Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

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 ...

I'm fairly relieved that I don't have to travel to Cardiff any more, especially when I see my friends' Facebook updates about the joys of their daily commute. I often allow myself a quiet chuckle as I read their tales of delays, cancellations, and imaginative excuses dreamt up by Arriva Trains Wales. Then, every so often, I hear something which knocks their regular battles with into a cocked hat. I have a mate who occasionally works at an office in Trefforest Industrial Estate. Getting there on a normal weekday is never easy, as the trains from Aberdare don't stop there. Instead, he has to travel to Abercynon or Pontypridd and change onto the train from Merthyr. On the return trip, he has to change from the Merthyr train to the Aberdare train. It must be frustrating at best and extremely annoying at worst. His commute is even worse on a Sunday, with trains from Aberdare running every two hours and not meshing neatly with the services from Merthyr. I don't envy him a...

We're chatting in the pub about public transport in general, and I was reminded of a news story from some years ago. It stuck in my mind because Shamrock Travel were notorious in South Wales even before this. The court case made the local newspapers and the TV news, unsurprisingly: Bus driver drank cider while at the wheel

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...

'Autumn woes' was the headline on BBC Wales' summary table of the home nation's dismal performance in the Autumn Rugby Tests since 2009 (eleven defeats and a draw.) 'Autumn woes' could also sum up the experience of passengers on the South Wales Valleys Lines over the past couple of weeks. As I told you in Wet Wednesday , Martin H. and I were fortunate enough to catch a delayed train home from Abercynon last week. Had it actually been on time , we'd certainly have missed it. On 5 November, my friend Alexis reported that the train from Cardiff to Aberdare was running approximately twenty minutes late. Arriva Trains Wales had come up with arguably the best excuse to date – the delay had been caused (this time) by a fireworks display. Back in the days of British Rail, the late running and cancellation of trains was a standing joke, and a great source of comic material. Reginald Perrin used to arrive at Sunshine Desserts eleven minutes late every morning. Driven ...

A word of warning: If you thought Space was complicated, wait until you start thinking about Time. As Cypher says in The Matrix , 'Hang onto your hat, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye.' Most scientists will point out that what we call 'time' is merely a way of rationalising the implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics – the famous one about Entropy tending to a maximum. This means that the energy in a closed system will spread itself out evenly over time. In layman's terms, it means that complex systems inevitably break down into simpler, more stable elements, as the energy involved in holding them together dissipates. Elaborate structures decompose into their component parts. A pint glass dropped onto a solid surface (such as the tiled concrete floor of this pub) will shatter into a hundred pieces. The energy stored during the process of creating the object is released in a small 'explosion' of kinetic energy (as the pieces fly around the pu...

I used to be a prolific letter-writer to the local press. This one was published in the South Wales Echo . It appeared on my day off, so I didn't know it had gone into print until the following day. Apparently the lads in Mulligan's (our lunchtime local, in Cardiff) laughed so loudly when they read it that Jeff and Laurie (my work colleagues) were surprised I didn't hear them from my house, some twenty miles away. Your little jibe (Editorial, September 21) about buses running on time made me wonder about the parallels between UFO sightings and bus non-sightings. Both UFOs and missing buses are frequently reported by a wide cross-section of the public, regardless of their age, gender or religious background. Both phenomena used to excite a great deal of interest by local newspapers and TV stations, but are now largely disregarded. Reliable witness testimony is usually met with disbelief, if not outright scorn, by the bodies concerned with their official investigation. UFO ab...