Blackwood to Ystrad Mynach rail link bus to end

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From the South Wales Argus

CAERPHILLY council has axed funding for a heavily subsidised bus service which connects communities to a railway station.

Run by Adventure Travel, the Rail Linc 901 bus service, running between Blackwood and Ystrad Mynach station, will be shut down after Saturday, July 22, in a council cost-cutting plan.

The service was described as “the contract with the highest subsidy per passenger” for Caerphilly County Borough Council, last year costing the local authority £13.43 per passenger.

An estimated 900 people used the service each month, and in light of “financial pressures facing the council” it was decided earlier this year to pull the plug on the Rail Linc.

The service makes 23 single journeys a day, 6 days a week - so that's over 600 journeys a month.  Each journey, then, averages 1.5 passengers if (as I suspect ) it means 900 journeys a month rather than 900 people.

[Bob_Blakey]

A c.40 minute round trip journey during the day with an apparent layover of up to 55 minutes at Ystrad Mynach doesn't exactly say efficient use of resources to me. And Pengam Railway Station is much closer to Blackwood but has the same roughly 3 TPH^▸ (trains per hour) service as Ystrad Mynach. Alternatively it would be very easy to divert the 26 service to cover the gap left by withdrawal of the 901 bus something which would only add 5-10 minutes to the journey. I am obviously missing something.