You would think that this fact would more easily facilitate a pilot scheme, as this fares integration can only work where both bus and rail is being funded (and revenue risk taken) by the same organisation.
However, the complexities and ongoing work involved should not be underestimated.
It would be nice if one area / network of routes trialled this, to see how it works, what the issues are and how to overcome. This network would be ideal as it is predominantly long distance links without too much complication of bespoke journeys, town services, schools etc.
Just because other Trawscymru servies compete with rail is not an argument that this situation should be continued with or increased.
I think you are getting fixated on the social aspect of fares to try and push your agenda for the T1C - if fares for rail/bus tickets via Carmarthen are too high then reduce them. This does not by itself justify additional service on the T1C
I believe in the social aspect of fares in relation to all Transport modes, not just the T1C service.
I am not sure how familiar you are with the Trawscymru network in view of your comment:
This network would be ideal as it is predominantly long distance links without too much complication
The T1C fits this description as does the T1. The remainder of the network is not in that category with diversions on minor B roads, missing out major rail stations (T3 Barmouth to Wrexham visits Ruabon station at times when there are no trains and fails to visit Wrexham station), and delays waiting to transport school pupils.
I do not understand what you mean by my "agenda for the T1C service". Yes, I am interested in seeing it improved.
You may not be aware that when the Welsh Government (WG) introduced the T1C they could have used any timetable they liked as they were only providing 1 service per day instead of the 2 with the 701 and only one link in Carmarthen with another new service the T1S to Swansea which was introduced at the same time.
The T1C replaced the 701 which had 2 services per day departing Aberystwyth at 7.30 and 9.30am. The WG chose 9.30am as the T1C departure time when the existing T2 service from Dolgellau into Aberystwyth arrived at 9.30. A mistake by Mr Lewis perhaps but perpetuated by the WG. The connection time in Carmarthen between the T1C and the T1S, which were both new services, was 3 minutes!
A request was immediately placed with the WG to alter the departure time of the T1C to 9.25 in order to give 8 minutes connection time with the T1S in Carmarthen and a request was also made to change the arrival time of the T2 in Aberystwyth to 9.20 so that the T1C could pick up passengers from the T2.
Trawscymru Service Delivery Groups exist to deal with connectivity across the network, chaired by a WG official, the Trawscymru Network Manager. However, the WG immediately invoked the "magic roundabout", saying this was an operational issue that had to be dealt with by the County Council managing the Trawscymru contract and the bus operator. This meant Gwynedd Council for the T2 and Ceredigion Council for the T1C. Needless to say, both Gwynedd Council and Ceredigion Council swung the "magic roundabout" even faster back to the WG. In the case of the T2 the operator was contacted and saw sense in the 9.20 arrival time in Aberystwyth and persuaded the WG to introduce it 9 months after the T1C/T1S started. The T1S departure time was also changed at the same time to improve the T1C/T1S connection, due largely to the support of Carmarthenshire Council.
You have to ask how much damage was done to the T1C/T1S routes by the 9 months of operation when the connection of the T2 with the T1C was non-existent and connection between the T1C/T1S was difficult. Needless to say, the WG made no attempt to publicise that the links had been improved. The WG simply do not want a bus service between Aberystwyth and Cardiff.
The lack of interest in promoting the T1C is all the more strange when the man who "created" Trawscymru and who runs the Trawscymru Strategy Group made the following comment in relation to the commercial National Express 409 service from Aberystwyth to London:
Aberystwyth is a student market in the main. It's a very big market, a very important market and the company wouldn't want to lose it to the competition which is there from the railways.
On the one hand, the "creator" of Trawscymru acknowledges that there is a big very important market for bus travel in competition with rail between London and Aberystwyth yet there is no market whatsoever to go from Cardiff to Aberystwyth.
Some passengers pay double the cost of a trip to London compared to people getting on the same coach 60 miles earlier.
www.bbc.co.uk
Some passengers in mid Wales have been paying more than double the price of people getting on the same coach 60 miles earlier.
People in the Powys towns of Newtown and Welshpool have complained about the £80 fee for a return trip to London.
However, passengers boarding the coach 60 miles (95km) earlier in Aberystwyth paid just £35.
National Express said prices were based on demand but it would lower some fares.
The company's 409 service to London leaves Aberystwyth every day at 07:55 GMT and stops off at Newtown and Welshpool before arriving in the UK's capital at 15:00.
Aberystwyth is 250 miles (400km) away from the London Victoria Bus Station destination while Newtown is 200 miles (320km) away and Welshpool is 190 miles (300km).
Carole Thomas, from Trehafren, was surprised to discover she was paying more for a shorter journey if she got on at Newtown.
