This £680 per passenger Rail Replacement farce ends Saturday

Tuesday 9th December 2025

Recent reports in some of the trade press quoting an eye watering cost of £650-£680 per passenger for a rail replacement bus service that’s been running for almost two years cried out for a BusAndTrainUser Verify investigation.

It was reported the 16 seat minibus providing a journey of less than three miles on a short stretch of the Treherbert line in the Cardiff Valleys across a 19 hour operational day was carrying on average less than four passengers a day. A Freedom of Information request to Transport for Wales (TfW) confirmed the cost of the contract for the minibus at £297,988 between April and August with £97,245 also spent on “revenue protection for this service, although in practice staff may occasionally have been redeployed elsewhere”.

It all sounded too bizarre to be true so last Saturday I took a ride on the 10:56 from Cardiff Central to Treherbert to see what all the fuss was about and provide some verification.

The Treherbert line north of Pontypridd closed back in April 2023 as part of upgrade work to electrify the line. Unfortunately when it reopened 10 months later, in February 2024, not all the work had been completed, in particular building a new second platform along with doubling the track and the installation of a footbridge and lifts at Ynyswen, the penultimate station on the line between Treorchy and the terminus at Treherbert. Ynyswen station remained closed as trains returned to the line from Cardiff Central through to Treherbert.

The distance between these last three stations is quite small (0.8 miles Treorchy to Ynyswen and 1.8 miles from Ynyswen to Treherbert) but it was felt best to lay on a bespoke replacement bus service with any passengers living close to Ynyswen station being ferried less than a mile to Treorchy to connect with trains towards Cardiff, as well as providing a facility from Ynyswen to Treherbert, even though three buses an hour operate between the two locations.

As is the way with these things the improvement works took a lot longer than anticipated due to unforeseen complications and this temporary bus replacement fix which has been in place since February 2024 will only come to an end this weekend when the newly extended Ynyswen station finally reopens having been closed since April 2023.

The £650-£680 cost per passenger came from an interpretation of two Freedom of Information enquiries as it turns out no records have been kept of how many passengers actually use the Replacement Bus service, so the headline grabbing cost per passenger has come from dividing the contract cost by the number of ticketed passenger journeys to and from Ynsywen during a sample period, which are naturally minimal since there are no ticket buying facilities at Ynyswen with the station closed off as a construction site behind barriers.

Nevertheless TfW defended the cost, saying due process in seeking tenders for the bus service had been followed by its contracted rail replacement administrator, Transport UK, however one of the trade magazines Passenger Transport “asked three bus operators to estimate their costs for providing the half- hourly minibus service. All three estimates were significantly lower than the cost of the current contract.”

A TfW spokesperson also explained alternatives of negotiating ticket acceptance with Stagecoach on its parallel bus routes running three times an hour along Ynyswen Road were discounted as the services between Treorchy and Treherbert don’t connect with train times whereas a bespoke service would work better for passengers.

They added they considered using taxis as required but again couldn’t get commitments from locally based taxi companies and “would have depended on sending taxis from the Cardiff area, causing delays for customers and increased costs.”

The service is being run by Porth based Thomas of Rhondda using minibuses from its mainly coach fleet used on Private Hire as well as a couple of Enviro200s used on three local bus routes in the Porth area. The Replacement Bus runs from first to last trains, seven days a week giving a half hourly timetable from 05:20 to 22:20 then hourly until 00:20 as well as hourly between 08:00 and 23:20 on Sundays making for quite an intensive commitment for the (officially) four (ticketed) passengers a day who’ve (supposedly) used it.

Southbound journey time from Treherbert to Ynyswen is three minutes and two minutes on to Treorchy with northbound journeys given three minutes back to Ynyswen and eight minutes on to Treorchy.

Luckily for my trip on Saturday to check it all out, TfW was running a good service up and down the Valleys and I arrived on time at 11:56 at Treorchy where I alighted to catch the replacement bus for Ynyswen, due at 12:09 for the three minute journey up the road.

I’d noticed the bus was due from its previous journey from Treherbert at 12:06 so wasn’t unduly concerned when there was a distinct absence of a bus.

What I was concerned about was the distinct absence of any information about the bus.

Zilch.

And looking at the confined space alongside the platform and car park it made me begin to wonder if the bus actually came up to the station rather than stopping in the main road.

A poster display commendably shows the current timetable in traditional format…

… with a blank line for Ynyswen and a ‘x1’ code alongside which in the small print explained “shuttle bus services in place for Ynyswen station; running between Treherbert station and Treorchy station.”

But there was nothing to indicate where to catch the bus nor about the replacement service even though there was a poster about other engineering works up until mid January.

I decided to chance it and wait at the station.

12:06 came and went and no bus appeared.

As did 12:07 and 12:08.

I started to get anxious.

Still nothing at 12:09; the scheduled departure time.

Then at 12:10, to my relief, a minibus came into view and pulled into the empty disabled parking bays…

… and I saw a passenger alight, so quickly ran round and reopened the nearside passenger door to board, taking the driver completely by surprise.

