Thursday 1st February 2024
The infamous £3 million Barry Docks Transport Interchange, which opened last year without any buses, can now proudly boast it has at least one bus route enabling passengers to interchange with trains.
Commencing on 8th January, Vale of Glamorgan Council introduced a new timetable on local town route B3 so it began serving the newly built four bus stop Transport Interchange alongside the railway station.
Route B3 is operated on behalf of the Council by Comfort DelGro owned Adventure Travel. The route encircles the town of Barry on an elongated figure of eight pattern linking the town centre with the Gibbons Down and Cadoxton areas in the north east and The Knap area in the south west.
The route already had a small ‘dog leg’ to serve a Morrisons supermarket and it’s that bit of route that’s been extended by a further half a mile to the new Transport Interchange, making for a mile extra per journey segment.
Until the change in January, the timetable was a nice easy to remember hourly frequency with eight round trip journeys and an hour’s gap at lunch time for the driver to have a break.
The new extension has added five minutes to each journey making for an extra ten minutes on the complete circuit for the two extra miles, as the bus diverts twice on its way round (from both Cadoxton and The Knap) to serve Morrisons and the Transport Interchange. To fit this in, the new timetable has one less round trip (seven, instead of eight a day) and a somewhat inconvenient and unmemorable 70 minute frequency instead of hourly.
The upshot of all this is regular passengers who use the route to travel to the town centre, the medical centre and Morrisons now have one fewer journey per day and a difficult to remember timetable.
And guess how many passengers are using the B3 to reach the shiny new Transport Interchange?
None, of course.
Well, there weren’t any when I visited Barry Docks last Thursday and the regular driver told me he hadn’t carried anyone so far, as well as making the pertinent point the new link needs advertising, rightly pointing out what it needs is a printed timetable. And maybe a house to house distribution, I would add.
But, there again, you might be wondering why passengers would want to interchange from bus to train (or vice versa) at the new Transport Interchange anyway, as the B3 route actually goes within a stones throw of the next station along the line, funnily enough, called Barry, because that’s where it’s located.
It is the case that Barry Docks station is closer to Barry’s town centre (eg the Civic Offices) than Barry station, but the latter is handy for those living in The Knap area, and those in the Cadoxton area are not far from Cadoxton station as can be seen in the map below.
Sadly we now have a white elephant of a route extension to serve a white elephant of a Transport Interchange and an inconvenient, less attractive route and timetable for passengers in the process.
Let’s hope councillors don’t get more ideas of diverting other bus routes to serve the Transport Interchange.
In the mean time, I see motorists are realising it’s a handy place to park.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS including another extra Superloop blog on Su and on Tuesday 13th February at 12:00 don’t miss a free-to-attend online webinar “Secrets of a Successful Bus Operation” thanks to the Foundation for Integrated Transport. Book your place here.
Comments are welcome but please keep them relevant to the blog topic, avoid personal insults and add your name (or an identifier). Thank you.
BusAndTrainUser 
Is this in fact merely the opening stage of a grand taktfahrplan, with 4 buses-per-hour connecting all parts of Barry and surrounds with the 4ph trains at Barry Docks (which, for a lot of the day, run conveniently – in both directions – at roughly the hour, quarter-past etc.), or is it what it looks like: a very costly mess-up?
Rick Townend
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I suppose a panic move when the “never set foot on a bus” Politicians realised they had created this glorious White Elephant. In fact, it probably would have gone unnoticed had the press not stumbled upon it on a “bad news day”.
As pointed out, why would anyone use the B3 when it passes other stations on the line to Cardiff and wreck the previous even headway timetable.
As buses, particularly in Wales, sink helplessly into further political control, we can probably look forward to many more “exciting” developments such as this….
Terence Uden
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I see Terence faithfully plays the ‘public control bad, private sector good’ card again! This a bit unfair. Such is the gestation period of projects such as this (years), the actual bus network may be completely different on completion to the one that existed at the time of planning. Agree this is an extreme example, but on a smaller scale, how many times have we all seen private sector companies abandon sections of route seemingly on a whim irrespective of housing developments etc that are being built and by the minimum timescales required by law (months). No wonder some bus stops end up being unserved!
