Is there any justification why this route operates to such a peripheral North Wales point as Valley
Ieuan Wyn Jones, Deputy First Minister, WAG
'Nuff said.
By the way, if you want a real laugh/cry (delete depending on whether you pay tax in the UK), the WAG's own audit report on the first year of operation of the service makes for salutary reading....
In the first year of operation, a subsidy of £800,000 was paid to the then operator. Additionally, a further £390,000 had to be paid to Anglesey Airport. So now we have £1.2m in planned public expenditure for the first year.
In fact, the airport needed some £1.5m for development work, and an ongoing £400k pa in revenue support. So a first year total of £1.19m has morphed into a first year total of £2.7m – an overrun of 127%. (It is fair to ascribe the airport costs to this route since no-one else goes there).
Against that, the WAG's own report notes that the route generated 1,879 new trips (so about 940 returns), of which just 23.81% were for business use (the rest were VFR, other leisure, shopping, public sector). So, for £2.7m pounds, Wales got 224 business return trips. Call it £12,055 a trip.
Counting ALL the
new passengers (that is, passengers who traveled because of the airlink, and who would not have taken the train or driven) who took the route in the first year, the subsidy amounts to £1,436.92 PER HEAD ONE WAY.
TA, Cynic, and becoming increasingly so in the light of the facts.