Not only did Alex, the driver, explain, he didn’t recognise me, but he doesn’t pick up any passengers there, as the official stop is 450 yards away in the High Street, which, when I got home on Saturday evening I made a thorough search online and eventually did find a map on the TfW website explaining this. But you’d think something would be posted at the station to let passengers know where to wait.

Alex also explained despite officially being required to drop passengers in the High Street, if anyone is on board wanting the station he does drive up there otherwise it’s quite tightly timed to walk and catch the train which leaves at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour towards Cardiff. It was my lucky day that a passenger had been on the bus wanting the station otherwise I wouldn’t have seen Alex or the bus.

Not only is this Rail Replacement Bus costing a small fortune, officially, it doesn’t even serve the railway station. Alex showed me the bus stop I should have been waiting at on High Street as we passed it on the journey, but there was no-one waiting there.

Similarly the bus doesn’t directly serve Ynyswen station (or Treherbert station) either although there’s more logic to the former in that the station is closed so there’s not much point going there which is also around 300 yards down a side road off the main Ynyswen Road.

However as Alex was going off on his break he kindly dropped me off by the station so I could take a look at the newly installed footbridge, lifts, platform and doubling of track….

… and it all looked ready for its grand reopening on Sunday with the new December timetable.

The lift towers looked somewhat over engineered to me, but otherwise it was all very standard stuff for the improved facilities being installed on these Valley lines ready for the “Metro” roll out. The need for a passing loop (and second platform) here is so TfW can introduce a 15 minute frequency timetable with trains (or, actually, new look tram-trains) passing on the otherwise single track at this end of the line.

Which made me wonder why the whole thing has been built in the first place as elsewhere where trams run (eg Croydon, Sheffield, Birmingham etc etc) passengers cross the tracks at surface level, yet here these huge monstrosity of lift towers have been constructed at no doubt huge expense.

Having reflected on that it was back to the main road and wait where Alex had shown me, for his colleague Ian, who would take me back for the two minute ride to Treorchy at 12:34.

As expected there was no information about the shuttle bus at Ynyswen station nor at the bus stops it uses on either side of the road, although the Treherbert bound stop did have the remnants of a notice…

… which looked as though it was about the Rail Replacement Bus service.

At 12:33 a Stagecoach bus came into view which initially I hailed thinking I’d try that as an alternative…

… but then I saw Ian just a short distance behind so waved the former on and met up with Ian.

We overtook the Stagecoach bus at the next stop, so it was worth waiting those extra seconds.

Ian kindly took me right to the station too, which was appreciated especially as it had started raining and also it would have been tight to make it for the 12:45 train if I’d had to walk from the High Street.

Ian had been driving the Replacement Bus since it started and admitted it had been tedious at times whereas Alex was more of a newbie having only done it for the past year!

In the couple of minutes I enjoyed with both of these very friendly drivers they both confirmed genuine train passengers have been very few and far between and the main use of the service has been people travelling between Treorchy and Treherbert to avoid paying a fare on the parallel Stagecoach routes 120 (half-hourly) 121 (hourly) and 130 (two-hourly).

Ian mentioned one morning journey is particularly busy with school children avoiding the alternative of a walk or catching the Stagecoach bus.

There’s no doubt the quoted £650-£680 figure is so high because it’s the price per ticketed rail passenger and therefore somewhat academic. Despite TfW commenting about the cost of revenue protection, I doubt hardly any passengers have purchased a ticket for their journey on the minibus. It’s almost certain the number of tickets sold to start or end at Ynyswen have been very few and far between especially as there’s no access to a ticket machine there, and other than this intrepid blogger, who else would buy a ticket with Ynyswen as the destination? In fact, I’m surprised as many as four tickets a day have been sold.

I reckon my ticket for Saturday is therefore somewhat unique.

It’s interesting to note TfW are currently advertising for a Road Transport Risk and Route Assessor which involves “developing and implementing a consistent customer focused process for assessing Rail Replacement Services across the TfW network”. TfW’s Ben Clifford said “we’re bringing the planning and management of rail replacement in-house … a big step to enhance our Rail Replacement Services and deliver real impact for customers”.

Perhaps lessons of the bonkers situation that’s applied at Ynyswen for these past almost two years are thankfully being learnt and such a ridiculous arrangement will never be repeated.

Let’s hope so.

And finally for this blog, a special personal message for the person in GWR’s Delay Repay team who’ll be looking into my claim just submitted for the 30-59 minute delay I experienced on my return journey from Cardiff Central to Paddington on Saturday afternoon which, based on previous experiences, I am certain will be deemed “unsuccessful” and I will have to go through the trauma and frustration of appealing and justifying it with no end if emails and phone calls. So, I will be referring them to this blog …..

“Hello there … yes, I know the Delay Repay software will automatically flag up that having bought my return ticket from Hassocks station at 06:51 on Saturday morning, the earliest I could have arrived in Ynyswen was 12:12 (having left Hassocks on the 07:02 to Victoria) and it seems incredible to you that I would travel for five hours and ten minutes only to stay at my destination for 22 minutes before returning on the 12:34. But now you have read this and other blog posts you can see that’s the kind of quirky thing I do, so please authorise the £19.67 I’m entitled to without further hassle and delay”.

Roger French

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