You could have saved another tenner by booking in advance (Super Advance Saver - www.thetrainline.com).
For regular journeys it's a totally different kettle of fish. A first class return from Poole to London Waterloo will set me back £123 per day if purchased daily, however a first class season ticket for the month costs £600 plus £50 for a parking season ticket. The answer? Book in advance or buy a season ticket if you plan on travelling more than 5 times a month.
In contrast, if I were to travel by car (as I have been doing) then a 20working-day month works out at 4,600miles in the car, plus £5.00 to Ken each day and another £8.00 to park all day in Southwark. Now assuming I'm averaging 36mpg thats
£482 for fuel
£100 to Ken (Gorblessya Ken)
£160 for parking
£742 in total
Then you've got two front tyres every 4 months, so say an extra £50 per month for that, plus depreciation, plus servicing, plus plus plus.....
So the train wins. On top of I get to get a couple of hours work in on the train in the morning, which I bill my client for.
:o)
It takes a little bit of a leap to get round the fact that the odd delay on the train is equivalent to and as frequent as an accident on the M3 delaying your journey. Once you get round that one, the train wins every time.
Strangely, I find the seats in the Type2 slam door rolling stock much more comfortable than the newer 442s that are in use on the longer journeys. Your jaunt to Esher would have been on a new Desiro 450, which is local commuter rolling stock. They're due to introduce the long-distance version, the 444, on the Southcoast run later in the year, but need to upgrade the power supply first.
Mind you, I'm transferring to a client in Newbury in the next 4 weeks, so back to driving as the train times just don't cut it on that route.
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OMIGOD! - It's the trainspotter's thread now!
It must be nice to be able to afford six to seven hundred quid a month just to get to work! That's my State pension more or less!
Roger in Spain
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And that's why I retired to Spain where I can afford to live on it!
Roger in Spain
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My fare was for a single, but I think the return ticket was about the same price.
I think the posts demonstrate that driving isn't the only, or always necessarily the most sensible option.
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I travel fairly regularly (abt 3 times a month) from West Yorkshire to central London. Used to do it a lot by car, but then found that was too much strain, esp with the increasing traffic levels and increasing aggression on the roads.
Overall I prefer the train, cos it's more punctual and I can relax en route and get some work done. Plus, my train does 225km/h, and the car only does half that. I sometimes miss the flexibility of the car (travel when I want to, stop off en route if I like), but not often -- I mostly just want to get home.
The train's cheaper too: hardly anyone pays the full fare, and even £66 return on a saver ticket bought the same day is not much more than the diesel bill for the journey, even w/o counting the wear-and-tear and depreciation on a car.
The downside of the train is that I have to finish my journey on a local service, which can add an extra hour to the journey. On a cold winter's night that's not fun.
My ideal way of doing that journey is car to a mainline station, then train -- that's bliss, if it works. Unfortunately, few of the mainline stations here have decent parking, which seems really dumb. Leeds station has a big car park, bit it gets filled by people not using the train, and the nearest GNER station with enough parking spaces is in Wakefield, about 40 miles away.
The train companies really need to sort out the station parking issue: maybe by building new park-and-ride stations, or maybe by restricting the car parks to train ticket holders.
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Southwest trains have a two-tier pricing system for their car parks. Substantial discounts if you buy your car park ticket at the ticket office and can show you are travelling from that station.
bigger discounts still if you buy a season ticket.
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Oh, and I wrote that last one on the train. Try doing that on the M25.
Actually, please don't.
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When I have long journeys to make, I always consider the train. With advance-purchase tickets, it is often cheaper than pure petrol costs. If the journey is simple and I don't need to get to multiple points in the destination area, the train usually wins.
That is of course on the basis of pure cash outlay. No-one ever seems to think about car depreciation and maintenance costs when making these comparisons.
But the clinchers are time and stress. My time is the largest cost component. I can work on the train; I can't work in the car. In the car, the stress and hassle are significant; on the train they are minimal. I'm in better condition for serious business meetings after three hours on a train than three hours in a car.
I'm keen on cars (I run three), but sometimes they make no sense at all.
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This weekend it took 3 hours to travel via train a distance of 10 miles. It would have been quicker to walk. Needless to say I wasn't best pleased and rather more stressed than I would have liked.
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My wife is currently working in Scotland and has to travel to and from near Edinburgh. We live in NE Lincs. She used to drive to Leeds/Bradford, park, take a plane to Edinburgh, then taxi to the hotel. This took about 5 hours, door-to-door and she was unable to work during the journey and found it very tiring. Now I drive her the 12 mile to the nearest station, she travels first class with one change to Edinburgh, then a shorter taxi ride. This takes about 5 hours too, works out cheaper, she can work on the train and arrives relatively refreshed. There's even a first class lounge at the station where she changes and has a 30 min wait.
