The Information Deficit Increases

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 approximately elbow height, where a list of departure times and destinations could be displayed. (I say could, because in a lot of cases the information was either outdated or missing entirely.) Here’s a recent example, on a bus stand (without a shelter) a short distance from my home.

This sign was clear, concise and easy to digest. (The fact that you often had to stand around in the pissing rain to read it is a side issue.)

The replacement stand has next to no information. Sure, it tells you what buses serve that stop, but not how long you’ll have to wait for one to come along.

There are two consecutive bus shelters along the route of Stagecoach buses 7, 8, 9, and 11C towards Aberdare. One shelter has an internal panel with a similar display to that in the previous photo. The other doesn’t have an internal panel – instead, the information was attached to the post outside. I say was because … Well, you can work it for yourselves, I’m sure.

Now, it could just be me, but I find it much quicker and far more convenient to glance at a printed piece of paper to find out my bus time, than to fuck around trying to get any sense out of Traveline Cymru (see ‘What Do You Want?’ – ‘Information’ from the very early days of this blog). And do passengers customers really want to be using their smartphones outdoors, in all weathers, to try and find out when the next bus might come along?

Just for the record, here’s the sum total of timetable information available to the travelling public outside Aberdare Library at the time of writing.

Precisely fuck all, in other words.

There’s not much more information available inside Aberdare Library, for that matter. They no longer carry the handy Stagecoach bus or Arriva Trains Wales timetables to pick up and slip in your pocket. As for train timetables in general, here’s what I’ve just found behind the counter in the so-called ‘reference’ department.

In case you think your eyes are deceiving you, they aren’t.

It’s over a decade out of date, but this is the best that the central source of printed and online information in Aberdare can provide.

If you’re thinking that this is just another excuse to bitch about the apparent uselessness of Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, you’re wrong. I was in Glynneath on Thursday afternoon, and I found this bus stop at the western end of the village, just before the turning to the Morfa Glas estate.

Well played, Neath Port Talbot CBC – now you’re getting the idea!

Return Journey to Swansea

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 of Mid Glamorgan (the Rhondda, Cynon, Merthyr and Rhymney valleys) are mostly operated by Stagecoach, while Bridgend County Borough and the former West Glamorgan are primarily served by First Bus. (There are a number of smaller operators as well, but for the purposes of getting from Aberdare to Swansea, I’ll consider the Big Two initially.)

As my regular readers already know, there’s nothing in South Wales comparable to Transport for London’s Oyster Card. Instead, we’re stuck with a paper-based system that doesn’t go any way towards making travelling easier. The South East Wales Network Rider, priced at £8.00 per day, is valid on pretty much every bus in the area on the map below.

In addition there’s also a ticket which you can buy on Arriva Trains Wales, which is valid on Stagecoach services within the Valley Lines area.  It’s not valid until 0915 (according to Arriva’s website) or 0930 (according to the booking clerk at Aberdare station). You pays your money and you takes your choice. Either way, it’s no use to get to work in the mornings. Furthermore, it’s a fat lot of use if you’re travelling within the Vale of Glamorgan or Bridgend, where most of the buses are operated by First.

In fact, anyone crossing the county line has to buy a second – and possibly a third – ticket for First Bus in that area. This is where the cost starts to go up. First Bus don’t seem to offer a Day Rider ticket for the whole of their network, unlike Stagecoach’s Day Rider ticket, which gets you right across south-east Wales for £7.50.

Actually, when I say they ‘don’t seem to offer’ one, it could just be that I can’t find it on their website. Instead, they have a confusing range of tickets in overlapping areas within their operating region. Here are two of the dozen or so you can buy in South and West Wales.

There’s also a bus operated by a company called First Call, based in Merthyr Tydfil. This X75 service runs four times a day in either direction between Merthyr and Swansea. It travels through Hirwaun, then follows the old road through Glynneath to Resolven – at which point the plot thickens.

According to the timetable, at Resolven you have to change onto the X5A. I haven’t decided whether this is just a change of service number, or whether you need to board a different vehicle. When the weather improves and I can spend a whole day doing nothing, I’ll go exploring and report back.

So, as you can see, anyone wanting to travel to Swansea from Aberdare by bus has two alternatives. First of all, I’ll look at doing it step by step, using the two big operators. Then I’ll consider the alternative journey using the smaller company.

1. OUTWARD The first two Stagecoach buses north from Aberdare – which leave at 0540 and 0640) terminate at the top end of the Glynneath Bank ( at 0606 and 0706 respectively). They’re no use for onward connections. It’s a mile and three-quarters downhill to Pontwalby, and another half a mile or so to Glynneath itself. Even assuming it was a nice morning, and light enough to walk to the village without being run over by fast-moving traffic, you’d be hard-pressed to make it in time for the 0630 First Bus X55 departure to Swansea, never mind the next one at 0715.
   The first practical connection (and I’m using the word ‘practical’ in its loosest sense) is the one between the 0655 bus from Aberdare, which terminates at Morfa Glas (the western end of Glynneath) at 0734, and the 0759 X55 from Glynneath, which arrives at Swansea Bus Station at 0909. I don’t know what there is to do for nearly half an hour in Glynneath at that time of the morning. I dare say the Co-op will be open so you can at least shelter from the rain.
   It’s an expensive and time-consuming way to have a day in the shopping centre, or a breath of sea air. It’s no use whatsoever if you work in Wales’s second city, barely twenty-five miles away – much less if you’re studying at the university, a further bus ride away, or working outside the city centre.