She told
BBC Wales' X-Ray programme: "I have to go down [to London] to see my mum because she's had a stroke, she's in a home and to see my dad's grave.
"When they said it was going to be £80 I nearly fell on the floor."
Her husband Graham said it was "not fair" they had to pay more than people getting on the same coach at Aberystwyth.
Margaret Thomas, who boards in Welshpool, said: "They said it's the volume of people going on in Welshpool and Newtown... Maybe just one person.
"But the bus is already coming from Aberystwyth. I just don't understand."
National Express's conditions forbid passengers buying the cheaper Aberystwyth to London ticket and getting on at a later stop.
Prof Stuart Cole, a transport expert at the University of South Wales, said while passengers might think the pricing policy was unfair, the company needed to make a profit.
"Aberystwyth is a student market in the main," he said.
"It's a very big market, a very important market and the company wouldn't want to lose it to the competition which is there from other coach companies and also from the railways."
X-Ray also found a return ticket from Newport to Liverpool for £42 - but getting on the same bus 13 miles earlier at Cardiff would cost £6 less.
National Express said it set ticket prices according to demand - not mileage or the time of day - to make best use of the capacity on its coaches and keep its prices competitive.
But the firm has now reduced its "lowest available fare" from Newtown to London to match the price from Aberystwyth, but is not cutting fares from Welshpool.
It also lowered the price of tickets from Newport to Liverpool.
It just does not make sense. Students going to London cannot afford the train fare and need a bus route and the same applies to students and other underprivileged groups wishing to travel between Cardiff and Aberystwyth.
The cost of a return rail ticket Carmarthen/Cardiff is £28.80. Therefore if the train is used with a Trawscymru day ticket for the T1 (£10) the cost would be £38.80. As you say the WG have control over fares for both rail and bus but they cannot undercut the standard rail fare. The cheapest ticket the WG could offer is £28.80 which is almost 3 times the £10 day ticket for the T1C. I would suggest that for some people they will be priced out of travelling.
The fact is that, as you concede, there was no abstraction, theft or stealing of passengers from existing commercial services.
I conceded nothing. I did not mention abstraction of passengers for any service and you introduced the subject of abstraction between Oswestry and Wrexham. I have been quite clear that I am talking about stealing passengers by moving them from local bus services by combining them to produce a new service on the Trawscymru network.
Conclusion - their figures are all a mess, some up and some down but ultimately, nothing in their favour.
Nothing in their favour? The Welsh Government (WG) released an incorrect statement that
Thanks in part to our decision to offer weekend free travel, passenger numbers grew by 45% across the network in 2018-19
(
https://gov.wales/catch-bus-week-sees-trawscymru-celebrate-next-chapter).
This allowed the unsuccessful Free Weekend Travel scheme to continue for another year in 2019-2020 at a cost of £1 million. This was despite the fact that the 2017-2018 report had already shown that the scheme was unsuccessful in meeting its stated objective to encourage free weekend travellers to pay to use services in midweek. The 2017-2018 report was more of an advert for the T2 and T3 services and the Free Weekend travel scheme.
The 2017-2018 report states.
In 2017-18 the Welsh Government contributed £2.057m in revenue support to provide services topped up with a further £1m to trial weekend free travel across the network.
In 2017-18 the TrawsCymru® network carried 1.751 million passengers a growth of 133,438 passengers
Between July 2017 and March 2018, an additional 133,391 passengers travelled on TrawsCymru® services which represented an increase of 65.49% on weekends, compared to the equivalent period in 2016-17.
Therefore simple maths tells you that 47 extra passengers travelled in midweek at a cost of £1 million. In my view, the scheme should have been stopped then and this just makes the ridiculous claims in the 2018-19 report even more indefensible.
The £2 million that has been spent after the 2017-2018 report should have been used in other ways – new services (not rebranding) / lower fares in midweek etc in order to attract more passengers and avoid cars using the roads.
You will doubtless be very familiar with the excellent study by David Holding and Tony Moyes about how the traditional market for travel from South Wales to Aberystwyth ....
.
Thanks - I was not aware and have managed to locate at the National Library 2 copies if the study is the one referenced below
South Wales (History of British Bus Services)
Holding, David and Moyes, Tony. Published by Ian Allan Publishing, 1986.
ISBN 10: 0711015309ISBN 13: 9780711015302
I shall certainly seek it out.
However I would question why a 35 year old report should condemn passengers between Cardiff and Aberystwyth to not be able to use the T1C service . Life has moved on since 1986.
Since 1986 the number of cars on the road has doubled and we have a Climate Emergency which dictates that we reduce car journeys.