No contest really, and driving all the way is definitely not an option.
BTW she loves Virgin Rail, nice trains, good staff and non-smoking throughout.
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Strangely, I find the seats in the Type2 slam door rolling stock much more comfortable than the newer 442s that are in use on the longer journeys. Your jaunt to Esher would have been on a new Desiro 450, which is local commuter rolling stock. They're due to introduce the long-distance version, the 444, on the Southcoast run later in the year, but need to upgrade the power supply first.
If these Desiro things are painted blue with red bits on them, and have Siemens logos plastered all over the carriages, they're using them along the Sussex coast already for the odd SWT services that head this way. Saw one in my local station the other day; looked very plush compared with the grunting old slam-door rubbish that South Central/Southern/whatever they're called this week provide for the services to London first thing in the morning.
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'No Dosh' - no wonder with £700 per month commuting costs!
Depreciation doesn't (really) count in this calculation to compare train to car, as you've got the car sitting on your driveway depreciating whether or not you use it.
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'No Dosh' - no wonder with £700 per month commuting costs!
And don't forget all that money I splash out on expensive toys, the latest 'phones, skiing holidays.... It's a wonder the bank let me use their money like this. The manager rang me the other day, he was ever so polite. Asked if I would mind lending them some of their money back so they can give it to other customers. ;o)
Depreciation doesn't (really) count in this calculation to compare train to car, as you've got the car sitting on your driveway depreciating whether or not you use it.
Ah, but depreciation on a car doing 10 miles a day is a bit less than one doing 230 a day. Sticking 40-50,000 miles on your car in a year can be a real bummer when it comes to resale value.
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I wrote a long reply including train schedule, prices etc and as has happened before, the site ate it. No way I am re-writing it so this is the condensed version.
Trip from home to Birmingham International(NEC) for my wife and I, would have cost 87.40 and the total travel time would have been just over 7 hours.
Same journey by car cost 42.80 (Petrol, toll charges and parking) and only took 3 hours. Even if I was travelling solo, the car still worked out marginally cheaper and of course, just as quick. No my costs don't include depreciation on the car, but I won't even attempt to figure out how much wear and tear would result from a 250 mile motorway trip.
Even in my daily commute to work the car wins as I only have to travel 11 miles each way, there is no train service there and the bus runs a limited schedule which means I can take it there, or take it home but never both on the same day.
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If these Desiro things are painted blue with red bits on them, and have Siemens logos plastered all over the carriages, they're using them along the Sussex coast already for the odd SWT services that head this way. Saw one in my local station the other day; looked very plush compared with the grunting old slam-door rubbish that South Central/Southern/whatever they're called this week provide for the services to London first thing in the morning.
Ah, they look plush, but when the aircon packs up you can't open the windows.... The seats are very pretty, but boy are they hard on the bum..... Less width to the seats as well, to provide wider aisles.
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ND in 'preferring open window to aircon' shock!
40-50k p.a. pretty hard on the bottom - do you need to account for depreciation on that as well?
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Trains can work but there are lots of 'ifs' to contend with. As I've used a train every day for 5 years, I'll list a few of them:
1. If the wind hasn't been too strong and blown the power lines down
2. If the weather isn't too warm and the drivers fancy taking the day off
3. If the train isn't cancelled, leaving you to pack into the next train. Which was packed anyway.
4. If it's going where you want - try traveling everywhere via London and it soon takes the shine off.
5. If you don't mind seats which are too cramped on commuter trains (3+2 seats wide in the carriage)
6. If you don't have to make a connection, because you can't be sure it will arrive on time, easily adding 20-30 minutes to your journey
7. If the train ahead of you doesn't break down, leaving you stranded behind it for hours.
That's only a few, I haven't used the train for a week now and my blood pressure is almost back to normal. Feel free to add as required!
Gareth
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It's nice to see a proper comparison, at last. Usually a comparison assume that you want to travel from (say) Paddington station to somewhere on the western edge of the Oxford city centre - not an journey that I've ever hear of anyone wanting to do. So thank you all for including the cost & time lost in getting to the starting station and from the final station.
Of course, for some journeys you can't book in advance, but the car doesn't mind. And sometimes you want to carry something heavier than a briefcase, but I don't see a nice secure boot on any trains.
The only journey I could reasonably book in advance is my daily commute from Wycombe to west Oxfordshire, but there doesn't seem to be any train that goes in that direction. I'd have to go to Marylebone, tube to Paddington, and change. Not tempting.
When I need to go to London, though, its a very different matter. It's easiest to catch a lift on the school run and be dropped off by the station, and use the saved parking fee for the taxi home. Except for the day there were no taxis and I had to walk up Amersham hill. Ooops.
