Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

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 ...

It's just occurred to me to check the operating details of the Beacons Bus for 2014. For the last ten years or so, these popular services have run on summer Sundays, departing from several major towns in South and West Wales and heading into the Brecon Beacons National Park. They all met at Brecon, enabling easy interchanges and giving tourists plenty of time to explore before heading home. Well, brace yourselves for the bad news. It's been discontinued as a result of funding cuts. http://www.breconbeacons.org/beacons-bus The withdrawal of the Beacons Bus will obviously have environmental and social repercussions on an already fragile Welsh tourist sector. Successive summers have been washed out by the weather, and many shops in Brecon are struggling to survive. Those of us without cars will be unable to visit the area and take advantage of its amenities. Given the lack of any alternative provision, those people who do want to visit the area will have no choice but to take thei...