However 17 million households in Great Britain do not own a car and a quarter of people in Wales are in poverty . There is a huge market for bus services in preference to the train simply because a bus is what they can afford.
The Welsh Government (WG) now "run" both the rail and Trawscymru bus services and have complete discretion over whether the T1C service runs or not. The WG talk the talk with the Future Generations Act, "Levelling up" etc and say they are committed to tackle poverty, reduce inequalities and support economic growth. Yet they refuse to provide an affordable T1C bus service for the population of Cardiff and thereby refuse to support economic growth in Aberystwyth and Aberaeron. A T1C service from Cardiff would service 2 seaside towns not the one town of Barmouth which the T3 services.
A fraction of the £2 million spent on the unsuccessful Free Weekend Travel Scheme between 2018 and 2020 would have provided just one T1C service between Cardiff and Aberystwyth.
References
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ttachment_data/file/8995/vehicles-summary.pdf
""Private and light goods vehicles increased from 3 million in 1950 to 10 million in 1966 to 18 million in 1986 and to 30 million.in 2010"" .
In 2021, approximately 25.6 million people in Great Britain lived in a household that owned one car.
www.statista.com
""In 2020, the majority of British households (36.15 million) owned one car. An estimated 25.7 million households owned two cars.
Meanwhile, an estimated 17 million households in Great Britain owned no cars. This was a marginal increase from 2019."".
https://www.jrf.org.uk › report › poverty-wales-2020
""Poverty in Wales 2020 | JRF - Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Even before coronavirus, almost a quarter of people in Wales were in poverty (700,000) living precarious and insecure ...""
At the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, we work to speed up and support the transition to a future free from poverty, in which people and planet can flourish.
www.jrf.org.uk
""29% of children in Wales are still in poverty's grip, despite attempts to loosen it.""
""child poverty (with a poverty line defined at
half mean equivalised household income) has risen markedly in Britain in the last 30 years. By 1995–96, around one in three — or 4.3 million — children were living in poor households. This
compares with child poverty rates of one in ten, corresponding to 1.4 million children, in 1968.""
The fact is that you are talking about long standing services. The T3 is clearly a straight replacement for the longstanding X94 (originally Crosville D93/D94) that has operated in that form for the last 60 years.
That is understood, but again I would question whether the fact that the route has not changed after 60 years is a valid reason for not changing it now.
The off route diversions (With 3 point turns for double deckers) in Llanuwchlynn and Llanderfel to visit non existent rail stations and the major diversion along the B4401 between Bala and Corwen to follow the route of the old railway line could be serviced by Bwcabus with a figure of 8 route centralised on Bala running between Corwen and Llanuwchlynn picking up passengers on the B4403 (Llangower village, Bala Sailing Club, Bala Lake Railway and Bala Camping) on the Southern side of Lake Bala .
This would allow a fast direct route for the T3 between Dolgellau and Llangollen with Bwcabus being timed to connect with the T3. The saving in time would then avoid the 15 minute waits of the T2 services in Dolgellau for late running T3 services which is decimating connections of the T2 with the T1 in Aberystwyth.
T3 services are frequently late and fail to meet the Traffic Commissioners Standard that 95% of services arrive within 5 minutes of their published arrival time. In 2016-2017 the figure for T3 Wrexham – Barmouth was 87.39% and T1 Aberystwyth – Carmarthen was 97.73%
(
http://www.greengauge21.net/wp-content/uploads/GG21_IBR_A4P_WEB.pdf )
The fact that the T3 does not employ a direct route between Llangollen and Wrexham is also puzzling. The justification is to allow links to the rail network at Ruabon station. In 27 trips made on the T3 no passengers got on or off at the station. This could be something to do with no connecting rail services to the T3 or due to competition from the Arriva No 5 Service, which runs every 20 minutes between Llangollen and Wrexham on the same route as the T3. Even more puzzling is that the WG fund the No 5 Service !!.
(
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-50845081).
The conclusion is that the WG could easily spend some of the £2 million spent on the unsuccessful Free Weekend Travel Scheme on improving the speed of the T3 attracting more passengers, whilst also improving connections in Aberystwyth between T2/T1 services. There is an argument that a justification for the Free Weekend Travel Scheme was to boost day trips at weekends from Wrexham to Barmouth. A speed increase on the T3 route would have the same effect. The closer you get bus journey times to the journey time for a car then the more likely you are to remove cars off the road and place passengers onto buses.
Also, the focussing on the population of Barmouth is the sort of bizarre, flawed logic that Dr Beeching used to cull routes to seaside resorts as it's about visitors from elsewhere.
The same bizarre, flawed logic is being applied now to Aberystwyth in 2021 by the WG not Dr Beeching.
