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UK Map - Season Prices to London

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AshValePsngr

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Hi All,

I am thinking of moving house (somewhere in the UK, probably within 1.5 hours of london). A season ticket to London will probably be required, unless I move job too. We are quite easy about where we want to move to. Does anyone know of map anywhere with zones indicating prices of annual season tickets to London?

I'm imagining a map similar to the underground map with concentric circles indicating zones, and the stations in zones depending on how expensive the ticket is from that station.

Bonus points for a similar map based on times rather than price!
 
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LexyBoy

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Easy, just move to Reading!

Alternatively http://www.commutermaps.co.uk/ looks good for journey times. Not seen one for prices, but sure someone's done it. The mapnificent one is fancy but I think just based on TfL/London Zones services.

Surely there's more to it though - what kind of place do you want? Rural, town, suburban?
 

radamfi

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Do you want a 24 hour train service? That will narrow your search to a few stations.
 

barrykas

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I don't think such a map exists, simply because each of the TOCs have different pricing policies.

Picking some examples (weekly rates, assuming Zone 1-6 Travelcards):
  • Shoeburyness (39.5 miles) : £112.40
  • Southend Airport (39.75 miles) : £109.60
  • Newport (Essex) (40 miles) : £122.40
  • Baldock (36.75 miles) : £125.00
  • Arlesey (37 miles) : £121.40
  • Flitwick (40.25 miles from St Pancras) : £122.50
  • Aylesbury Vale Parkway (40.5 miles) : £111.50
  • Princes Risborough (36 miles) : £98.50
  • Reading (36 miles) : £120.40
 

soil

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This question is far too open-ended.

There are many possible goals:

* cheap house on a limited budget
* large house on a good budget
* fast commute
* frequent service
* rural area
* urban area with shopping
* access to friends/family
* actual workplace in London (if you work on Bishopsgate, for example, then a longer commute boarding an empty train out in Essex into Liverpool Street, would be much more pleasant than trying to board an already crowded commuter train into Waterloo or St Pancras and then facing a further overcrowded tube to get to your final destination)

If spending say £7k/year for a season from Peterborough is out of the question because your income is not high enough, then that's going to make a difference to your housing options as well; if on the other hand that would be viable, but you would have to compare the overall cost with say a £3k/year season and a more expensive house, then again that comes into play....
 

Be3G

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To be fair though, the OP isn't asking anyone to choose a house location for him – he's just looking for some season ticket price ideas so that he can begin making his own judgments.
 

soil

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To be fair though, the OP isn't asking anyone to choose a house location for him – he's just looking for some season ticket price ideas so that he can begin making his own judgments.

Ok.

I have attached something that might help.

LM has the cheapest per mile seasons. The very cheapest on this basis is Shrewsbury -London, which is 222km from Euston (as the crow flies), for £134/wk. This ticket is valid only on ATW & LM trains -a 3 hour journey or more each way.

Apart from LM, the cheapest fares are found on the West of England Main line, with fares very good value the further you travel past Basingstoke.

E.g., Basingstoke - London Via Woking - £98.80/wk, 72km each way (straight line), Tisbury - London -£133.40/wk (144km) each way, Exeter - London (via Honiton) £217.40/wk (255km).

Tisbury is a gruelling 1hr 45 minutes from London, and commuting each day from Exeter on SWT doesn't bear contemplating....

However certainly for instance Andover is a much better value season than Basingstoke, being 30km further, but only £7.50/wk more expensive.

Limiting to seasons under 100km from London, Uckfield is the cheapest, probably because it's at the end of a slow line. It is 64km from London, and £66.70/wk, but a 1hr 15 minute journey.

Looking at some stations with good, fast services to London, around 60 minutes from London, here are some differentials:

Brighton - 78km, 66 minutes to Victoria, £96.50/wk (there is also an £88.30/wk ticket to St Pancras, which is only intended to be valid on FCC services)
Folkestone - London 60 minutes to St Pancras, £144.80/wk (route +HS) ~100km from London
Swindon - 115km, 65 minutes to Paddington, £220.90/wk (this is really obscenely overpriced)
Winchester - 97km, 66 minutes to Waterloo, £113.90/wk
Oxford - 82km, 63 minutes to Paddington, £116/wk
Aylesbury - 57km, 64 minutes to Marylebone, £90.80/wk
Coventry - 136km, 61 minutes to Euston, £219.50/wk (also very expensive)
Kettering - 105km, 62 minutes to St Pancras, £155.50/wk
Peterborough - 117km, 57 minutes to Kings Cross, £172.20/wk
Cambridge - 76km, 60 minutes to Kings Cross, £110/wk
Colchester - 83km, 58 minutes to Liverpool Street, £113.90/wk
Canterbury - London 60 minutes to St Pancras £145.40/wk (route +HS) ~90km from London

The fastest line in terms of distance vs/time is the WCML, but fares here are high. The best value seasons here are on London Midland trains, which basically negates the speed advantage, although the commute time from say Northampton is not too bad, and the speed/distance ratio reasonable.

