To Split or Not to Split?

Next week I'm planning a day trip to Bristol, and I need to be a short distance outside the city centre by 12.30 p.m. Considering that Bristol Temple Meads lies on a direct route from Cardiff Central, that should be a piece of piss.
Shouldn't it?
You might think that – I couldn't possibly comment.
To make sure I'm where I need to be in good time (and even that isn't guaranteed, of course), I'll have to arrive at Temple Meads at 1119. That gives me ample time to catch the bus to Bedminster and find the right place. (Any later and it'll be cutting things too fine.) So that puts me on the 1030 departure from Cardiff Central.
And here's the problem. To get to Cardiff Central in time for 1030, I'd have to catch the 0922 train from Aberdare – eight minutes before the off-peak fares kick in. (According to raileasy.trainsplit.com I'd have to catch the 0852. I don't know whether they allow a margin of error for changing platforms.) Either way, it means I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the cheaper fares.
And that half-hour head start does make quite a difference. Let's see how it works, using the information from the above website.
Aberdare–Bristol Aberdare–Bristol Aberdare–Bristol Aberdare–Bristol Aberdare–Bristol
0752 dep, 1019 arr 0822 dep, 1052 arr 0852 dep, 1119 arr 0922 dep, 1151 arr 0952 dep, 1218 arr
£22.39 £22.39 £20.86 £20.35 £16.40
You can see the snag immediately, of course. By the time the off-peak fare kicks in – saving me nearly four quid – I'm already an hour late arriving at Temple Meads, never mind making my way out to Bedminster on the bus. (And before you ask why I'm not catching a train to Bedminster, it's because they only stop there once an hour.) When I factor in the extra £2.00 for the PlusBus ticket, it's turning into an expensive day trip. Almost as expensive as Swansea, in fact.
But I have a cunning plan. I already buy a Stagecoach Megarider ticket, which costs me £13.40 for seven days, and is valid as far south as Pontypridd. If I catch an early bus from Aberdare, I can be in Pontypridd station by 0930. That's in time to catch the 0938 train to Cardiff – by which time my off-peak ticket will be valid. And if that doesn't get me to Cardiff Central in time for the 1030 departure, then we should all start writing to the Senedd asking for Arriva Trains Wales to get the franchise back.
Of course, all this bollocks will only be necessary in the first place for two related reasons:
  1. The fucking nonsense about 'off-peak' fares has been allowed to go unchallenged for decades. Even in the mid-1960s, Bill Pertwee was given a line in Round the Horne about coming up from Brighton 'on the cheap workman's'. Not only was the class system alive and well; so was the byzantine system that charges you differently based on your need to travel.
  2. The break-up of British Rail and the introduction of dozens of franchise holders drawing up their own fare structures – presumably on the back of a fag packet during a break between management meetings – means that not even the train operating companies know exactly what the correct fare from A to B is any more.
A few years ago, a campaign led by journalists like Simon Calder and Martin Lewis, led some passengers (the switched-on ones) to realise that they could save money by splitting their fares. This uses websites employing complex algorithms to sift through the millions of possible combinations on offer. (The data in the above table came from one of those websites.) Instead of having one outward ticket and one return ticket, for complicated journeys like one my friend undertook to Poole, you end up with a wallet full of bits of card for various legs of the excursion.
But how many ordinary passengers – commuters, shoppers, students, people visiting friends and family, those needing to visit the hospital or other facilities, or punters like me fancying a day away – really have the time and/or the patience to fuck around with unreliable websites, and even more useless mobile apps, in the hope that the couple of quid they might save will compensate for the half an hour wasted buying the tickets in the first place? I still need to walk over from Aberdare Library to Aberdare station, armed with a code I've been emailed and my debit card, to pick up my tickets to Bristol. That's ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.
If you've ever questioned the significance of the overall title of this blog, that's the reason I chose it. Right here, right now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Bus From the Cynon Valley

Image
This is the first of a series of similar entries examining the various bus routes which criss-cross the South Wales Valleys. I've already written a general preamble called The Last Bus to Everywhere . For the next few posts (barring accident or incident, of course) I want to look more closely at specific areas in turn. I've started with the Cynon Valley for a couple of reasons: mainly because it's where I live, and so I've experienced the problems at first hand on many occasions; but also because its topography makes it rather different from some of the neighbouring valleys. As well as the classic north-south ribbon development centred on the four main towns (Hirwaun, Aberdare, Mountain Ash and Abercynon), there are a couple of smaller branching valleys with distinct communities, and some sizeable villages scattered around the hillsides. It's also possible to drive out of the Cynon Valley in a northerly direction, which isn't true of some of the other valleys in
Read more

Return Journey to Swansea

Image
A few weeks ago an old friend of mine invited to me to a one-day programme of talks at Swansea University's Singleton Park campus, at which she was delivering the keynote address. I provisionally agreed to go along, depending on public transport and other factors. I did some research online first, of course, before committing myself to what was going to be a lengthy and expensive day out. As it was going to be a fairly late finish, the bus wasn't an option. There hasn't been a direct service from Aberdare to Swansea for about ten years; I can't tell you when it ceased to operate, because it just vanished without any warning one day. (Even though it's still advertised on the stops in Trecynon, good luck to anyone expecting to catch it.) It is still possible to get to Swansea by bus, but – as you'll see – it involves a great deal of fucking around en route. Because they rarely, if ever, venture over the county boundaries, buses in what used to be the eastern part
Read more

The Last Bus to Everywhere

Image
About a month ago, Stagecoach in South Wales – part of the UK's largest bus operator – announced that they would be closing their depot at Brynmawr in Gwent. 77 jobs are at risk following this decision, which Stagecoach have attributed to the cut in Welsh Government subsidies. The company are also dropping fourteen services and reducing the frequency of another eight. In a statement on the BBC Wales News website, the company's managing director John Gould said: Make no mistake, ultimate responsibility for the loss of bus services and jobs lies firmly at the door of the Welsh government following years of cuts to bus investment. We deeply regret the impact this will have on our customers and local communities. Instead of protecting and supporting bus travel, ministers' misguided decisions have dealt a body blow to the country's public transport network and wider economy. People across Wales have repeatedly warned the government about the consequences of their actions, bu
Read more