Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

A friend of mine has recently moved from Aberdare to Talbot Green. I haven't been there for ages, but I do know that it's pretty much at the centre of a large (and growing) area encompassing Llantrisant (old and new), Pontyclun, Beddau, Ty Nant, and the surrounding villages and large new-build estates. It's a couple of bus stops from the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, so there's a 'direct' bus route from Pontypridd to Bridgend, serving the hospital during the day. Situated just off the M4 and twenty minutes from Cardiff by train, Talbot Green Bus Station and Pontyclun Railway Station should be ideal transport hubs. Should … I've been investigating various ways for my friend and I to meet up and have the occasional break from the Valleys routine. I'll go into my findings about the buses another time. For this entry, though, I want to highlight the situation facing rail passengers travelling to and from Pontyclun. Technically speaking, Pontyclun forms part of...

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...

Let me explain … Some years ago, when I first got into the Observer 's fiendish Azed crossword, one of the clues was 'Tonite, in an FM special, the newsroom variety show'. I must have had a moment of inspiration, because I realised that the first four words of the clue were an anagram of the solution: INFOTAINMENT. Anyway, this is a media word for the media itself – the sort of blended news and feature items that make up a typical edition of The One Show . I mention it here, because I spotted a poster on a Transport for Wales train last Monday. It shows their timeline of proposed improvements over the next five years or so. One of these highlights is 'free infotainment'. At which point my blood ran cold. Having spent a lot of time on Cardiff buses in the last fifteen years or so, I have a horrible feeling that the content will probably involve live streaming of the BBC News channel. You see, I think I must have missed the announcement in the papers when...

Yesterday evening I switched on Radio 4's PM to be shocked by the first thing I heard. The Indian government has announced plans to build a bullet train , capable of reaching over 200 mph, with help from the Japanese. Operating between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, the project is expected to be completed in just five years' time. It was this shock headline that's forced me to issue this public apology to the Indian government today. Several times in this blog I've referred to Wales as having 'a Third World' public transport system. In the light of the news from India yesterday, it seems that it's nowhere near that good. Sorry to anyone living in the developing industrial nations for any offence I may have caused.  

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...

Arriva Trains Wales conductors have recently been supplied with new handheld ticket machines, as the contract with the previous manufacturers had ended. The old devices used to produce credit card-sized tickets on fairly stiff card. They were the same size as those issued by the platform machines and ticket offices. This size: They fitted the plastic wallet you got from the ticket office when you first obtained your photocard. They went into the slot in the barriers and popped back out again, even if they were slightly creased. They easily lasted the whole month, and when they expired you could either put them in the recycling bag, use them as convenient bookmarks, or stash them in your wallet/purse for months (or years) on end, until your mates took the piss so much you ended up clearing it out. Then came the great leap forward. Sort of … We had to go to Merthyr on Tuesday afternoon. As it's much cheaper to travel by train than by bus (£3.90 vs £7.50), we decided the time differen...

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...

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...

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 ...

There's an interesting article in the current CityMetric blog (part of the New Statesman) , about the so-called 'Northern Powerhouse' so beloved of the current Westminster government. It compares the average speed of trains between major cities in different parts of the country. Have a look at this: London Milton Keynes 1.66 miles/min London Reading 1.44 miles/min London Cambridge 1.16 miles/min Manchester Leeds 0.82 miles/min The Staggers quite reasonably makes an argument for an urgent upgrade of the trans-Pennine route. After all, it points out, between them the two city centres account for some half a million jobs. HS3, the proposed high speed link across the Pennines, would have immediate benefits in terms of job creation, and significant long-term economic returns on investment. Meanwhile, here in the land where the railways began, we're one of only three countries in the whole of continental Europe without a single kilometre of electrified railway. (The other tw...

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...

During the recent Rugby World Cup the state of the Welsh railway network came under scrutiny again. After each game at the Millennium Stadium, thousands of people descending on Cardiff Central Station found themselves in the predicament we've all become sadly familiar with after a home fixture: delayed trains, cancellations, and massive overcrowding on the services which did operate. The trials and tribulations of rail passengers during special events in Wales are nothing new, it seems. I've just found an irate letter to the Swansea-based Cambrian newspaper, published on 24 March 1882. THE TREATMENT OF EXCURSIONISTS—WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? SIR,—Permit me, through the medium of your columns, to record my vehement protest, on behalf of a large number of excursionists, against the treatment we received at the hands of the railway officials who had charge of the excursion train from Swansea to Pembroke Dock on Saturday last, on the occasion of the launch of the ironclad "Edinburg...

Arriva Trains Wales sell a ticket called the Valley Lines Day Explorer and Night Rider. For just £11.00, it which offers 'unlimited travel' by train and Stagecoach bus in the area shown. I decided to buy one of these yesterday, and spend a day filling in some gaps on my copy of Stuart Baker's Rail Atlas: Great Britain and Ireland . Since it's an off-peak ticket, I knew that I could expect a time restriction on it. I got to the ticket office in Aberdare in time for the 0852 train and asked for a Day Explorer ticket. The lady behind the counter told me that she couldn't sell me the ticket until 0930. She suggested that I had a word with the conductor, as he might not be aware of the restrictions. Instead, I headed for Aberdare Library, where a quick search online turned up Arriva's own Terms and Conditions for the offer: I printed this page off (eventually!) and stuck it in my pocket. Armed with this information, I returned to the ticket office. By now I was too l...

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...

I'm indebted to today's Independent for this piece of news. The French national railway operator, SNCF, has ordered 341 trains which are too wide to fit some 1,300 platforms across the country. At least Arriva Trains Wales could never make this mistake, as we get second-hand rolling stock at best! 'French rail operator orders hundreds of new trains too big for platforms' , Independent , May 21, 2014

Yesterday, the UK Parliament began debating the construction of HS2, the proposed high-speed rail link which will initially connect London and Birmingham, and thence proceed to the north of England. Its progress through Westminster is set to be a convoluted journey – not unlike that of the trains themselves. So far, nobody has been able to come up with accurate costings for the project, and arguments about the route have raged since the proposals first saw the light of day. It's symptomatic of the way in which transport policy in this country has always been cobbled together. The line is currently set to slice through the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to the north-west of London. Householders in the area (and some Tory MPs, with an eye to their majorities) have objected to this alternative, and would prefer to see it buried out of sight. It would add to the cost, of course, but an extra few hundred million pounds on a multi- billion pound construction schem...

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...