Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

This kinda forms a supplement to my previous entry. That outlined the difficulties posed by having so many different transport operators in South-east Wales, and no overall structure to make ticketing easy and affordable. My friend and I are planning a trip to Caerphilly Castle (weather permitting, of course). Problem: find the cheapest way of doing it. You see, we'd initially have to pay to get from beyond Aberdare to Caerphilly – by bus and/or train – and then pay to get into the castle. Not cheap, as you'll see from the tables below. But luckily for us, I know the area quite well as I've travelled it extensively over the last forty years. I know bus routes have changed – and timetables and fares have certainly changed – but the basic framework is still there. I also get newsletters from the public transport providers, so I get to hear about their special offers. Summer is always a good time for these because it's tourist season. The real trick is to combine as m...

On my birthday three years ago, I was making my regular visit to London when the front page of the Western Mail caught my eye in Cardiff. I can't remember the exact headline , but it seemed that a committee of the Welsh Assembly had recommended an Oyster-style card covering the whole of Wales. The first thing that came into my head was 'What a good idea!' As a frequent visitor to London, I'd found out just how efficiently the Oyster card allows you to travel around the city. I'd also found out how much money it can save you over a period of time. (Or even a single day, when you compare it to the Travelcard.) I bought the paper and read the full story on the coach. The second thing that came into my head was 'What a stupid idea!' You see, the contrast between London and Wales couldn't be more apparent. Greater London is pretty much one continuous, flattish, dense urban sprawl covering over 1,500 square kilometres. It's criss-crossed by dozens of...

About six weeks ago I decided to initiate Operation Motorcycle Silencer for the fourth year in a row. Every summer Aberdare Park hosts the Welsh National Road Races, organised by the Aberaman Motorcycle Club. I don't begrudge it for a second, because it brings a welcome boost to our local economy, it's a chance for old friends to catch up and to make new friends, and it puts one of the finest Victorian municipal parks in Wales firmly on the map. But (as you can probably imagine) it's a fairly loud affair. Even though modern bikes run a lot more quietly than their older brothers, you bring a couple of thousand of the buggers into one place and the noise level soon becomes pretty challenging. As I live literally two streets from the circuit, as often as possible I've decided to spend the Saturday as far from Trecynon as I can possibly be. After receiving a 25% discount voucher from National Express, and with the latest copy-edit running on schedule, it seemed that Lo...

On Saturday, two friends and I travelled from Cardiff to London by National Express coach. Yesterday I received a market research email asking for my feedback on the journey. Here's what I told them: I booked three seats on 31 May 2017, to travel on 29 July. Two months' clear notice. We were unable to sit close to each other because a large family was monopolising one seat each (to the extent of placing luggage on vacant seats), and ended up sitting some distance apart for the entire journey. We were travelling light. If we'd had luggage, we would have observed the guidelines and placed it in the baggage compartment – not taken it on board, so it would fill up a seat which someone had paid for well in advance. The British railway companies sell pre-booked seats (not tickets – seats), and National Express would do well to follow their example. This morning I received the following reply: Dear Steve, Thank you for taking time to submit your review. I am really sorry you were ...

I received an email this morning from the Office of Rail and Road. They were following up my 'recent'(-ish) complaint against Arriva Trains Wales (see I Don't Like Thursdays and We Apologise For the Late Running of This Refund ). The eight-week time lag between action and reaction seems to be the new industry benchmark, judging from today's date. Anyway, the ORR sent me a little market research survey to fill in, rating my experience of dealing with Arriva following the Replacement Bus Service fuck-up in early  October. You won't be surprised to learn that I rated them pretty poorly overall. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. On 3 January, I went to Aberdare station at the crack of dawn on a bitterly cold morning to single-handedly promote Action for Rail Day. (Two of the lads I'd invited to join me were working that day; the other was laid up with gastric flu.) It was part of an ongoing campaign organised by the TUC, and supported by a couple of dozen...

A couple of months ago I told you about the late-night shenanigans I experienced while travelling home from Cardiff (see I Don't Like Thursdays ). Well, you can imagine my surprise when, on 5 December, an email from Arriva Trains Wales pinged into my inbox: Case Reference: ATW-161007-BFD Dear Mr O'Gorman, Thank you for contacting us about your journey on 06 October between Cardiff and Aberdare. I am sorry to learn that your journey was disrupted, and that you were caused a delay as a result. In order for me to fully investigate and resolve your compensation claim I do need some more information from you. Could you therefore please confirm the following? • As you have requested to be paid by bank transfer please confirm the account name, sort code and account number we should pay your compensation to. I look forward to hearing from you in due course. Yours sincerely Neil Curness Customer Relations Advisor Arriva Trains Wales I emailed them back with my details, and congratulated...

