[Closed] Commuting by train from Birmingham to London for £16k pa ?

£4000 seems cheap. Its about 3 from reading to london afaik.

[quote=MidlandTrailquestsGraham ]someone living in Birmingham, commuting by train to London and earning £16000 a year, would now be spending a quarter of their wages on their season ticket.
Does anyone actually do that ?
I presume that they save more than this amount on account of cheaper housing etc.

Don't let common sense get in the way! 😉

I want to know what portion of my tax gets spent on train fares as I haven't been on one for over 10 years.

I wonder what kind of heinous crimes you'd have to commit to end up with a sentence of living in Birmingham, working in London, and spending hours a day shuttling between New Street and Euston?

Surely, if that was your 'life' then a bullet to the back of the head would be an act of mercy?

Binners has the solution.

HS2 pushing a new business case?

Apart from making the percentage seem larger, what does the £16k salary have to do with it?

While £4k is a lot...assuming 5 weeks of holiday, equates to 47 weeks of commuting at 117miles each way, means an annual mileage of 55k miles. Which is quite far.

Diesel costs assuming you travelled by car & achieved 55mpg would be £6350 (£1.4/litre)...

Presumably if you earn £16k and work in London you don't choose to live in Birmingham...?

What kind of job would you do that only pays £16k but requires you to commute from Birmingham to London each day?

Over £10k for a Bristol to London season ticket 😯
It your salary allows for it then fair enough finance wise but it's still not worth the 1hr 45min train journey plus probably another 1hr commuting to and from the station at each end. Nothing is worth wasting that much time commuting for.

Someone earning £16k a year must take home about ~£12K?? So £4k on train tickets and the time spent travelling must mean they'd be be on a highr rate £/hour on a paper round.

I'd prefer to be a tramp and eat out of bins/hedges or take it in the ass from truck drivers.

Its £6.6K from Brum to london on the WCML on virgin, or £5.2K if you take midland on same route and stop at every station.

It is over £4K from Milton Keynes, so no idea where their figures are from.

I heard on the news that was based on a family season ticket not a single commuter. Fail

hmmm my season ticket is £9,500

I was talking to someone the other day that does Chester to London daily!!

I have no idea of her salary but it is definitely not enough.

Must feel like the train is more homely than her house!

In answer to the ops question, I think the answer is no, they don't. However I'd bet a fair few do pay that for a season ticket but then they'll be paid closer to £100k than £16k...

Mine's only £2.5k. However I live in Surrey about 25 miles from London. I think £4k (or whatever it actually is) to Birmingham sounds quite a bargain!

To make sense you need to look at journeys that commuters actually take.

http://www.newstank.co.uk/headline-news/rail-fare-hikes-effective-today/04621/

Over £10k for a Bristol to London season ticket
It your salary allows for it then fair enough finance wise but it's still not worth the 1hr 45min train journey plus probably another 1hr commuting to and from the station at each end. Nothing is worth wasting that much time commuting for.

I have recently had the option to work in our London office. It's a nice office to work in but 3 hours each way made me opt for unemployment instead.

I'd prefer to be a tramp and eat out of bins/hedges or take it in the ass from truck drivers.

I would imagine a train commute from Chester, or Wilmslow (a lot of people seem to do that) to London, would be an infinitely more enjoyable experience than being crammed in like sardines on a filthy, god forsaken commuter service from some hell-hole in Essex. And probably wouldn't take that much longer

i have a customer in hebden bridge who takes the train to london town 3 times a week... something to do with the bbc/ eastenders..

lol at Binners

I'm looking at commuting Leicester to Birmingham and I got quoted 3k pa! I simply cannot afford that to go to study!

Birmingham's quite nice (centre)- better centre than Manchester's IMO. The difference is Manchester has a wow 360 degrees around the outer reaches whereas Birmingham..hmm.

16k a year = work on your doorstep and use the bike.

