The Twilight Zone

Ever since bus deregulation in October 1986, a number of small operators have been able to enter a marketplace previously dominated by the National Bus Company (in its many regional subdivisions). As far as the travelling public are concerned, it has been a two-edged sword.

The previous state monopoly was overthrown for purely ideological reasons. It was the same free-market 'logic' that led to the privatization of British Rail soon afterwards. Almost…

Ask anyone in London (i.e. the 'Westminster Bubble' of politicians, think-tanks and media types) what effect bus deregulation had on services, and they'll tell you: none whatsoever! In the capital, deregulation never happened. Everywhere else, there was a free market free-for all, as I told you in Nice Work If You Can Get There.

Initially, at least, deregulation drove prices down as competing operators fought over the plum routes. Eventually, of course, the status quo was resumed. The Tories' much-vaunted 'competition' was replaced by a series of private monopolies across most routes. Timetables were re-engineered to focus on the arterial routes while peripheral services limped on, largely funded by local authority subsidies.

In the longer term, some of the smaller players became rich as they sold their operations to the big companies – Stagecoach, Arriva, First, and so forth. For example, the late unlamented Shamrock Travel of Pontypridd were acquired by the French company Veolia. Veolia continued to run services (to some extent) for a few years before vanishing off the scene entirely.

The South Wales Valleys are now pretty much carved between Stagecoach, First Cymru, New Adventure Travel, and a handful of smaller operators. It's almost like the good old days, only without the benefits of the state monopoly.

This fragmentation of local operators had immediate and obvious disadvantages: connecting services were lost; through ticketing all but disappeared; conveniently-sited offices closed; information provision dwindled to a smattering of out-of-date and/or illegible timetables wherever the operators could be bothered to display them.

It wasn't all bad news, though, as new routes were introduced to serve previously neglected areas (to pick one local example, the hourly daytime bus between Mountain Ash and Cefnpennar).

Please note the key word in that last sentence: daytime. As I mentioned in my previous post, as long as you wanted to travel between 0800 and 1800 from Monday to Saturday, you were pretty much okay. Even the 'new' services to places like Cefnpennar dried up in the evenings – just when people would be coming home from work.

Outside peak hours, you're in exactly the situation as you were in thirty years ago. Following the last round of Westminster's budget cuts (which, of course, were passed on to local authorities via Cardiff Bay), bus subsidies have been slashed to the bare minimum. Here in the Cynon Valley, evening buses have all but disappeared, except on the arterial route between Glynhafod and Hirwaun and a tiny number running between Aberdare and Pontypridd. (On Sundays, needless to say, you'll be lucky to see a bus on either of those routes before 1300, and you won't see one at all anywhere else.)

The result of this is that after 1800 it's virtually impossible to get to or from most of the villages surrounding Aberdare. The same applies to Mountain Ash; the services to Perthcelyn and Cefnpennar vanish at about the same time. I call this post-6 p.m. shutdown the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone has been a feature of South Wales for a long time – even before the subsidies were cut to the bone, in fact. If it's frustrating for locals, imagine the effect it must have on visitors to the area.

When I worked in Cardiff, two girls from Germany came on a placement for a couple of weeks one summer. On the Thursday afternoon, they asked if they could leave a bit earlier so that they could visit Caerphilly Castle before they went back home. It wasn't an issue for us, but we warned them to make sure they were heading back to Cardiff before 1800, just to be on the safe side.

The following morning they arrived as usual, complaining bitterly about the journey back from Caerphilly. It had taken them just twenty minutes to get there by train – and about an hour and a half to get back to their accommodation, because they'd overstayed their welcome in the town by a few minutes.

The situation used to be made more complicated by the fact that the off-peak 'supported' services were usually operated by local firm. Your expensive weekly ticket to work, issued by Stagecoach or one of the other big companies, wouldn't be accepted by these smaller players. You ended up paying for another ticket, simply so you could get home at the end of the day.

Nowadays, it seems, you don't even have that option. For most people travelling in the Twilight Zone, the only public transport available is the taxi – not cheap by any means. A taxi to my house, just over a mile from Aberdare town centre, costs nearly four quid. I shudder to think how much people living in Cwmdare, Llwydcoed, Penderyn or Rhigos would have to shell out every day. Walking home isn't really an option when you live five or six miles from town.

I was halfway through writing this entry when I caught the end of the Radio 4 PM programme yesterday. It was a timely intervention

Throughout the General Election campaign, Eddie Mair has invited listeners to write in, asking 'Why can't I…?' Every few days he gets one of his correspondents to outline their particular grievance, and asks various pundits to come up with solutions.

Yesterday's question was 'Why can't I get to work?' It was a heartfelt litany of complaints about the privatized rail industry. It would have been familiar to anyone living in the Westminster Bubble. Unsurprisingly, it came from a frustrated commuter living in Zone 3 of Greater London.

My first thought was, 'Oh, you poor love! Imagine having to wait fifteen minutes for the next train – even on a Sunday! You simply don't know you're born.'

Personally speaking, I think Mr Mair's correspondent should consider moving to Wales. Let's see how long she endures our pathetic 'public transport system' before she's begging to head back to the supercharged economy of South London.