Madam,

The 5 July edition featured a letter, 'Retiming of bus service done for a good reason', in which the writer indicated that the retimed 6.50pm T2 arrival in Aberystwyth always arrived 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 6.50pm was done for no reason at all'.

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 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 6.40pm T2 arrival in Aberystwyth was sometimes late in Taliesin was not because of horrific traffic delays in the Caernarfon area but because the T2 service had a scheduled wait of 10 minutes in Dolgellau and then a further five minutes’ delay beyond its published departure time to wait for late TrawsCymru T3 services from Wrexham.

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.

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

5. It would be beneficial to the public to be told which services wait.

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.

We need to ask Bus Users Cymru and the TrawsCymru network manager for an explanation on (a) Which TrawsCymru services in Aberystwyth are subject to a “five-minute delayed departure”; (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. 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.

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