To think £75 a week to get to work is a bit steep

[justloseit]

Why is public transport so expensive??

I used to pay a out £600 when I was apprentice earning just under £1000. My company paid £50 in travel expenses and you had to send proof of purchase, my sending a copy of my ticket to HR in France raised many eyebrows there.

Once I was on a proper salary I moved back to London and paid the same to rent a studio from which I could cycle to work.

HowardSpring Dead right. Applies also to people living on the edges of cities, or working the antisocial hours that so often go with NMW jobs, and thus needing taxis. Having to show willing and accept a 3 hour shift (in order to be in the field for any extra work available) when the first two hours pay completely absorbed by the travel costs.

GBP575 per month from here (has to include tube) and that’s only because company offers interest free loan to buy a yearly ticket otherwise it would be considerably more per month. On one of the worst rail lines in the country.

I used to pay a lot in transport when I lived alone and was earning less in real terms than current nmw. Low paid workers have no choice usually but to pay high bus fares. And no, these are not subsidised for low paid workers as one person Suggested they are.

Depends how much you earn. I spend approx 9-10k a year on my commute but it’s more than worth it.

Depends what you earn surely?

It takes me 1hr 15min to earn back my travel cost at what my gross hourly rate works out at (am not paid hourly rate).
I'll actually be working at home a lot more soon so should have an extra £40 a week for savings. It's only temporary though.

My DH and I each pay about £370 a month (so around £740 pm total) to commute. It was worse until we moved house last year as before that he also had to pay £100 per month car parking at the station. The £370 is a season ticket annual price split by 12, our employers give us a loan for it each month which we’re grateful for and then pay back directly out of our salary. If we paid monthly, it would be about £430 each per month! After our mortgage, transport for commute is our biggest monthly outgoing!

I pay £2,472 a year for my train ticket - works out £5.32 a day. It would cost me far more to drive.

And a weekly train ticket isn't worth it because they cunningly make it for 7 days instead of 5 so there's no saving. The promised 'part-time season tickets' have never materialised, nor have the carnets they were talking about at one point.

They cunningly make weekly tickets valid for a week... not entirely surprising...

When I started my first job after graduating, just over 20 years ago, my take home pay was just over £500 per month. A crap salary even bank in the 1990s. My bus ticket cost me over £100 per month, and it cost me another £100 per month to insure my car, which I needed because there was no bus to the bus station from where I lived. Then it cost about £50 a month in petrol as well. So half of my take home pay was spent on my commute.

Low paid workers suffer the most because they're desperate for work but can't afford to travel to it.

It rather depends how far you're travelling.

Public transport always feels expensive.

But compare it to the cost of driving - not just parking costs and fuel but also car purchase & depreciation and servicing.

Usually bus is still the cheaper option (or sometimes train although that's less reliable).

And even unemployed people have to pay to attend the job centre once a week. With the closure of many centres that people could walk to, this is often a heavy burden. I remember talking to one woman on £73.10 a week have to pay nearly seven pounds a week to get to the job centre once a week. Nearly one tenth of her income.

That's a big issue for people where I live. The JCP staff (or the JCP appointment booking system) are also very awkward about giving people appointment times that fit in with the 3 buses a day rural timetable. One JCP insisted on giving a woman an appointment time that would have meant her leaving home the night before, and then sanctioned her when she turned up late. Thankfully, she won her appeal against the sanction.

They've also recently started sending people miles for PIP and ESA assessments, eg Hastings to Portsmouth (80+ miles and 3 hours or so each way by train). They can get their travel costs (around £30 in the example mentioned) reimbursed for these, but have to have the money to buy the ticket in the first place. Not easy to find a spare £30 when you're on £73 a week.

Twenty years later I work part time and public transport isn't viable now. You can't buy a monthly or annual ticket because you're paying for a full week of transport when you only need three days. But three days individual transport is more expensive than driving.

£75 is cheap, about half of what I pay. I'm only in z4 London
where are you commuting to babysharkah?
I commute to central London from zone 6 and I only pay £51 a week.
I actually think that's pretty good value for what I get.

They cunningly make weekly tickets valid for a week... not entirely surprising...

How many people who commute and work a 5-day week are going to be travelling into their workplace destination for the other two days as well? Some are, yes - but I bet most aren't. It's the weekend. I want to stay at home, personally.

When i lived in London in the 90s my work paid for an all zone TravelCard, I think I took was about 3500 pounds. Now I’m in Australia i I get a 25 minute bus journey to work, it costs under 5 dollars, which is about 3 pounds. It’s clean, reliable and you get a 25% discount if you use a travelcard. And people here whinge about it!

1500 not3500 pounds!

I know people who learnt to drive purely to avoid the joke of public transport. It really is a joke and far too much effort for zero reward.

I started taking the bus to work last year to avoid parking charges but have now moved 40 miles out of the city so will be driving in when I return from mat leave. The fuel and parking costs are nowhere near as much as it would cost on public transport and I’d have to leave home an hour earlier too.

My annual rail card was £8500! Needless to say I changed jobs shortly after realising the opportunity wasn’t worth it.

How many people who commute and work a 5-day week are going to be travelling into their workplace destination for the other two days as well? Some are, yes - but I bet most aren't. It's the weekend. I want to stay at home, personally

Taken from the national rail season ticket calculator website: ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/seasonticket/search If you are making the same journey on 3 or more days within a week a 7-day Season ticket is likely to save you money compared to buying daily tickets

So you would be saving money even if not using it at the weekend. Generally the longer the validity of the season ticket the bigger the saving. I frequently use my annual ticket for leisure trips/ days out too.

It costs me about a third of my daily wage to drive to work and park. Public transport takes longer than my drive and then there's an additional hour or more of walking in total. If you add the extra hours of walking at my hourly rate (I would have to cut my hours to do it), public transport comes in about the same.
Add in a health condition which means I get tired very easily then door to door in the car is the only choice.

I spend nearly £500 a month on fuel for a rural commute that is a 3 hour round trip. There are no public transport options for my route. However, I am still much better off financially than my London commuting friends and I don't stand jammed in on a train for hours.

It is a lovely drive across the peak district in good weather, but can be a challenge if it snows!

interested to hear how far you are travelling OP.

I live in zone 6 and a travel card to london at peak time costs £49.50 - that's just for one day, from north kent. Disgusting.

I grew up in zone 4 and at the time a travel card cost £7.90 (late 90s/early 00s).

When we move, I am going to be paying a sixth of my salary on the commute. But I’ll still be earning more money than I would locally. And I love working in London. Provincial offices aren’t really my thing.