Cost of commuting

Yes. Privatisation.

£78 per week spent on commute for me for train and bus for in office days. Not in London. And I'm lucky if I have a week where the trains run on time or run at all!

UK public transport is a joke - used to cost me £34 return a day to travel from 40 miles outside London to the office - which then jumped to something ludicrous like £67 a day when my railcard expired

I agree, its very flawed but at least affordable

Yeah, it is a lot cheaper but the trains are absolutely rammed full. So there isn’t space for more commuters at rush hour. And the buses are worse than they used to be while transitioning to the new hub and spoke system and new routes. With a lot of ghost buses that never turn up.

Maybe the poster means they wouldn't drive into London since the method described above is much cheaper?

Be very careful what you wish for if you try and get an employer contribution towards commuter costs, because if they are paying, they can dictate your presence.

I prefer to pay my own way (about £50 a time) and maintain limited and flexible days in office, rather than work pay and be made to go in every day/days of their choice.

£60 a day plus £10 parking from Basingstoke to Waterloo. Plus £4 fuel/ wear & tear to get to the station.

I took a local job and a £15k pay cut, but after not commuting one day a week, less tax & NI, lower cost of lunch etc, my take home pay is the same. And it saves me 2.5 hours a day travel.

What a relief😊

That's mad money. I'm in Dublin where train fare from surrounding counties is around 13 euro. In Dublin itself you can go anywhere for 2 euro for 90mins. And we still cant persuade people out of their cars !

“Last time we went to London we drove to a zone 4 station, paid for all day parking £7.50. DDs tube travel was free and ours was minimal! Just puts us off ever going into London at all.”

Sounds reasonable, why would that put you off?

So I thought I was bad living in North Wales and going in to Manchester, 1-2 times a week at £40 per day. But surely, how much do you need to earn to make that worthwhile? How often do you need to go in?! I feel like I can barely spare money and I thought I was frugal but I must be wrong?! 40K single income household here. I came to this thread looking to see if my expectations were unrealistic but I actually feel better, lol!

Oh wow I don’t know how you stand a 4 hour round trip commute 3-4 days a week! That would kill me!

I just depressed myself by looking at annual season ticket- 9k!!! (£105 a day inc parking)
wild. I buy flexi monthly or try to game system based on known workdays/ leave to maximise weekly tickets.
I’m in 3-4 days a week.
sometimes I don’t get a seat.
on a good run it’s 2 hours each way (drive- train/ tube/ walk)
4 hours commute a day
768 commuting hours a year, 34 full days a year.
i have a sideline collecting delay repay payments too as service is shit.
#fucksoutheasternrailways

Exactly! It’s not worth it.

Thankfully I no longer commute to London and DH is 99% from home.

When we have travelled into London for a day trip with DD we are always shocked at the price. It was £80 once, for all 3 of us and she was about 7! And we are only an hour on the train from London. So before you've paid for the days activities, food etc you are down £80! It's so out of reach for many people.

Last time we went to London we drove to a zone 4 station, paid for all day parking £7.50. DDs tube travel was free and ours was minimal! Just puts us off ever going into London at all.

If DH suddenly had to start back in the office on a regular basis I don't know how we would afford it.
And companies wonder why people are so against going into the office!

The trouble with that mentality though - this attitude of “well you picked that job” is someone has to do that job. I think it should be the responsibility of employers paying more, but we know that might not happen as they’re gonna try and save as much as they can, and with that in mind I do think the gov need to regulate prices a bit more. I commute one day a week for a corporate mental health position and it’s not that well paid considering… I am going to be putting a request in for a pay rise as the cost of living in the SE of England in general is extortionate.

I pay £107 for an off peak return when I have to meet my team in London. It’s a 1.5h train journey.
I recently did a 3h journey on the TGV in France for €40, trains in the UK are ridiculously overpriced and I have lost count of the amount of times my trains have been delayed or cancelled. So the quality of the service doesn’t match the fare!

I work for London Transport so free travel is a benefit, thank goodness.

How much more would it cost you to live in London and avoid this cost though?

I’m not saying rail fares are justified in being this high, but just for context.

Possibly a stupid question but I’ve been mulling it over since reading this thread on my ridiculously overpriced commute this morning 😀

if companies are nationalised like the trains - are they “allowed” to make profit? What happens to any profit nationalised rail companies make? If British Rail made a come back would ticket prices be reduced? Is that how they manage to make it so cheap in other countries?

I’m a bit torn.

I do think that train fares in general - and public transport in general - should be cheaper, so to that extent I agree.

But I also agree that London weighting is to assist with the cost of either living in or travelling to London. People (not necessarily you OP) moved far away from their jobs in the pandemic and saved themselves a lot of money doing it. Now they’re all moaning about the cost of and time spent travelling into London (or other cities) - often when they’re now going in 40-60% of the time compared to 80-100 before the pandemic.

Having people back in the office has been really beneficial at my work.

Just looked up. Its £75 return peak to London from my local station (about 90 mins). I pay £7 to go 20 miles.

on the London to Cheltenham line. its extortionate & whilst I may get more for buck in terms of garden, house prices, cost of living is the same. Taxis are waaaay more expensive too

I don't think it's a trade-off anymore. I've lived in London for 12 years, my husband all his life. When it came to buying a property in our mid-30s, we just couldn't afford London (not for the property we needed for 2-3 kids anyway).
We couldn't afford not to work in London either (both our industries are very much based there).

Commute is £55 a day (with a Railcard) + return tube fare in zone 1.

I often think people miss out commuting costs when they suggest people "move somewhere cheaper", to save money. Often - not always- places are cheap(er) because they are not well connected for public transport. So you'd need to spend either a long time or a lot of money (or likely both) getting to work. The money you save on a mortgage or rent is swallowed up by a hefty rail ticket and station carpark fees. This is possibly worth the risk, if you have a hybrid job...although I think some people took the chance to move further away, and then paid for it when workplaces wanted people to come back to the office more frequently.

When we looked to move out of London, my non negotiable was that it had to be walking distance to a station, so we didnt have to add carpark costs (and fuel) to the commute. Both DH and i commute 5 dats/week most weeks. It's expensive, even with a season ticket. If you get a fixed rate on your mortgage, you can at least forecast how much it will cost you for 2/3/5 years.....rail fares go up every year....