   RETURN The 1720 X55 from Swansea Bus Station is timetabled to arrive at the Pioneer supermarket in Glynneath at 1833. By a strange coincidence, the last Stagecoach 8 service to Aberdare leaves Morfa Glas at … 1833. Since we’re dealing with two competing companies the arrangement prior to October 1986, whereby a connecting service would wait for up to ten minutes for the feeder bus to arrive, no longer applies. As you can imagine, it would only need a tiny delay on the journey from Swansea to fuck that Rizla-thin ‘connection’ up entirely. Would you risk it? No, neither would I.
   That puts you on the previous X55, leaving Swansea at 1645 and arriving in Glynneath at 1802. At least at this time of the day the pubs are open, so you can kill half an hour before the last 8 runs from Morfa Glas. Either way, you’re on course to arrive back in Aberdare at 1915. As with the outward journey, it’s no possible use to anyone working in the city centre, never mind studying at the university campuses a further bus ride away.TOTAL TRAVELLING TIME: 2h 14m out, 2h, 30m return = 4h 44m

   Let’s break down the cost, just to complete the exercise. I’ve based this on the price of adult tickets, using information from the companies’ websites.

   Aberdare – Glynneath: £4.80 (Aberdare Day Rider ticket); Glynneath – Neath: £4.20 (Neath Port Talbot Day ticket); Neath – Swansea: £5.00 (Swansea Bay Day ticket) TOTAL COST = £14.00

   If you’re planning on reliving this nightmare for a whole week (and why wouldn’t you?), the total goes up to £53.70 – that’s £11.70 for your Aberdare Megarider, plus £20.00 for the Neath Port Talbot Weekly ticket, and £22.00 for the Swansea Bay Weekly ticket. Compare this with Arriva Trains Wales’s weekly ticket from Aberdare to Cardiff, which suddenly seems pretty reasonable at a mere £26.70 for an hour’s journey over a comparable distance.

2. OUTWARD If you live in Aberdare or further up the valley, you can catch the 0655 Stagecoach service to Hirwaun. You hang around for half an hour, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, until the X75 comes along at 0742. Then you may or may not have to change at Resolven, arriving in Swansea at 0840.
   It’s better than Option 1, but still no use to anyone working outside the city centre, or travelling on to the university campus at Singleton Park. It’s hardly surprising that it seems to be used almost exclusively by senior citizens armed with their concessionary passes.

   DRETURN The fourth and final X5A of the day leaves Swansea at 1740. Even after fucking about in Resolven, the X75 arrives in Hirwaun at 1835. You might – if you’re very, very lucky – be in time to jump on the 1835 7 service. If not, don’t worry – the last 8 from Glynneath is only twenty minutes behind. In the latter case, you’ll arrive back in Aberdare at 1915.(I can’t give you a cost breakdown for this one, because the fares information on the Traveline Cymru website is ‘coming soon’ – and has been for at least a year and a half.)TOTAL TRAVELLING TIME: 1h 45 m out, 1h 35m return = 3h 20m

Please bear in mind that the information here only applies from Monday to Saturday. There’s no possibility of getting from Aberdare to Swansea by bus on a Sunday or on a bank holiday. None at all. Zero. Zilch. Not a sausage.

So, that all led me to Plan B: let the train cause the strain. Remember, I needed to be at the Singleton Park campus by 0930; it’s half an hour’s bus ride from the railway station. I did some digging on their website, and found that the latest I could leave Aberdare to arrive in Swansea for 0900 was 0622.

Yes, that’s right – the first train of the day got me to Cardiff Central at 0726, in time to miss the 0714 to Swansea. (I’d already walked from my house into Aberdare, so in practical terms I’d been travelling since 0600.) That latest example of differentiated public transport put me on the 0750 – the Boat Train, running from London Paddington to Fishguard Harbour in time for the lunchtime crossing to Ireland.

Don’t do it. It stops at virtually every station on the South Wales main line – except, bizarrely, the stations between Cardiff and Bridgend – and takes an hour and two minutes to get to Swansea. I could have waited for a quarter of an hour, caught a ‘faster’ train, and arrived at 0900, but what would have been the point of that?

I used my handy Plus Bus ticket (which I’d bought a few days before) to catch the First Bus 4 service from the station to the university campus. By the time I finally arrived at the lecture theatre, it was approaching 0945.
The return journey was just as long. I left the campus on the 1745 bus, arrived back in the city centre at just before 1830, and had an hour or so to kill until my booked journey back to Cardiff. Even on the ‘fast’ train it takes about 45 minutes, so I eventually arrived back in Aberdare at 2145.

TOTAL TRAVELLING TIME: 7h 15m; TOTAL COST: £23.50.

Please compare this experience with that of my friend and neighbour, who works in Swansea and drives down every day. He’s very kindly offered me a lift next time I head that way – leaving at 0815 or so.

Is it any wonder that a non-driving teenage friend of mine turned down a university place in Swansea to study in Guildford instead? It only takes her half that time to get there, for a comparable price, and she can travel at weekends. It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?