The most expensive per mile London seasons are the shortest, with Ebbsfleet - London, at £104/wk for 17 minutes/33km into St Pancras top of the heap.

On the other hand, Box Hill - St Pancras (Route Not Underground) is a mere £49.60/wk over the same distance. Caterham - St Pancras at £42.70/wk is also good value.

The most overpriced season of all is arguably Cheltenham Spa - London, at £9,184/yr, 142km from London, a journey taking a painful 2hr 9 minutes.

Templecombe, 2 hr 10 minutes from London, and 169km, is a mere £5,808/yr. Templecombe also has hourly direct trains, whereas from Cheltenham the direct service is only ever two hours, albeit that there are hourly changing options. All-in-all, one can reasonably conclude that FGW rip-off commuters wishing to travel west from Didcot (which has relatively reasonable fares).

For getting the most house for your money, for a reasonable commute time and reasonable season ticket, my bets would be on the MML, WCML, and the further reaches of HS1.
 

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  • london seasons.xlsx
    301.9 KB · Views: 21
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AshValePsngr

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Thanks for everyone's input so far.
This is an amazing website, but ultimately not useful for my needs.

lexyboy said:
Alternatively http://www.commutermaps.co.uk/ looks good for journey times.
This is very useful, and gives me some good ideas, thanks.

As Be3G said, I'm not asking you to choose my location, just wondering if such a map exists in order to help me choose a location, as we have many options with family and friends spread right around the commuter belt of London.

Soil, that is an incredibly useful post, and spreadsheet - thanks for that!
 
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stephy

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A map like this definitely exists think i saw it in the evening standard a couple of months ago
 

FenMan

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Comparing Swindon with two other long distance commutes not mentioned:

Swindon - 115km, 65 minutes to Paddington, £220.90/wk
Banbury - 111km, 64 minutes to Marylebone, £125.70/wk
Ely - 117km, 77 minutes up to King's Cross (67 minutes down), £114.50/wk
 

LexyBoy

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I've added a map to soil's spreadsheet. It's very rough and ready mind!

Where different fares exist they will be overlaid, so I've put two versions showing either the cheapest or most expensive fares for each station (obviously journey times will usually differ significantly).

Capture.PNG

I would think that for someone with the skills it would be a fairly easy job to create a dynamic map using the fares database to filter by price (and time if you can get hold of that data too).
 

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  • london seasons map.xlsx
    1.8 MB · Views: 21

AshValePsngr

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...
I would think that for someone with the skills it would be a fairly easy job to create a dynamic map using the fares database to filter by price (and time if you can get hold of that data too).
Superb LexyBoy, thanks for that! Also, I've almost got a dynamic map working, but I can't work out the proper conversion of eastings and northings to latitude and longitude (As required by Google maps). I'm not sure exactly what type of easting and northing these are, can anyone give me any pointers?
 

soil

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Superb LexyBoy, thanks for that! Also, I've almost got a dynamic map working, but I can't work out the proper conversion of eastings and northings to latitude and longitude (As required by Google maps). I'm not sure exactly what type of easting and northing these are, can anyone give me any pointers?

Yes they are relative to the National Grid Origin but plus 10,000 on the easting, plus 60,000 on the northing

So Acton Bridge station at 13599, 63745.

becomes as a 4 digit NG reference:

3599, 3745

or 5

35990, 37450

6
359900, 374500

This is confirmed here:

http://toolserver.org/~rhaworth/os/...station&params=SJ598745_region:GB_scale:25000

You can convert from Grid Reference to Latitude and Longitude, but the maths is non-trivial

http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-gridref.html

My spreadsheet was missing the coordinates for 'Stations' - principally Portsmouth Stations, Folkestone Stations, Liverpool Stations, Farnborough Stations, Dorking Stations, and a few others. I have just added them in if you want to re-download.

Turns out Liverpool - London LM Only is actually slightly cheaper per mile than Shrewsbury.
 
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Poggs

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You can convert from Grid Reference to Latitude and Longitude, but the maths is non-trivial

There are libraries such as Proj4 which will do this without you having to work out the "how"
 

AshValePsngr

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I know this has been a while since the last post, but I've got a dynamic web page based on Soil's spreadsheet data and it works well. It's not hosted anywhere currently, so I can't give a URL. I hope to put it somewhere soon and I'll then post a URL for anyone interested. It turns out I may not have to commute to work as often as I thought, so I'm interested in the same data but for anytime day returns. Can Soil, or anyone else post a spreadsheet with the same data as above, but for anytime day returns? That would be fantastic!

Sorry, if I knew where the data had come from I'd attempt it myself. I'm sure that it's not been done manually. Thanks in advance
---------- edit -------------
I've temporarily hosted my page here https://ewiseaa.co.uk/trainprices.html

Please wait about 10 seconds after the map loads for the stations to appear. You can then mouse over the stations from more info on price and station name.
 
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