Cost of commuting

[Asosbabe]

Do other countries pay these commuting costs? We're 25 miles from central London and flexible ticket is over £23 a day. Car park is £12.90 a day , no bus to get to station. Parking restrictions for about a mile around the station and people that park just over a mile away get their cars keyed by pissed off locals. Is this the same in other capital cities?

Some countries have excellent public transport services for commuters.

Where I live (in Europe) I can buy a 365-ticket which covers all public transport in and around the city for a year for €365 - i.e. one Euro per day. The ticket actually covers the entire State, so I can effectively travel up to about 80km (50 miles) from the city centre and still be covered. Trains and buses are run by one publicly-owned company and timetables are integrated so that the different transport options are timed to connect with each other or to minimise waiting times.

In Luxembourg all public transport is free.

I worked for a while in a couple of former Eastern European countries, where public transport was the norm in the past simply because nobody could obtain or afford a car. That legacy continues to a large extent today, with many cities still having excellent and cheap trams, metro trains and buses.

Don’t get me started. £95 a day return plus £10 parking. Wild.

Where from? I mean, from Scotland to London or something?

Costs vary a lot by country but most charge a fair amount outside of the main conurbation which 25 miles is

£240 return to London for me 🙄 it puts so much out of reach

That's what a London weighting is for, isn't it?

That said, you can negotiate for your company to pay commute costs. Last year I moved sites and increased my commute from 20 minutes to around 44-60 minutes. I got a pay rise as well as a travel supplement of around 4k which more than covers my fuel costs. This was well outside London.

This is surely what we should be doing here

It costs you £105 per day to work?😲

Thats just……unreal.

Kent. I kid you not. Bloody outrageous.

Ok but surely you're living in a far cheaper area so your housing costs are far less than what they would be closer to London? It's a trade-off?

I live in a London suburb but lucky enough to live near the tube. Costs me £15 to commute into town and if I had to park at the station would cost £10 a day.

£39 per day train, £11 a day parking or £6 a day on the bus. I could cry when I see how much I spend commuting - and I only do it twice a week, wfh the other days.

Wow! How I that OK? Unless you're commuting by private helicopter!

Maybe but it still isn't cheap to rent here.

You think it's reasonable then? I don't think £15 a go is OK if you're so close

That’s just nuts! No way does London weighting cover even half the costs, you couldn’t drag me back down South! Live in the North now and the salary is lighter but probably works out a lot more anyway, once transport has been paid for down South.

It’s shocking but that’s a pretty standard fare. I live under an hour’s train journey from London and the fare is £105. People I know who commute regularly from here drive about an hour up the line so that their train fare is less.

The fares seem to have gone up massively in the last few years. It wasn’t that long ago that it was £75..

That’s insane, in Sydney there is a weekly public transport cap of $50 (so £25). You can travel from hours away and still be covered.

It’s less than £50 for a travel card for an entire week in many European capital cities. Uk public transport is a rip off.

I live in a European capital. Transport costs are very affordable and it is the norm for employers to pay or contribute towards for a season ticket. Mine pay 100% so commuting costs me zero. We pay high taxes here but railway is government owned and therefore subsided. There are discounts for students and I think it cost €35 for my daughter for 3 months to commute 35 mins into the city. Tram and metro is €12 per year!!!

I am in Perth, Australia, fares are currently capped at two zones which is a max of $10.40 a day (about a fiver). In January the cap is being reduced to one zone so the max cost will be about $5, or 2 pounds fifty per day. Travel is free on Sundays, and if you travel off peak FamilyRider ticket costs $10.40 to cover 2 adults and up to five kids. Perth is the longest city in the world (about 170 km) and this covers the whole area. I used to commute in London back in the 90s and 00s, it was expensive enough but affordable. I was back for a holiday in August and was totally shocked by how expensive public transport is now in the UK!

>£100 a day plus £12 to park. Exactly an hour from London on a very popular commuter line into waterloo. Although it was less with an annual ticket.

When covid happened, we saved all the money and bought all new blinds and curtains for our house! Annual ticket then was £7500

My son pays £250 commuting into London a month and I don’t think it’s too bad (could use that 7 days and he does often travel into the city on the weekend for fun!). We are on edge of zone 6. Parking is obviously extra, but he walks 25 mins each way to the station. Can you not park in a side street and walk?

Do agree that London weighting doesn’t cover extra cost of living in the south east. I have done 25yrs here and finally heading back north next year when youngest child finishes 6th form so I can buy a house as single income doesn’t go far here. Will still have commuting costs as not going to be mega close to the office. I go in 5 days at moment out of choice but will be less as further away when I move.

I live 6 miles from a city centre - big city. It’s £7 to park all day and £7.50 return on the train. The cost has nearly doubled in the 10 years I’ve worked at my company. My wages have not doubled. It’s not so much the cost as on the face of it £15 per day doesn’t seem like a lot it’s the fact that it’s increased and continues to increase above wage inflation

Trains are disgustingly expensive and disgustingly unreliable. DP is looking at a job in London where he would go twice a week. £6k in train fares plus around £10 a day parking or I could drop him but would need to plan around. This is if the trains are on not cancelled or delayed - in the last 2 years I have not been on a train that wasn’t cancelled or delayed. Ex Colleague lived in MK and her husband paid £7-8k to travel to London daily prior to covid.

£47 into London per day here (peak). It’s a 50 minute train. Absolute extortion and I have no idea why we need to pay above inflation rises each year. Is it because of privatisation that we can’t have a functioning service at a reasonable price? This country is mad. We cannot get the basics right at all.