Madam,

We need a much better bus service between Tywyn and Aberystwyth. Not that we necessarily want a night on the tiles, which isn’t possible because you can’t get back after 4.30pm, but because we can’t make outpatient appointments or visit family and friends at Bronglais hospital without great difficulty.

For those over 60, expense isn’t the key problem, thanks to free bus travel and winter-time free rail travel provided by the Labour Government. If Plaid Cymru hadn’t blocked it, over-sixties would have had the benefit of free rail travel in summer as well.

With Tywyn’s new health centre and local hospital located on the road to Aberystwyth, the case for a better bus service has never been stronger.

This isn’t the place to go into the minutiae of timetables, but certain key facts stand out.

The first service of the day leaves from Tywyn at the startlingly early time of 6.50am. It is very well used by school students and workers. The next doesn’t go until 8.50am, too late for them. Thanks to the current requirement to change buses at Machynlleth, the journey is longer than it need be at an hour and a half.

As for linkage with the train timetable, there isn’t any! This two-hourly service runs through to the late afternoon. There is no Sunday service.

Clearly, there is a very strong case for an hourly no-change service that would take just a little over an hour for the morning commute. We need some evening return services and at least one return service on Sundays.

If you’re asking where the money would come from, I direct your attention to the 24 full colour pages of Gwynedd Council’s publicity broadsheet Newyddion, delivered to every household four times a year at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds.

Yours etc,

Quentin Deakin, Corbett Avenue, Tywyn.

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