A direct daily coach between Carmarthen and Bangor will launch on Sunday 25 October, the Welsh Government has announced, and it now has a name: TaithCymru.
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Tuesday 6 October through an online booking system being built by Transport for Wales. Fares have not been set; the government says they will be published once the system is live.
The coach will call at Caernarfon, Porthmadog, Dolgellau, Machynlleth, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth and Aberaeron on its way between the two ends of Wales.
End to end is expected to take between four hours 45 minutes and five hours, which the government says is more than an hour faster than existing public transport. The rail alternative loops through England and can take six and a half hours.
Eight new coaches have been bought for the route, supported by the Network North Wales programme, and the first has been shown off outside Bangor railway station.
Bangor to Carmarthen in under five hours, fares to follow in October
Deputy Minister for Transport Mark Hooper said the launch delivered one of the new government’s 100-day commitments. “Transport for Wales has worked at pace to deliver this scheme which I am pleased to announce will launch on 25 October,” he said.
“TaithCymru plays a vitally important role in connecting towns and communities, making it a quicker, easier and more reliable way to travel to access work, education, and leisure.”
Lee Robinson, Transport for Wales’s executive director for regional transport and integration, called the service “a major step forward in improving connectivity between north and south Wales”, saying it would help build a fully integrated public transport network.
The route largely follows roads already served by TrawsCymru buses, the T1 corridor between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth and the T2 north to Porthmadog, and ministers say it will work alongside those services, local buses and Fflecsi rather than replace them.
The £2m allocated covers the first year of operation, including the booking system and promotion. When the funding was confirmed in July, the government said it would assess demand before deciding whether to fund the coach beyond that first year.
Still no train: the £775m question that hasn’t gone away
The name and launch date land on a route where campaigners have spent more than a decade asking for something else entirely. When the £2m was confirmed, we reported the familiar frustration in west Wales: another bus, and still no train.
Traws Link Cymru has been fighting since 2013 to reopen the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth railway, closed in the Beeching cuts. A Welsh Government feasibility study in 2018 found 97% of the trackbed still clear and reopening technically feasible, but priced it at £775m and judged it only “socially viable”.
The government says the new coach will also open up sustainable tourism to Eryri National Park, the Llŷn Peninsula and Cardigan Bay.
For now, the practical dates for travellers are these: tickets from 10am on 6 October, first departures on 25 October, and fares to be revealed in between.
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