Why a 49-mile journey in Wales takes seven hours

[Krokodil]

Down here they tried running hourly trains between Newport and Crosskeys. People stayed on the parallel bus, which runs at least every fifteen minutes. I had a coach to myself and the guard had the other coach last time I used it.

Is it really a surprise that a service that didn't reliably turn up - and when it did run it didn't actually go to the busiest station on the line - wasn't well used?

Railways aren't the only things which bring social benefits. Pretty much all public expenditure does.

Would someone tell that to the UK government?

but it's a fact that they have to compete for taxpayers' money and it's only fair that they do so on a level playing field.

The playing field was inclined against rail for many years. It's about time that it was rebalanced. Buses seldom achieve significant modal shift, they usually become a distress purchase for those who can't use a train (whether it's down to price or the complete lack of one). If you want to get people out of their cars (and we really should, mass motoring is unsustainable) then the best way to achieve it is rail.

I'm not saying that we should reopen slow branch lines that serve no significant population, but if a line is still operational (and with more than a Parly service) then it probably deserves to stay.

It's one thing to not go forwards, it's another to actually go backwards.

 

[Dai Corner]

Is it really a surprise that a service that didn't reliably turn up - and when it did run it didn't actually go to the busiest station on the line - wasn't well used?

That's why I said it will be interesting to see what happens once it's reintroduced and, hopefully, properly resourced and reliable.

The Ebbw Valley is an urban route by the way. Definitely so as far as Newbridge.

Would someone tell that to the UK government?

The Welsh Government for the purpose of this thread. They have reduced support for buses and most other public services except the NHS in favour of the railways recently.

I believe the UK Government are spending considerable sums on resignalling in West Wales too. All for the benefit of the 1% of trips which use the trains and the daily freight.

The playing field was inclined against rail for many years. It's about time that it was rebalanced. Buses seldom achieve significant modal shift, they usually become a distress purchase for those who can't use a train (whether it's down to price or the complete lack of one). If you want to get people out of their cars (and we really should, mass motoring is unsustainable) then the best way to achieve it is rail.

I'm not saying that we should reopen slow branch lines that serve no significant population, but if a line is still operational (and with more than a Parly service) then it probably deserves to stay.

It's one thing to not go forwards, it's another to actually go backwards.

My playing field is larger than yours I think. I'm including all Government expenditure.

Road is really the only sustainable transport in more sparsely populated areas. It make no sense to maintain a rail network as well and subsidise the few who can and do use it, sorry. Large urban areas are different.

 

[laseandre]

No, but the many sheep farmers do, and they don't generally support Labour.

My point was: it seems like the Tories are a lot bigger than they are because they have large, sparsely populated constituencies.

 

[Krokodil]

Road is really the only sustainable transport in more sparsely populated areas.

I agree, I just draw the line in a different place to you. Mercifully so do the powers that be.

It make no sense to maintain a rail network as well and subsidise the few who can and do use it, sorry.

That's your view. Clearly generations of governments feel differently because these lines continue to survive.

Large urban areas are different.

The economics of the Ebbw Vale line would improve considerably if the passengers actually paid for their travel. I hear plenty of horror stories from Cardiff crews.

 

[dangerousdids2]

I used to do a 25 mile journey that took close to 3 hours and 6 changes. Could shave half hour off that doing a 80 mile journey with 3 changes!

 

[Doctor Fegg]

The population of Haverfordwest is about 12,000 and even pre-covid about 120,000 used the station. On average each inhabitant took less than one train trip a month. Now it's down to about seven times a year. It's hard for those who work on the railway or use it frequently to appreciate how insignificant it is outside the large urban areas.

It's also hard for people to appreciate that not all rural areas are the same.

(I'm writing from a rural town with a population of 3000 and, pre-Covid, 300,000 journeys per year. So on average each inhabitant takes 100 trips per year. Yes, we have a lot of railheading. Most of that railheading is also from rural areas...)

 

[Dai Corner]

It's also hard for people to appreciate that not all rural areas are the same.

(I'm writing from a rural town with a population of 3000 and, pre-Covid, 300,000 journeys per year. So on average each inhabitant takes 100 trips per year. Yes, we have a lot of railheading. Most of that railheading is also from rural areas...)

What's the population of the area that uses your station as a railhead, where do the trains go? I'd expect a station within an hour of a large town or city to have greater usage, for example.

I accept that my calculation overestimates the annual trips per inhabitant for Haverfordwest as I didn't include the surrounding rural population.

 

[Krokodil]

I accept that my calculation overestimates the annual trips per inhabitant for Haverfordwest as I didn't include the surrounding rural population.

And some of the passengers counted will be people arriving from (and then returning to) other stations. Non-resident workers, visitors etc.

 

[zwk500]

One the one hand you can't serve everywhere, on the other, public transport must be about more than just Central London commuters.