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...

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 ...

My regular readers will already be familiar with the rigmarole necessary to book National Express coach tickets online. You have to jump through several hoops simply to travel between the capital of England and the capital of Wales – a process which takes far more time and demands far more patience than the average passenger has to spare. But, gentle reader, that's just the start of it. Booking a coach ticket online is an absolute piece of piss compared to buying an advance ticket via the Arriva Trains Wales website. I'm travelling to Bristol tomorrow, so I decided to see what the fares were. I was surprised to learn that an off-peak day return from Aberdare was £14.90. That puts Bristol – some forty minutes from Cardiff – in more or less the same price band as a day return to London by coach. Anyway … I tried to log in to my account, but (needless to say) I'd forgotten my password. I first registered with Arriva Trains Wales about five years ago, just for their news update...

In the last entry I told you about the trials and tribulations of booking coach tickets using the National Express website. I've learned some more information today, which makes me wonder whether booking online is really worth the effort. After my visit to London in September 2014, I signed up for National Express's 'Make ten journeys and get one free' deal. As I've started to visit London frequently again, it seemed like a tempting offer. At the time … Anyway, this year I've been to London three times. I also made two journeys last year, although one was booked in my friend's name. A few days ago I had an email from National Express, telling me that my running total towards my free journey was two. Not four – just two. I emailed them back to query it. I provided them with the dates of my five (or four) journeys. I explained that I always book using the same email address, and pay using the same card. I asked them to look into it and contact me with an expla...

Last week I had to visit Prince Charles Hospital, the large general hospital outside Merthyr Tydfil. I've mentioned the bus journey previously, in The Last Bus From the Cynon Valley , so I don't need to go into too much detail here. Suffice it to say that it took just under an hour and a half to travel from Aberdare town centre to the hospital entrance. Over a third of that was made up of the journey (Stagecoach route 9) from Aberdare to Merthyr Tydfil itself, calling at Trecynon, Penywaun, Hirwaun, the out of town shopping centre, and Parc Keir Hardie. Once you arrive in Merthyr, there's an interval of 'up to' ten minutes before the 27 bus pulls in. The bus itself takes a circuitous route through the town centre, then travels through the outskirts to the Gurnos housing estate. Once it enters the Gurnos, it seems to travel down each and every street in a strange figure-of-eight loop. (I'd love to see it superimposed on a map. I might try sketching it myself, act...

An interesting article by Ian Steadman appeared in the New Statesman blog today. It's not directly related to South Wales, but its general thrust ties in with what I've been arguing for the past few months. Why not check it out? Public transport bodies: producing lots of data, not necessarily making the most of it , New Statesman , July 21, 2014

I caught a Stagecoach bus to Aberdare this morning, because it was hammering down with rain. As I sat down, I spotted a poster behind the driver's cab advertising 'Green Week.' This appears to be a campaign to get people out of their cars and onto public transport, running from June 2nd to June 6th inclusive. As an added incentive, it advertised a competition to win a year's free travel on the local network. That seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. I had visions of making huge inroads into my Vanishing Valleys project if I won the golden ticket. As you can probably imagine, as soon as I got to Aberdare Library I Googled 'Stagecoach South Wales green week'. Here's what I found: As Terry Wogan would say, is it me?

It's that time of year again, when the claustrophobic nature of Aberdare and the closed-minded nature of many of its denizens really starts to grate on my nerves. It usually happens when the nice weather finally arrives, and my friends start embarking on day trips or short breaks to relieve the monotony of small town life. Yesterday, Rhian and I had a pint in the beer garden of Thereisnospoon, and talked about our various misadventures at the hands of Arriva Trains Wales over the years. It's a pity that I wasn't blogging back in the day, as I could have started a subsidiary blog charting the various events which prevented us from getting to work on time, or getting home at a reasonable hour. British Rail used to have an advertising slogan, Let the train take the strain . I told Rhian that my blog would have been called Let the Train Cause the Strain , and I've decided to adapt that title for this entry instead. I told her about a day trip to the north Devon resort of Ly...

If you don't believe me, check out this notice I spotted at Cardiff Central Station this morning: