Madam,

Ceredigion County Council Cabinet member for transport Cllr Alun Williams made comments in December regarding a pilot scheme that offers free weekend bus travel on the TrawsCymru network across Wales.

Cllr Williams said the T2 service between Aberystwyth and Bangor had seen a 77 per cent per cent increase in passengers. What Cllr Williams failed to mention was that the T2 services do not connect any more with the T1 in Aberystwyth.

The T2 and T1 routes were designed as a north to south route (133 miles) linking Bangor with Carmarthen and in Carmarthen with trains going east to Cardiff.

The T2/T1 route still has an outstanding key action to improve reliability and journey times on this strategic route (recorded in the published Welsh Government Transport Strategy document).

The reason that the T2 no longer connects with the T1 in Aberystwyth is because the 15-minute connection time in Aberystwyth between the T2 and T1 was transferred to Dolgellau when the T3 (a 58-mile-long, non-strategic service between Wrexham and Barmouth) was introduced in 2014.

Before the T3 service was introduced the Welsh Government had commissioned an independent review of the TrawsCymru network by the Bevan Foundation, which recommended that the T3 should run from Wrexham to Aberystwyth rather than Barmouth.

This recommendation would have resulted in no disruption to the strategic T2/T1 Bangor to Carmarthen service. The T3 would have then become a strategic service between Wrexham and Aberystwyth (with links to the T1 to Carmarthen and T5 to Cardigan), and possibly with links at Newtown in mid Wales with the T4 to Cardiff.

The Welsh Government ignored their own Transport Strategy document and the independent Bevan Foundation review and introduced the T3 from Wrexham to Barmouth with catastrophic results on the T2/T1 Bangor to Carmarthen services.

For example, because of the 15-minute delays in Dolgellau to wait for the T3 from Wrexham the last T2 service of the day arrived in Aberystwyth at 18.40 and the T1 to Carmarthen departed at 18.40, with only 50 per cent of services connecting.

Passengers who decided that this connection was too risky had the option of catching the train in Bangor to go to Carmarthen and could follow a circuit route across north Wales to Crewe in Cheshire, down to South Wales and on to Carmarthen.

This train route takes up to seven-and-a-half hours (could be longer than the bus) and costs £90.60 one-way.

Since the introduction of the T3 service, journey times on the T2/T1 route have increased by between one and two hours.

On 17 November last year the Cabinet Secretary responsible for Transport, Ken Skates, wrote to Cllr Williams saying he would commission a “high-level” review into the Bevan Foundation recommendation to route the T3 from Wrexham to Aberystwyth. Cllr Williams has confirmed that this “high-level” review has not been actioned.

Not only was the review not actioned but also, two months later, on 15 January, the Welsh Government ignored the promised “high level” review and introduced further changes to the T2 service to improve connections with the T3 from Wrexham to Barmouth, four of which were catastrophic to connections in Aberystwyth.

Yours etc,

Dr John McTighe, Llanrhystud.

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