Nobody travels from Aberystwyth to Carmarthen. But plenty will travel to Cardiff, or from Welshpool who are making the same connection at Shrewsbury but which is in fact an accident of happenchance rather than something that was planned or engineered in the timetable.

Note - nationalised, integrated, single operator. And it still doesn't work.

Where did I say public transport should only be about Central London commuters?

People can get trains from towns to large towns and cities, which is what trains are very good at. Aberwystwyth and Camarthen both have trains to places where lots of people want to go. For the smaller links there's other options.

Related to the BCR debate - not sure if it's been swallowed up in the furore but schemes that are funded from within the Welsh Government's budget follow WelTAG and don't need a BCR, but rather an IWBA (integrated Well-being assessment). However anything that needs funding outside that or UK DfT funding would require a BCR. Therefore, running a better bus service on this route would not need a BCR but building a train line to serve it would.

 

[jayah]

Where did I say public transport should only be about Central London commuters?

People can get trains from towns to large towns and cities, which is what trains are very good at. Aberwystwyth and Camarthen both have trains to places where lots of people want to go. For the smaller links there's other options.

Related to the BCR debate - not sure if it's been swallowed up in the furore but schemes that are funded from within the Welsh Government's budget follow WelTAG and don't need a BCR, but rather an IWBA (integrated Well-being assessment). However anything that needs funding outside that or UK DfT funding would require a BCR. Therefore, running a better bus service on this route would not need a BCR but building a train line to serve it would.

What you said was that:

Trains are *not* for everywhere to anywhere journeys. Smaller flows need different solutions and trains are the motorways of the public transport network.

Trains are only sometimes good at getting you to the *next* town or the next city, if it is on the same line. As soon as you have to change train or change between modes, it often goes to pot. People in Welshpool do go to Cardiff and they suffer the same long connections as the hypothetical traveller going from Aberwystwyth to Camarthen. It is not unreasonable to expect journeys like that to work by rail.

 

[Dai Corner]

It takes about 3 hours with a change at Shrewsbury.

Are you advocating spending many billions of pounds on building a new rail route? How much time would that save and how would it stack up against a new high quality road and express coaches?

 

[zwk500]

Trains are only sometimes good at getting you to the *next* town or the next city, if it is on the same line.

No, quite often they're good at getting you very far. Of course that requires a well-run and properly thought out system, not one that's been creaking under COVID and industrial tensions for many years now.

As soon as you have to change train or change between modes, it often goes to pot.

Changing train just as often goes absolutely fine as it does to pot. Changing between modes I will give you is far worse for passengers.

People in Welshpool do go to Cardiff and they suffer the same long connections as the hypothetical traveller going from Aberwystwyth to Camarthen. It is not unreasonable to expect journeys like that to work by rail.

Connections to Cardiff are exactly the type of things trains should be targeted at. It's a large city in it's own right and as the capital of Wales with it's sport, culture and business it's got a lot of travel demand. And certainly if the connection is poor to Cardiff options for improving it should be looked at. But Welshpool to Cardiff is a very different journey in terms of the two towns/cities, geography and options than Aberystwyth-Camarthen.

 

[jayah]

No, quite often they're good at getting you very far. Of course that requires a well-run and properly thought out system, not one that's been creaking under COVID and industrial tensions for many years now.

It is not a system - that is why it usually goes wrong as soon as you change from one train to another, even using the same operator. The fact some trains go a long way doesn't change this. And COVID doesn't really have anything to do with it either, it was the same before .

Changing train just as often goes absolutely fine as it does to pot. Changing between modes I will give you is far worse for passengers.

Its not a competition for who can do it worse. The article is very good at pointing out rail operators cannot even be bothered to plan connections, even between their own trains. If you think 30-40min connections are fine, you have low expectations.

Connections to Cardiff are exactly the type of things trains should be targeted at. It's a large city in it's own right and as the capital of Wales with it's sport, culture and business it's got a lot of travel demand. And certainly if the connection is poor to Cardiff options for improving it should be looked at. But Welshpool to Cardiff is a very different journey in terms of the two towns/cities, geography and options than Aberystwyth-Camarthen.

Again Aberystwyth - Carmarthen is irrelevant. The 30-40min connections at Shrewsbury are the same ones, between the same trains, for both flows. Credit at least for recognising there might be a problem here and it might be worth trying to fix it.

 

[Krokodil]

Its not a competition for who can do it worse. The article is very good at pointing out rail operators cannot even be bothered to plan connections, even between their own trains. If you think 30-40min connections are fine, you have low expectations.

If nothing else they're reliable, when (not if) one of the services is up the spout it becomes a convenient connection.

