www.route-one.net
Politicians plead poverty them waste money on crackpot ideas.
The T1C is on the TrawsCymru website with a traffic update for Saturday so looks like it.
I just think for North Wales to South Wales, you're just not going to beat the train via England, and anything else just seems a bit pointless (and even then, the North to South Wales demand just isn't there).
Exactly. Who in North Wales wants to go to Carmarthen? Cardiff yes, even perhaps Swansea, but I can't see Carmarthen being much of a draw.
From somewhere like Porthmadog to Cardiff, you would be mad to take the train. It takes an eternity via Shrewsbury. There currently isn't any demand, because anyone in their right mind drives.
What about improving mobility for non-drivers? Also reduced congestion for those who do use the roads
This is what the express bus service should be catering for.
I'd suggest that there are better ways of helping what must be the tiny number of non-drivers in Porthmadog who want to go to Cardiff and have no friends or relatives who will give them a lift than running a few coaches a day in the hope that the timetable might fit their plans?
Does it really? There's a reason why most major roads head east to west, and mid Wales is very sparsely populated.
The sums would be astronomical and I don't see anything happening in that area.
I might add Newport onto that list too.
Definitely. I've made the point before that they want to put electric vehicles running to Blaenau where the environmental benefits are limited and yet Swansea or Wrexham don't feature in electrification yet where the benefits locally would be far greater.
This isn't something new. At Dolgellau, the interchange at Eldon Square has been the norm for as many years as I can remember. I certainly recall it in 1994 where the 94s passed each other (now T3) and connected with the 94A and 2 (which are now the T2) and the 30 (?) to Tywyn which is now the G21.
Perhaps a tweak to stand 4 might be required but then again, it might not be an issue depending on the vehicle type selected.
It's £0.5m - £1m for a half decent interchange area. That's about right in order to do the site works for power etc, put in display screen, shelters etc. Eldon Square isn't fit for purpose and having four vehicles blocking the road is less than ideal. Moving them to Marian Mawr (which is the likeliest option) solves that and it's not exactly far to walk - 200m?
Some connections are good, the way TFW go about it though less good (i've discussed this in length on other threads). The point being that with all routes connecting at one specific time, if the coach doesn't fit into the connection times at Aberystwyth, Mach, Dol and Porthmadog (and maybe Caernarfon depending on if those routes start linking up departure times with the T2/T22), the connecting buses will have gone and passengers will be left sitting around waiting a while for the next bus. And as per the Corwen issue, any missed connections, most of these towns aren't exactly thriving hubs of life where you can easily kill time, you'd just be sat in bus shelter for 50 odd minutes with not a lot else going on. Especially at night!
Granted. Though given the debacle in Porth with the bus station there not being built to accommodate the vehicles serving the site (another thread topic if someone wants to speak about it), I am sceptical about whether they will think about these things in advance, and even then if they make stand 4 longer, will there be enough space on stand 4 to accommodate a coach wheelchair lift? Some of the lifts come out quite far.
200 metres doesn't seem like much but it is when there is hardly any pavement and for at least some parts of that walk you would be forced to walk on the road and wheelchair users or those that struggle going on and off kerbs, will be walking in the road for almost all of that 200 metres. Less than idea. You've also got the
True. Tbh, when I said North Wales, I was mainly referring to the area along the North Wales coast where most people live. In places like Porthmadog, Aberystwyth etc, with the sparseness of the population it's very hard to see public transport competing with the car.
What about an 'A470(M)' Merthyr-Llandudno motorway to appease those with an aversion to crossing the border?
Page 36 of the study claims that the 2, 4 and 6 coaches per day options would stimulate demand on other services. The 8 coaches per day option would abstract 'moderate demand' while the 9 and 10 coaches per day options would likely result in significant abstraction. No idea how they work that sort of thing out.
I've seen worse. If they reduced the frequency of the coaches to 3 or 4 per day instead of every two hours this one would actually look somewhat sensible if you ask me. Still more-useful things to spend the subsidy on in the short term though.
Public transport in Wales needs to vastly improve, yes. I would argue however that they still need to focus on 'level one' (local bus services) - they are still well short of the providing the basic local services in many cases. If and when they sort that out, then the time would be right to overlay some long-distance express coaches on top of that, but every two hours seems excessive given how limited the likes of National Express coaches from Pembrokeshire to London are.
Bangor to Caernarvon is certainly one of most-attractive propositions for rail extensions in Wales outside the South East Wales Metro. Beyond that it gets rather tricky to justify.
I think it's partly to do with the fact that the railway is still there south of Carmarthen, so they expect passengers to connect with rail services there rather than run the coaches through to Cardiff. If that's the case though why have the T1C? If passengers were willing to change, axe the T1C. Given the reluctance to change, incorporating some through workings to Cardiff (ie. the current T1C service plus perhaps a couple of extra workings) into the new express coach proposal would make sense. The T1C does have rather more stops between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth than the proposed new service, but for the most part I don't see why they couldn't change that - the T1C is only one trip each way after all.
Good point. Bangor to Cardiff is probably best-served by trains via Shrewsbury, as others have said, but some intermediate locations would benefit hugely from a faster north-south public transport option within Wales. I very much doubt there is much demand for end-to-end travel between Bangor and Carmarthen, but there's plenty of demand for shorter journeys along that route. In theory local buses and existing rail routes could cater for that, but the fragmented nature of that (having to switch from bus-to-rail at Porthmadog, train-to-train at Dovey Junction, train-to-bus at Aberystwyth and bus-to-train at Carmarthen) isn't very helpful, as is the limited provision of passing loops on the Cambrian Lines (which prevents running hourly trains between Machynlleth and Porthmadog so that half of them can run fast).
Alternatively, they're an indicator of an extractive economy (click for source):
George Monbiot (2008) said:
Do the Welsh Government own any other brand for buses other than TrawsCymru and perhaps fflecsi? I got the impression that the Welsh Government were using TrawsCymru (or TrawsCymru Connect) branding simply as a way to take credit for contributing subsidy when the local authorities previously responsible found they were unable to afford to keep the service going themselves.
One solution would be to double the frequency of one of the routes, so that the other no longer has to have vehicles in opposite directions passing each other at Dolgellau. For example, if the T3 ran every half hour (with vehicles passing at Dolgellau) and the T2 hourly, the northbound T2 could call at Dolgellau 30 minutes after the southbound T2 and both would be able to connect with the T3 while only needing room for three buses at Eldon Square instead of four. That ignores the G21 and any future additions though of course.
Could they pedestrianise said roads completely?
My view is that a comprehensive public transport service for those who don't drive should be the first priority, which is why I think this express coach idea is rather premature (much of Ceredigion still lacks a useable local bus service for example). However, if and when the local bus service is sorted, I do think efforts should be made to attract the motorists out of their cars as well - partly for energy efficiency and partly to help reduce the subsidy required to keep the public transport running.
The question here is what are the rail reopenings expected to acheive? 'Reopen' to me implies putting a railway back where it was before; in many cases the old routes were slow (indirect or with many tight reverse curves). I doubt they would be much more attractive against the car than what could be acheived with a local bus or express coach depending on whether it is local or long-distance traffic you are looking to serve. A brand new express rail link between Caernarfon and Porthmadog, together with some extra loops or partial doubling of the existing Cambrian Lines, could be transformational - but the old alignments can be a distraction. Going via Afon Wen is an indirect route if you want to get to Bangor from Mid Wales.
www.bbc.co.uk
