”Retiming of the T2 bus service to arrive at 6.50 pm was done for no reason at all”

Reply-To: john.mct@

”Retiming of the T2 bus service to arrive at 6.50 pm was done for no reason at all”

Madam,

The 5th July edition featured a letter ”Retiming of bus service done for a good reason” in which the writer indicated that the retimed 6.50 pm T2 arrival in Aberystwyth always arrived late (20 or 30 minutes late) in Taliesin before the change to 6.50pm “due to horrific traffic delays in the Caernarfon area”.   The writer also said a simple solution to T2/T1 connections would be to retime the T1 6.40pm departure to Carmarthen by running this service from Aberystwyth 15 minutes later to connect with the 6.50pm T2 arrival.

I would say ”Retiming of the T2 bus service to arrive at 6.50 pm was done for no reason at all” and was carried out as a deliberate act to make it impossible to connect between the T2 6.50 pm arrival and the T1 6.40 pm departure to Carmarthen .  I would  make the following points:-

(1) The Trawscymru T2 (Bangor to Aberystwyth) is a long distance service supposedly connecting in Aberystwyth with T1 services to provide a fast route between Bangor and Carmarthen and in Carmarthen onward by bus/train to Swansea/Cardiff.   The T2 service is not a local bus service between Taliesin and Aberystwyth and therefore should not be designed purely with Taliesin in mind.

(2) The reason the old 6.40 pm T2 arrival in Aberystwyth was sometimes late in Taliesin (I would say 50% of the time it was late, but never in my experience 20 or 30 minutes late) was not because of  horrific traffic delays in the Caernarfon area but was because the T2 service had a scheduled wait of 10 minutes in Dolgellau and then a further 5 minutes delay beyond its published departure time (15 minutes in total) to wait for late Trawscymru T3 services from Wrexham. (which are more than 20 minutes late most of the time due to poor route design between Wrexham and Dolgellau).

(3) In January 2018 the T2 timetable was changed and all T2 departures from Bangor departed 10 minutes earlier and the journey time was increased between Bangor and Porthmadog by the same 10 minutes. The reason this was done was to cater for anticipated traffic delays when work on the Caernarfon bypass starts (earliest start predicted to be November 2018).   All T2 service journey times between Bangor and Aberystwyth were therefore increased by 10 minutes with one exception, this exception being the 6.40 pm T2 arrival in Aberystwyth, which had its journey time increased by 20 minutes, due to a further 10 minutes of delays introduced close to Aberystwyth.

(4) In January 2018 the only T2 arrival time to change in Aberystwyth was the 6.40 pm T2 arrival, which was changed to 6.50 pm . The extra 10 minutes was the result of a completely unnecessary wait in Machynleth for 5 minutes followed by a 5 minute detour off the A487 near Aberystwyth through Comins Coch/Aberystwyth Waunfawr estate.  These unnecessary changes made sure the T2 could not connect with the 6.40 pm T1 departure to Carmarthen.

(5) The writer explained that correspondence and articles were forwarded by the writer to Bus Users Cymru and the Trawscymru Network Manager and mentioned Trawscymru services could wait “up to 10 minutes” for a connecting service in Aberystwyth.  It would be beneficial to the public to be told which services wait (ie delay their departure beyond the timetabled departure time) . In my experience in Aberystwyth “some” T2 service departures wait, no T5 and no T1 service departures  wait.

The writer was incorrect in saying a wait of up to 10 minutes is allowed . This is the delayed departure that the Trawscymru Manager was employing for the T2 in Dolgellau in January 2016.  Following complaints that 10 minute delayed departures contravened the the Road Traffic Regulations, the Trawscymru Network Manager was forced by the Road Traffic Commissioner to reduce delayed departures to 5 minutes.

(6) The suggestion by the writer to change the departure time of the T1 to Carmarthen by 15 minutes to 6.55pm is impractical as the T1 would then not connect in Carmarthen with the last train to Cardiff.

Finally, if this letter is published , perhaps the writer could forward it to Bus Users Cymru and the Trawscymru Network Manager and ask for an explanation for the public on (a) Which Trawscymru services in Aberystwyth are subject to a “5 minute delayed departure” and (b) Who is responsible for connectivity of Trawscymru services in Aberystwyth and (c) Why the T2 arrival time cannot be put back to its previous time of  6.40pm and the T1 departure time to Carmarthen be changed from 6.40pm to 6.43pm (with a 2 minute delayed departure. to a maximum of 6.45pm).  This would allow the T2 to connect with the T1 and the T1 departure change would still allow the T1 to connect in Carmarthen with the train to Cardiff.

Yours etc  Dr John McTighe ,  Llanrhystud