It is only five months since Bwcabus – Connecting the Teifi Valley bus service was launched, but already it has made over 4,500 passenger journeys and attracted nearly 500 registered users.
The Bwcabus service is operated by Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion Local Authorities, in partnership with Wales Transport Research Centre (based at the Glamorgan Business School) and Traveline Cymru, with funding from Welsh Assembly Government and European Convergence Programme.
Mid and West Wales AM Joyce Watson praised the scheme’s early success, saying:
“Bwcabus goes from strength to strength. Results from passenger surveys show that people are using the service for all sorts of reasons – it has enabled people to access education and training, get to work, make doctors appointments and generally get out and about more easily.”
Bwcabus, which began running on 24th August 2009 and operates Monday to Saturday from 7am to 7 pm, is the first door-to-door bus service of its kind in Wales. Residents living within the operating zone can phone up and book a journey from close to home to a bus stop on a main route. It covers several villages that were previously without a bus service and enables people to travel between local villages and the Carmarthen to Cardigan 460 bus service, which has seen a 40% increase in passengers since Bwcabus was introduced.
Joyce asked new First Minister Carwyn Jones, in his first question time since taking the reins, to congratulate the scheme. He responded:
“We know that there are many communities where a conventional bus service is never going to work in terms of viability, but Bwcabus has been important in demonstrating how an innovative and flexible scheme can be made to work not just for the individuals who need it, but for those communities that are helped by the fact that public transport is available to them.
“I am certainly taking an interest in how the scheme is developing to see whether it can be rolled out across the rest of Wales.”
The Welsh Transport Research Centre is also heavily involved in the teaching of the Glamorgan Business School’s postgradaute courses. For more information on these programmes please visit the Logistics, Transport and Supply Chain Manangement course pages.
To find out more information on this bus service, please visit the Bwcabus web page at http://www.traveline-cymru.info/bwcabus/
