Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

It only occurred to me a few days ago that October 2016 marks thirty years of bus 'deregulation' (i.e. privatisation) across most of the UK. You won't have heard anything about this momentous occasion on the TV or radio news, of course. Nor will you have read anti-nostalgic articles about 'the bad old days' in the national press. That's because bus service were only deregulated outside Greater London – and, of course, as far as the Westminster Bubble of politicians, journalists, newspaper columnists and business lobbyists are concerned, that's pretty much the extent of the Observable Universe. As for the rest of us, as I've pointed out on several occasions, deregulation panned out exactly as the prophets of doom (myself included) said it would. The results included wonderful spin-offs of the capitalist system: cheaper fares initially, which quickly shot back up after cut-throat competition forced smaller operators off the road; fewer services running on...

I was reading the  Wales on Sunday when I came across an item about the Plaid Cymru conference in Llangollen. The party's leader, Leanne Wood, had given her keynote speech, and among the topics she covered the South Wales Metro got a mention. Leanne and I discussed this briefly at a public meeting in Mountain Ash, back in the early spring. She'd come up to talk about the party and outline its vision for the future shape of Wales. During the Q&A session afterwards, I put my hand up . Cerith Griffiths, our former Westminster candidate and (at the time) Assembly candidate, spotted me and invited me to speak. I started off by saying, 'I'm sure there'd be a lot more people here tonight if every bus in the Cynon Valley didn't disappear at six o'clock.' That got a laugh from everyone, so it was a good start. I went on to outline the plight of people working outside the Cynon Valley, arriving back in Aberdare or Mountain Ash in the Twilight Zone, and then h...

When you live in South Wales - that's when. Yesterday afternoon I spotted this lovely little cartoon on Facebook: I found it especially amusing because if you read 1802 as a time on the 24-hour clock, it translates as 6.02 p.m. In the Cynon Valley, and presumably other areas of the Valleys as well, 6.00 p.m. is pretty much the point at which all bus services cease, apart on from the key routes. You don't need a city boy living in New York, or a country girl from Arkansas for this story to be true. You just need to be a big town boy living in Aberdare, or a country girl living in Penderyn, and the love story ends there. Right there. If it wasn't so pathetic, it would actually be funny, wouldn't it?

This week's edition of the Cynon Valley Leader carries two interesting transport-related stories. The first is good news. The upgrade of the Severn Tunnel to support electric trains is due to be completed on time – next weekend, in fact. There's still a lot of work to be done until the first Twentieth Century ( not a typo) trains actually glide into Cardiff Central, of course, but it's a step in the right direction. The second story concerns the South Wales Metro scheme, which I've written about extensively already. According to a piece by Sion Barry (originally published last week, but only now filtering through to the 'locals'), four companies have been shortlisted for the bidding process to build the infrastructure. As usual, the story is accompanied by the map of the proposed network. However, it's occurred to me recently that there seems to be one massive, glaring omission from the whole scheme. The place I've got in mind isn't a tourist attr...

In April, Stagecoach in South Wales announced that weekly tickets would no longer be issued from the machine, as has been standard practice pretty much since buses were invented. Instead, their customers were notified about 'smartcards', which would replace the ancient Chinese technology they've got used to. I don't often buy a ticket for more than a day at a time, but I'm working on a project which has taken me the length and breadth of the Cynon Valley since Sunday. It made sense to buy a Megarider. At only £11.70 for a week, it was going to be far most cost-effective than buying several daily tickets. Thus I added their smartcard to my growing collection. I've had Cardiff Bus's iff card since they were launched. I've only used it a few times, though. As you can only top it up on the day of travel – in a small number of city centre locations – or on the bus itself, it seems to be a bit of a half-arsed effort. I was expecting it to be something like th...

For some unexplained reason, Arriva Trains Wales always manages to unleash chaos on Thursdays. I noticed this when I was working in Cardiff, about fifteen years ago. Platform 6 at Cardiff Central on Thursday evenings would be a free-for-all, with trains coming in late, going off late, running out of sequence, or not turning up entirely. After a few months I used to finish work and go for a pint, instead of fighting through the scrum, and catch a later train. Yesterday I was in Cardiff, and decided to stay late in town to check out a couple of new places which have opened. I don't think it had occurred to me that it was Thursday until I arrived at the station, when all Hell broke loose as usual. Here's the text of a compensation claim I've just submitted to ATW via their website. I've learned an important lesson this week: Never go anywhere by train on a Thursday. Or a weekend. Or pretty much any time in the next ten years, until the upgrade is complete and services are ...