Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

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?

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...

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...

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...

I had an email last week from National Express, offering me 25% off my next return journey. Since I've never been one to pass up a day in London, I decided to book my journey this morning. My first attempt ended in disaster when the site wouldn't even load. (Mind you, I was using the piss-poor wifi in Aberdare Library, so I wasn't especially surprised.) The second attempt at logging into the site via the link in the email was slightly more successful. Unfortunately, the site didn't give me the offer of Cardiff University as a departure point. Cardiff Bus Station closed on 1 August for 'redevelopment', so the National Express services have been relocated to Sophia Gardens. It's about a fifteen minute walk from Cardiff Central Station to Sophia Gardens. National Express expect passengers to be at the departure point ten minutes before the advertised time. That's far too narrow a window when you're travelling into Cardiff by train. The Valley Lines curr...

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...

In Nice Work If You Can Get There I recounted the sad tale of the Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway Tunnel. The line through the mountain connected Blaencwm, north of Treherbert, to Blaengwynfi, high above the Afan Valley, and thence to Port Talbot. It was closed in the mid-1960s as part of the Beeching review of the British rail network. As Kerry Hamilton and Stephen Potter pointed out in their book Losing Track (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), the cost of maintaining the tunnel was a key factor in its closure – even though it shouldn't have been a consideration. Suddenly, however, the Rhondda Tunnel is firmly back on the map. There's an ambitious proposal to reopen it to walkers and cyclists, and add it to the network of cycle paths which criss-cross the Valleys. Last night, a meeting was held in Treorchy to discuss the scheme. I'd planned to go over, but the weather forecast talked in ominous tones of snow moving in throughout the day. As it's difficult enough to g...

I used my Oyster Card for the first time last Monday (29 September), on a day trip to London. I've had it for about a year, but owing to cirumstances beyond my control I didn't have chance to use it until then. It still had the initial £5.00 credit from when I first ordered it. After checking out the Transport for London website, I decided to put an extra £5.00 onto it to tide me over. I used the TfL website to add a fiver about three weeks ago. I had an email telling me that it was only valid for seven days, and needed to be 'activated' at my nominated station (Earls Court) before it would be added to my balance. If it wasn't activated, it would be automatically refunded to my bank account. Needless to say, I was travelling nine days later. When I arrived in London, I therefore had to put a further five quid onto my card to see me through the day. I made the most of the card, mind you: one tube journey in Zone 1, and five bus journeys in Zones 1 and 2. To put this...

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 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?

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

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...

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...

My brother used to work as a cartographic draughtsman for a number of public bodies. In fact, we used to joke that if anyone was ever digging up the ground anywhere in Wales (and a fair chunk of Western England), there was a good chance that he'd drawn up the plans beforehand. One useful piece of jargon I picked up from his career was 'desire line.' You've probably all come across desire lines, but I expect very few of you ever realised that they had a name. According to Wikipedia (because I'm at home, and I haven't got access to any textbooks on Town and Country Planning): desire path (also known as a desire line , social trail , goat track or bootleg trail ) can be a path created as a consequence of foot or bicycle traffic. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width of the path and its erosion are indicators of the amount of use the path receives. Desire paths emerge as shortcuts where...