Or pretend you've got a bad back, and depression, then spit out 5 kids with 6 different dads and get a massive housing benefit funded house, a huge telly with Sky, and a life of as much Stella and Lambert and Butler as you can eat!

You mugs! 😀

told the other day of a chap commuting from Coventry to south London everyday on a motorbike (not a slight, but sitting in your heated box with radio is easier than on the riding on the edge on a m/c down the m1/m25), for wages not much better than that of the OP... bizarre, even taking a drop in wages for more "life", it would be better, but it just proves ppl do it..

There are a few people who commute from York to London every day.

A couple of them were interviewed recently and they both live in Luxury Apartments (penthouse) 2 mins walk from York Station, and Work a few minutes walk from Kings Cross.

Leave home just before 7 am. Back home just after 7 pm.

Relaxing couple of hours in First Class having Breakfast and doing a bit of Work. In the office just after 10.
Leave the office just before 5, First Class train home, little bit of work, bit of a kip maybe. Home by 7pm.

Sounds good to me.

(Their season Tickets were costing £22k each ! )

Sounds good to me.

There are a few people who commute from York to London every day.

A couple of them were interviewed recently and they both live in Luxury Apartments (penthouse) 2 mins walk from York Station, and Work a few minutes walk from Kings Cross.

Leave home just before 7 am. Back home just after 7 pm.

That's pretty slack hours for someone earning enough to drop 22k on a season ticket! You'd struggle to do 10-4 on unless you work on top of the station.

But yes, if you can find me a job that pays enough that I can spend £22k on a season ticket and work <30 hours a week I'll take it, I'll even commute!

I don't buy a season ticket, mine's £4000 (from Sussex to London, no tube), you need to do it 3 days a week 52 weeks a year to make it pay. Factor in holidays, riding a bit and going to our other non-London office whenever I can and it doesn't work out.

I looked at living out of London and getting the train in, somewhere like MK or St Albans.

In the end it was slightly cheaper in London, so I live there and commute by bike, much more fun.

Seriously? 12hr days sounds good

I regularly do similar hours, and earn less than the price of their season ticket.
I also don't get Four hours a day sitting in First Class chilling out.
So yes, it does sound good.

And a £22k ticket. They could take a £20k pay cut for a job nearer home and I bet they would be a lot happier.

They both seemed perfectly happy, they both used to live in London doing the same Jobs, and same 12 hours, but now they live in York in a far nicer house that cost half as much and in much nicer surroundings.

What's not to like ?

I hate the way the rest of the country has to subsidise the London commuter train fares. About time you lot paid full price. And I can then afford to buy some diesel for my car.

[i]I don't buy a season ticket, mine's £4000 (from Sussex to London, no tube), you need to do it 3 days a week 52 weeks a year to make it pay. Factor in holidays, riding a bit and going to our other non-London office whenever I can and it doesn't work out. [/i]

This.

But, buying a daily ticket is now +£30, and its under an hour...

For me though its less about money and more about time, once you are taking over 1hr 30mins from door to door its just too much - which tbh is why I've pretty much always used a motorcycle for London/SE commutes.

Given how busy the commuter trains are around my way I'd have thought they're about as profitable as trains can get - and cost per mile seems high. But then again all transport attracts investment paid for out of taxes - road maintenance must cost a bit.

Are there any gay truckers on STW. If so I believe Papa Lazarou may have a great proposition for you!

😯

Thats like me traveling from aberdeen to edinburgh for work.

Anyone doing that daily needs their head looking at.

Is that right - the fee for a season ticket for 12months, 5 days a week from Birmingham to London is only £4K? If used every working day (assuming 5 days a week with 6 weeks holiday to be generous) that's only £16 per day.

That seems an amazing bargain. Just looked up the train and Birmingham New Street to Euston return at peak time would cost you £158 if bought on the day as a one off - which is quite frankly a daft price! A years worth of working days of that comes to about £37K!

