does live up to its name, with buses arriving and leaving from a row of stands directly outside the town's railway station. It takes less than a minute to transfer from bus to southbound train, and a little longer to cross the footbridge to the northbound platform. The information boards and timetables are clearly displayed, and there's a Stagecoach information booth in the middle. There's no summary board or overview map, however, which I feel that tourists might find useful.

By far the best bus information I encountered on my travels was also in Caerphilly County Borough: in Blackwood Bus Station. Considering that Blackwood has no railway station, it's a public transport hub between the eastern and central Valleys. Whichever body is responsible for producing the information boards has done a superb job of presenting a lot of complex information in a convenient fashion. Have a look at these…

[caption id="attachment_12255" align="aligncenter" width="480"] One side of the information board at Blackwood Bus Station[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_12256" align="aligncenter" width="480"] The other side of the board[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_12257" align="aligncenter" width="480"] A full list of places served, the route numbers, and their departure bays[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_12258" align="aligncenter" width="444"] All the bus routes within Caerphilly County Borough (and beyond)[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_12259" align="aligncenter" width="640"] A handy map of the area, showing the bus routes in detail[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_12260" align="aligncenter" width="591"] Small maps of the neighbouring towns as well[/caption]

To my mind, this is an exemplary piece of public information. It's a clear, well-designed, accessible, comprehensive overview of the buses in Caerphilly County Borough – not just around Blackwood, but throughout the surrounding area as well. It's the sort of map which should be made available wherever bus routes cross each other, or come within easy walking distance of a railway station, enabling passengers to see the shape of the whole network at a glance. Well done to whoever designed this superb information centre – whether it was Caerphilly CBC, Sewta, the Welsh Government, or a private consultancy. The other local authorities in South-east Wales would do well to learn from this example.