for fare paying passengers the journey now is:
T1 Aberystwyth- Carmarthen (2 hrs 24 mins)
X11 Carmarthen-Llanelli- Swansea (90 mins)
X10 Swansea- Cardiff/ Cardiff Bay (75 mins)
a total journey time (without waiting for connections) of 5 hrs 9 mins... a significantly poorer journey time than that of the 701 (4hr 10 mins WITHOUT THE VAGUERIES OF CONNECTIONS) I would suggest that taking into account waiting for connections the journey would now take at least 6 1/2 hrs... making a day trip impossible...
So the journey by bus takes about two hours longer than the 701, I must admit that is worse than I had expected; however:
To complete the full 701 journey since it was withdrawn involves more than 1 change of service...
There was a reason I said "a change of vehicle" rather than "a change of bus". I wasn't sure whether or not you could do Aberystwyth-Cardiff with 1 change of bus, but you can change onto a train at Carmarthen and thus do it with just one change. Taking the daily 701 depature at 07:40 as a starting point, using the train times for Saturday, the journey today would be:
07:40 Aberystwyth-Carmarthen arr. 09:53 (T1)
10:04 Carmarthen-Cardiff arr. 11:48 (train to Manchester)
End-to-end journey time of 4hrs 8mins, much the same as the 701 and a similar arrival time in Cardiff, so a day-trip should still be possible too. To confirm, let's look at the return journey, starting with the 16:00 off Cardiff Central (again a similar time to the daily 701):
16:00 Cardiff-Carmarthen arr. 17:50 (Gloucester to Fishguard train)
18:09 Carmarthen-Aberystwyth arr. 20:33 (T1 and T5, a 2nd change is required here because the T1 at this time terminates at Aberaeron).
Journey time 4hrs 33min, about 15mins slower than the 701 but still alot better than the X10-X11 option.
So, a day trip to Cardiff from Aberystwyth is still possible, but using the train could make the trip quite a bit more expensive in terms of fare, and having to change is certainly an inconvinence (though perhaps prefrable to over 4hrs on what I assume are still fairly standard buses used on the T1).
Therefore I do not see how the withdrawal of the 701 is different to the T3.
Because the T1 is there so there is an alternative service, the journeys can still be made by bus and train. Although this may be less attractive to passengers due to the change of vehicle and probably higher fares, it does not make the journeys impossible by public transport.
if they were ever serious about it they would have issued an emergency contract for the 701 to keep it going just as Ceredigion did with 585/ 588 services.
I agree with that, if they saw a need for the service they should have acted much faster to keep the 701 going.
Lloyds won't be taking the Scania's. They're currently using 5 dealer stock Enviro200's and one of 2 Enviro400 MMC's off the X28. They have the emergency tender until February, but chances are they might keep the contract.
Thanks for the reply. Assuming the interiors of the double-deckers had TrawsCymru embrioded on the seats etc. that is a bit of a shame as it will be a bit wasteful with whoever takes them on having to reupholster the seats etc.