Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

Most of the time, at least, the good people at Transport for London really understand how public transport needs to work. (I've got some examples of when it doesn't work, which I'll show you again.) They've announced a new innovation this week, called the Hopper fare. I don't know how it would work in practice, but here's the blurb from the TfL website: Make a journey using pay as you go (contactless or Oyster) on a bus or tram, and you can now make unlimited bus and tram journeys for free within one hour of first touching in. Touch in using the same card on all the bus and tram journeys you make and the free fares will be applied automatically. Hopper fares apply to all pay as you go journeys. You can now travel on Tube, DLR, London Overground, TfL Rail, Emirates Air Line, River Bus or National Rail services between Hopper journeys, and Hopper fares will still apply. Hopper fares will not apply if your Oyster card has a negative pay as you go balance af...

I know I've discussed this subject several times already, but I'm going to revisit it with good reason. Over the past couple of weeks, new bus stop indicators have been erected on routes in and around Aberdare. The main reason for the change seems to be that the new signs include up-to-date contact details for Traveline Cymru. Here are the old and new signs from the same location – outside Aberdare Library – so you can see the difference for yourselves.             I think the new signs look much clearer than the old ones, some of which were really starting to show their age. In addition, they no longer list services like the X55 (Aberdare to Swansea) which were discontinued the best part of a decade ago. But there's a snag. Have a look at the whole signpost. Have you spotted it yet? Yeah, you've got it – there's nowhere for the timetable(s) to be displayed. On the old stands (or a fair percentage of them, at least), there was a rectangular panel at approxi...

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...

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 ...

The South Wales newspapers have run three stories about public transport in as many days. I thought I'd summarise them here. On June 28, Rhodri Clark reported that bus use in Wales has fallen to its lowest since records began in 1982. (The witty headline to the piece alludes to the fact that everyone in Wales – except me, because I know half the drivers by name anyway – will call the man behind the wheel 'Drive' when they get on or off the bus.) In 2013-14, 107 million passenger journeys were made on Welsh buses. This nadir coincided with the Welsh Government's decision to cut subsidies by 25%. Further reductions in services are planned as cash-strapped local authorities struggle to balance the books. I know correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but it's difficult not to draw your own conclusions, isn't it? According to the industry body CPT Cymru, some 800 services have been axed across the country. Passenger numbers fell by a further 3.3% in 201...

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...

Ever since bus deregulation in October 1986, a number of small operators have been able to enter a marketplace previously dominated by the National Bus Company (in its many regional subdivisions). As far as the travelling public are concerned, it has been a two-edged sword. The previous state monopoly was overthrown for purely ideological reasons. It was the same free-market 'logic' that led to the privatization of British Rail soon afterwards. Almost… Ask anyone in London (i.e. the 'Westminster Bubble' of politicians, think-tanks and media types) what effect bus deregulation had on services, and they'll tell you: none whatsoever! In the capital, deregulation never happened. Everywhere else, there was a free market free-for all, as I told you in Nice Work If You Can Get There . Initially, at least, deregulation drove prices down as competing operators fought over the plum routes. Eventually, of course, the status quo was resumed. The Tories' much-vaunted 'co...

I still haven't finished working on the second half of my analysis of bus services within the Cynon Valley. I know it's taking ages, but every time I start making progress the companies change their timetables again. The most recent changes I heard about only a couple of weeks ago. It appears that services after the evening 'rush hour' (or what passes for rush hour in the Valleys, anyway) have been drastically curtailed. I'm reliably informed that after 6 p.m. you'll be unable to catch a bus to Llwydcoed, Cwmbach or Cwmdare. That puts these outlying districts on a par with Penderyn, Rhigos, Abernant, Perthcelyn and Cefnpennar, with no services at all on Sundays either. It's always baffled me why there's such a rapid drop in services after 6 p.m and at weekends. Logic would suggest that there'd be more demand for public transport, not less. After you get home from work, it's nice to go out for a couple of pints in the evening. Young people, too, ...

Every time I go to Mountain Ash, I feel as though I'm stepping back in time slightly. Last week, I definitely did, because I found this handy information display on the bus stop at the old Bruce Hotel. No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Even though the photo isn't very clear, that's definitely a timetable for Spring 2003. It's been a long time since a Shamrock bus troubled the people of the Cynon Valley (thank God!)

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

On Monday July 21, Stagecoach in South Wales are fully implementing the timetable changes which I told you about in The Last Bus to Everywhere . Having said that, some of them seem to have taken place already. I was in Caerphilly last week, and the buses to and from Bargoed are now operated by a company called Harris Coaches. I still don't know what's happening to the buses between Pontypridd and Bridgend, or Pontypridd and Blackwood, or the other services I listed after the Stagecoach announcement. I daresay I'll find out next time I plan a day out, only to find that my ticket isn't valid for some (or all) of the journey. [As I was finishing this entry, my informant from Caerphilly CBC very kindly filled in some gaps. New Adventure Travel are taking on the 244, although on a slightly different route. He also told me that tickets from different operators would be interavailable. It's nice to have some good news to pass on for a change.] I'll take most of these c...

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 ...