But I'm being facetious and agree with you; at Llandudno Junction there used to be a shuttle service that would connect with the Holyhead-Cardiff/Birmingham trains, thus providing Llandudno with an effective half-hourly service towards Chester and convenient connections for Bangor too. Now though, those shuttles that remain in the timetable are often timed not to make half of the possible connections.

Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford have the potential to be Takt nodes with only small tweaks to timetables. They're conveniently just under an hour from each other and an hour from other major hubs. No guiding mind has stepped in to organise it though.

 

[zwk500]

It is not a system - that is why it usually goes wrong as soon as you change from one train to another, even using the same operator.

Not a system and a broken/not working system are two very different things.

Again Aberystwyth - Carmarthen is irrelevant. The 30-40min connections at Shrewsbury are the same ones, between the same trains, for both flows.

The journey this thread was started on is irrelevant? OK then. And no, Cardiff is in the opposite direction to Carmarthen so it isn't the same train or the same flow. There's also a slightly higher service frequency from Shrewsbury to Cardiff (1.5tph) than to Carmarthen (1tph).

 

[stuu]

The journey this thread was started on is irrelevant? OK then. And no, Cardiff is in the opposite direction to Carmarthen so it isn't the same train or the same flow. There's also a slightly higher service frequency from Shrewsbury to Cardiff (1.5tph) than to Carmarthen (1tph).

Are you thinking of Caernarfon? Carmarthen and Cardiff are in the same direction from Shrewsbury

 

[jayah]

Not a system and a broken/not working system are two very different things.

If the connections are not planned in the booked timetable and consequentially are rubbish, that is not a system. It facilitates connecting journeys largely by accident than design.

Unplanned disruption is what you are describing.

The journey this thread was started on is irrelevant? OK then. And no, Cardiff is in the opposite direction to Carmarthen so it isn't the same train or the same flow. There's also a slightly higher service frequency from Shrewsbury to Cardiff (1.5tph) than to Carmarthen (1tph).

The discussion on this thread about the Aberystwyth journey itself being immaterial, are irrelevant because exactly the same problems with the same poor connections affect other journeys that are important.

The connection from Shrewsbury to either destination is whichever Cardiff train arrives next.

 

[jayah]

Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford have the potential to be Takt nodes with only small tweaks to timetables. They're conveniently just under an hour from each other and an hour from other major hubs. No guiding mind has stepped in to organise it though.

They don't need a guiding mind, most of the time it is the same train operator failing to make any attempt to connect with themselves!

 

[Krokodil]

They don't need a guiding mind, most of the time it is the same train operator failing to make any attempt to connect with themselves!

And? Why does a train operator not need a guiding mind and some strategic planning?

 

[Matt P]

I still find it extremely surprising that after the 1964 general election the new government, with a manifesto commitment to halt major rail closures still allowed several strategic Welsh withdrawals to go ahead: Carmarthen-Aberystwyth, Afon Wen-Caernarvon, Morfa Mawddach-Ruabon and Welshpool-Oswestry were all still open.

I get that other links like the Mid Wales lines via Brecon/Three Cocks Junction and the 'Heads of Valleys' had already gone, even before the Reshaping Report, but late-1964 to 1965 was really when any idea of an 'intra-Wales' network slipped beyond possible recovery.

It may be worth checking how many marginal constituencies those lines ran through. Being cynical, I suspect not as many as the Central Wales line!

Of those lines mentioned, only Ruabon to Barmouth stands out to me as route which could potentially have been retained, albeit with significant rationalisation such as closure of all stations west of Llangollen other than Corwen, Bala and Dolgellau. However rention may have had unintended consequences.

The Cambrian Coast line was periodically under threat throughout the BR period from Beeching onwards. Would keeping Ruabon to Barmouth open have made it easier to justify the closure of the Machynlleth to Barmouth section?

Keeping Bangor to Caernarfon open makes some sense. However does keeping the line all the way to Afon Wen open make sense? Especially if Ruabon to Barmouth stays open. The justification for keeping the routes would be to provide connections to northeast Wales and the northwest of England. But I cant see the traffic being there to justify both. It would be one or other. And of the two, Ruabon to Barmouth runs through a relatively urbanised area east of Llangollen that isnt currently rail served.

I am struggling to see the case for Camarthen to Aberystwyth. I've mentioned in another post that the line's main revenue stream was actually milk, as evidenced by the fact that just over half of it stayed open for milk traffic until 1973.

I am unsure of the case for Whitchurch to Welshpool as well, particularly if Ruabon to Barmouth is kept open and, as actually happened, the Welshpool to Shrewsbury line. Granted, both Oswestry and Ellesmere have grown substantially since 1965. However would they generate enough traffic over the route to justify retention? Do lots of people from either travel regularly between the two towns or onwards to Whitchurch or even Crewe? Would they if the line was still open. I personally have doubts.

The only line out of Oswestry that should have remained open in my opinion is the branch to Gobowen.