Dan Tancock
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I really don’t think the bus network is going to change around Barry Dock for many years, and my point was whoever sanctioned this ridiculous and costly interchange clearly knew nothing about the bus network. I am surprised it hasn’t got 20mph signs plastered all over, but perhaps that is work in progress.
But a comfort to know that the Pitchfork Brigade still monitor my every utterance, and whilst flattering, a tolerance of other opinions would be welcome.
Terence Uden
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The service between King Square in Barry Dock (the main shopping area) and Barry Dock station ran half-hourly in 1953, and this was still the case in 1974. In the mid 1970’s the frequency was reduced to hourly, and this situation would seem to have persisted for almost 50 years. As far as I can tell, these services always stopped on the north side of the railway station.
The fact that a bus service stops outside a railway station does not necessarily mean that any of the passengers actually need or wish to make the connection to the train. In this case, the journey from King Square takes about 5 minutes, but at King Square there are more frequent buses to either Barry station (westwards) or Cadoxton (eastwards), so that the majority of potential passengers, who do wish to transfer to/from the train, probably have better services from King Square.
As per my comment on Roger’s earlier report, there appears to be quite a lot of vacant land in the area south of Barry Dock station, so if that were to be developed, then the market for the bus service might change – but that hasn’t happened in the last 50 years; and house building appears to have slowed down in the UK (just as it has in Germany, and probably elsewhere).
What will be interesting to discover is the effect that the change of frequency will have on loadings – from “easy to remember” hourly to every 70 minutes (more or less impossible to remember when the bus will actually run). That information might be useful for timetable planners in the future!
Nigel Frampton
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A similar story in Flitwick, Bedfordshire – a shiny new bus interchange, few buses:
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0036955,-0.4964437,3a,90y,55.53h,92.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smtgUNuxJzjb6i-qaivqxYg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
The opening was long delayed as it was built too narrow for a bus to use:
https://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/news/transport/opening-of-ps48m-flitwick-transport-interchange-delayed-after-claims-theres-not-enough-space-for-buses-to-use-it-4017525
And Stagecoach are withdrawing one of the few bus routes that serve it:
Click to access STG_FEB_18_BEDS_GUIDE.pdf
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This is what happens when politicians think they can run buses better than transport professionals. It is happening all over the country as you have highlighted in numerous of your excellent blogs.
Perhaps we should tot up all these white elephant schemes, including the dead-loss DRT schemes!
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Should the new Timetable have a 2nd time line for Morrisons Store for Journeys from the Interchange – this would give you 4mins extra shopping time, this might be handy
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You got the hourly 88 service to Penarth withdrawn last year when funding was withdrawn being resurrected from 1st April this will also serve the interchange
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Passengerless Transport Interchange
Shiny new £40million train station built in Tory stronghold is only missing one thing – passengers
Official figures show the station, which cost almost four times its estimate, attracts fewer than 300 passengers a day. Some locals are baffled at why it exists at all. Steven Smith, 51, told us: “I think it’s a white elephant, it’s been built in the wrong place and it’s not very well used.”
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Presumably this is a reference to Thanet Parkway?
Nigel Frampton
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NAT bus has had somewhat of a disaster with the latest round of tenders. It has lost very many routes
68 – Goes to Newport Bus
A3,A5 & A6 Newport Bus
G1 New operator unknown at present
10 New Operator not known at present
303/4/5 First Cymru
320/321 First Cymru
103/4 Stagecoach
105 Edwards
106 Unknown
107/9./1 Edwards
404 Stagecoach
A.B.C Unknown
C18 Harris
C16 Unknown
X38 Harris
R1 Unknown
1 Unknown
89/600 Unknown
Routes Gained
88. B3
612, 613, 614, 615 and 618 (Cardiff school services)
404 (evenings only)
130 (Sunday only)
112 (Sunday only)
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Newport Bus are almost doubling their Flix Bus Commitment
With the number of routes they are operating at quite a long range from their Newport depot you would think they would e looking to set up an outstation
These routes operate a fair way from Newport
68
A3,A5,A5
C1,C2,C3,C4
T7
72
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