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...

A friend of mine is planning a trip to Poole in Dorset in the new year. (I won't go into details, but it involves stuff that young people do on smartphones, apparently.) Needless to say, she's called on my services as an independent travel consultant to plan out a route for her. Easier said than done. I was in my local library earlier, armed with Stuart K. Baker's indispensable Rail Atlas: Great Britain and Ireland (12th edition), and Ian Allan's companion book British Railways Pre-grouping Atlas and Gazetteer . (Both books are from my personal reference library – Aberdare doesn't have anything like those on the shelves – but I wanted to use the Wi-Fi.) Here's what I've found so far: The Somerset and Dorset Joint Committee (a 'joint' line operated by Midland Railways and London & South Western) had what looks to be a nice route through Radstock, Shepton Mallet, Wincanton, Sturminster Newton and Blandford Forum. That was back in the days o...

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 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...

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 ...

A few weeks ago an old friend of mine invited to me to a one-day programme of talks at Swansea University's Singleton Park campus, at which she was delivering the keynote address. I provisionally agreed to go along, depending on public transport and other factors. I did some research online first, of course, before committing myself to what was going to be a lengthy and expensive day out. As it was going to be a fairly late finish, the bus wasn't an option. There hasn't been a direct service from Aberdare to Swansea for about ten years; I can't tell you when it ceased to operate, because it just vanished without any warning one day. (Even though it's still advertised on the stops in Trecynon, good luck to anyone expecting to catch it.) It is still possible to get to Swansea by bus, but – as you'll see – it involves a great deal of fucking around en route. Because they rarely, if ever, venture over the county boundaries, buses in what used to be the eastern part...

I was in Cardiff the weekend before last, and while I was walking through St David's Centre I saw a large group of students studying a large mural. I wondered what was causing so much excitement, so I decided to check it out for myself. This is what I found. (I know the photo isn't great, because I took it with my phone, but there's a reason for that.) It's a clever idea, isn't it? Grafting Cardiff and the suburbs onto the Tube map – that iconic piece of design which evolves as the network grows and changes – proves that someone at the South Wales Echo (where it originally appeared) has a sense of humour. Unfortunately, it had totally confused the youngsters. A couple of Chinese students were having a very animated discussion about it; a few West African girls were equally enthralled by the idea of the Barry John Line, the John Charles Line, and the Cardiff Arms Dart. I looked at it with them for a few minutes, took a couple of photos, and then turned to them and s...