So the train wins when you happen to be going the same way as its railway lines. Otherwise not. Even then, I find that things go wrong with depressing regularity; I could cope with that if only their reaction wasn't along the lines of "So what? No I don't know why. No there's nothing that can be done."
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patently, I agree that train delays are a pain, but as NoDosh pointed out, there are delays on the roads too.
On my last 8 return train trips to London (i.e 16 journeys), three journeys have been delayed (by about 30 mins each time). On my six most recent motorway journeys (200-300 miles each), three had delays of similar length. Small sample, but my experience is that mway holdups are much more likely than train delays (except post-Hatfield, when the trains were atrocious).
For intercity travel, even a delayed train is still likely to be much quicker than an unclogged mway.
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NW, yes but when the roads are clogged I am in a comfy chair that is clean, there is no smelly fagger next to me and no personal stereos within earshot. And I can choose my CD. No contest!
Yes the train is faster from point to point. But I don't live next to a terminus and none of my clients do either!
Well said Tim, btw.
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NW, yes but when the roads are clogged I am in a comfy chair that is clean, there is no smelly fagger next to me and no personal stereos within earshot. And I can choose my CD. No contest!
patently, on a train I can buy a cuppa tea and a sandwich, I can read, I can walk around, I can talk on the phone and I can even use the loo: all verboten when driving. If I'm feeling sociable I get to meet lots of interesting people without having to take the risks of picking up a hitch-hiker. I can happily forego the pleasure of bouncing my foot from brake to accelator as the trafic jam inches forward. No contest! :)
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I guess we have different priorities, then, NW...
But, on a train...
I try to read but the train bumps and jiggles so much the words are jumping around and I get a headache.
I try to work, but the laptop does the same as my book and my typing aerv;n epr'vnwe qw'efpnqv than usual
I try to walk around but then there's a jolt and I end up in the lap of a fellow passenger. And never the young female ones either.
Tea? I recall the quote of a US senator - "If this is tea then please bring me coffee. If it is coffee, then please bring me tea! "
Phone? Handsfree
Sociable? The only chatty people I find on trains have at least one identifiable psychiatric disorder and that the sane ones are resolutely silent*. Obviously we catch different trains!
Foot bouncing? Don't follow you. There's a knack and a state of mind that resolves this!
As I say, so long as you're happy, good for you.
*Given that I have tried to start a conversation in order to discover this, I realise the implications of this comment for my mental health!
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Caught the train to London this morning. High Wycombe to Temple.
Try to work on the train but someone is looking over my shoulder and this is meant to be confidential.
Train stopped outside Marylebone for no apparent reason.
Marylebone underground not open before 9:30 for those wishing to enter, only those who leave.
No-one at Baker Street to let me past the barrier with a thin paper ticket. Had to ask for help - "no, I won't, try him"
No-one at Temple to let me out.
Return:
One coach has broken doors so is empty and we are squashed into the remainder.
Try to work but the lights seem to be broken. Later, lights fix themselves but my writing is illegible due to bumpy ride. Don't have the laptop as I want to travel light - no boot to carry things in.
At Wycombe, no-one to let me out. Have to bang on window to attract attention of staff who are too busy doing nothing.
Average speed, 28 mph
After this, I settled into the car for a run up to our office in Oxford. Smooth, no problems, comfortable.... Average speed well in excess of 28mph.
No further comment.
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Had to go up to Cambridge for meeting last evening. Left office at Aldwych 17.10 & caught 17.45 out of King's Cross (commuter train) with plenty of time to buy ticket (£10.60) & time to spare. Only just full - a few people standing. Had gentle snooze for half hour, then time to peruse my notes before meeting, before train arrived early in Cambridge.
Return trip on 22.31 bliss. Had had a couple of drinks after meeting. Arrive King's Cross bang on time, jump on bus, having nightcap at home by 23.55.
It looks as though this line has finally recovered from Hatfield.
(Compare car journey: Battle from Aldwych (£5 Ken-tax) towards A12 in Bow. Lose temper. Get fed up of BBC London interrupting every 15 minutes to tell me that traffic is going nowhere. Finally reach M11 & sit in traffic jam. Perhaps reach Cambridge before 7.30pm, perhaps not. 60 miles, near enough, so 2 gallons - realistically 3 given snail's pace through town & up motorway. No snooze; no pre-meeting preparation. No drink after meeting. Home in an hour - I'll give you that, but another couple of gallons.)
No further comment!
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Any chance of diverting your trains past Wycombe on a regular basis?
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I'll do my best... but after the hours I spent on that line post-Hatfield (for 3.5k p.a.) I think I deserve a good run sometimes!
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