I hope this means the campaign to reopen the railway has focused minds on improving the bus service and that the Welsh Government will now be arranging funding for improvements.
That may be true of many of the pepole promoting the idea but I wouldn't necessarily go along with that being 'the only reason'. My personal opinion is that the TrawsCymru bus network has underdelivered; if I recall correctly when the rebranding was officially announced the two launch routes (TC1 and TC4) were to have brand new buses with improved legroom, coach-style seats and the TC1 was to run from 6am to 8pm. In the event the TC1 didn't happen due to Arriva blocking the Welsh Government's plans and the new buses were stored until finding a use on the Cardiff Airport Express (T9). Thus when the T1 finally arrived normal buses were used and the first bus from Aberystwyth remains at 06:40; reaching Carmarthen at 08:57 (too late for commuters, although there is an earlier bus from Lampeter), the last bus from Carmarthen is 19:05 and the 19:45 from Aberystwyth (last bus for Carmarthen) is a T5 to Cardigan; change at Aberaeron for the T1 to Carmarthen. (Times are from the 2015 timetable, but I don't think it has changed much).
I wouldn't go as far as "absolutely no potential" either, but I object to such sums of money being spent just to decide whether to take a specific scheme forward; especially if it is fairly obvious you don't have the budget to built it anyway. If you are paying a consultant £300,000 it would have been better to set an objective in terms of either reduced car use or reduced greenhouse gas emmisions. The consultant's role would then be to examine various options including bus and different rail routes to establish which offers the best cost:benift ratio (where the benifit is reduced emmisions/car-mileage).
Mwnt isn't on a bus route that you could connect to from a Carmarthen-Aberystwyth train either; if I recall correctly it has two buses each way daily between Quay West and Cardigan in summer and the same timetable (but only 2 or 3 days per week) in winter.
The Cambrian Coast does have more loops than are needed for the current timetable; however if you want to run one or more extra trains in the opposite hour to the existing ones (so that they connect with the Aberystwyth line at Dovey Junction) then they will need to pass at Dovey Junction, just as the Aberystwyth trains do. There is no loop on the coast-side at Dovey Junction, so you'd either need a loop there or terminate coast trains at Dovey Junction with no through-running to Machynlleth/Birmingham.
And I believe some work has already been done in this vein: viz. the planned extra summer weekend fasts planned for the Cambrian Coast in the forthcoming francihse, which iirc. will only run as far as Dovey Jn.
Fast services from Tywyn to pwllheli on summer Sundays from 2025 is the plan I believe
The Welsh railways are fragmented, it’s almost impossible to get around using them.
That’s because it’s a tourist line.Only for rich English tourists like yourself Paul
In the absence of the bypass where would you have imagined the north end of such a line going?
Indeed. It is probably nearly a mile walk from the road to the station. I was thinking the extra trains could attach at Mach, as happens now. I’m not sure an hourly fast service would reduce a great deal of overcrowding on the current stopping trains, due to a lot of the traffic on the route being localised. I think an hourly ‘all stops’ would be better. Maybe omitting some of the really quiet stations such as Tonfanau, Tygwyn, Llandecwyn and Abererch for example, so those travelling from Dyffryn/Talybont/Morfa to places like Barmouth, Harlech and Porthmadog get an hourly service, spreading out the loadings over both trains, and there then being a little more room for those boarding the lesser used (but still used) stations.
I'll gladly join you for the latter (and for the harmonies)!