Alternatively do that journey (245m round trip) every working day by car even at a very reasonable 30p per mile that's £17K

In fact thinking about it, the number of car commuters that spend more that £16 a day must be very sizeable. Then there the group of cyclists that think they will ride to work, buy a daft expensive bike to do it on and go off the idea after a dozen trips - per trip that has to be up there as one of the more expensive commuting ideas!

Can I just say also that environmentally we should also be attempting to reduce our home to work daily commute (he says smugly actually living at work and wife working a mile and a half away) so down with this sort of thing. Unless you ride to work, then as you were.

" Then there the group of cyclists that think they will ride to work, buy a daft expensive bike to do it on and go off the idea after a dozen trips - per trip that has to be up there as one of the more expensive commuting ideas!"

Leaves cheap second hand bikes for the likes of me 🙂

Is that right - the fee for a season ticket for 12months, 5 days a week from Birmingham to London is only £4K? If used every working day (assuming 5 days a week with 6 weeks holiday to be generous) that's only £16 per day.

According to National Rail, New Street to Euston is £5240 on London Midland, as I think someone put on the last page, and Virgin ones are even more. So no, it's not £4k.

According to National Rail, New Street to Euston is £5240 on London Midland, as I think someone put on the last page, and Virgin ones are even more. So no, it's not £4k.

To be fair, that's still pretty good. I'm thinking of 2 people in my department who commute by car 35miles each way. All in costs of running a car over that distance must be about the same as that. It would have to be an amazing job or I'd have to be pretty desperate to do either mind.

TTIWW......

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When I heard that my brother in law was commuting from Peterborough to London daily,I thought he was mad but apparently it's only 53 mins for nearly a 100 miles.
I had the misfortune to commute to work by bus across Manchester,1 hour 15 minutes on a good day for what was a 6 mile journey by car or bike.

To be fair, that's still pretty good. I'm thinking of 2 people in my department who commute by car 35miles each way. All in costs of running a car over that distance must be about the same as that. It would have to be an amazing job or I'd have to be pretty desperate to do either mind.

The London Midland services take 2.5 hours though, not great! Virgin is an hour quicker.

I'd pay £4000 a year not to go to London, hopefully the fact that there is no work there that actually requires the physical presence of people will allow it to collapse like a black hole.

I'll be paying just over £4K this year to commute/fly weekly to Frankfurt and back. 🙂

"I also don't get Four hours a day sitting in First Class chilling out."

Yeah, but it's not that they're working 12 hours a day of which 4 are a doss. They're working 8 hours a day and commuting for four! They're taking a 1/3 pay cut to live in York. And then, you know, they're in York...

Leave home just before 7 am. Back home just after 7 pm.

Relaxing couple of hours in First Class having Breakfast and doing a bit of Work. In the office just after 10.
Leave the office just before 5, First Class train home, little bit of work, bit of a kip maybe. Home by 7pm.

Sounds good to me.

(Their season Tickets were costing £22k each ! )

So by that reckoning i figure they spend perhaps 4 to 5 hrs awake whilst in York?, for the privilege of wasting at least 4 hours of their life everyday and £22k a year whilst sitting on a train, to go to work that i expect isn't really "work" in the truest sense of the word or what i consider to be "work" anyway but i expect that's an argument i doubt i'd win on here.

They spend 4 times as much as i earned last year on combined train tickets....Ha..Ha...no wonder this country is going tits up....i love it!....only on "Aspirational Living - The STW Years" would someone come out wi the comment "

Sounds Good To Me"

Reading the Metro today, there was a story about train season ticket price increases.

FWIW the two people concerned did seem very happy with their decisions

Apparently they used to live just outside London and spend 1hour 30mins each way commuting.

Now they spend 1hour 55mins each way commuting, but moving to York allowed them to sell their House down south and pay off the mortgage and buy huge rooftop apartment by the river with what they had left and now mortgage free.

They could of course save £10k each by travelling standard class, but I'm guessing they aren't too worried about that sort of money, which is why they choose not to use that option.

Of course I'm sure they would reverse all their decisions after reading that a few cyclists think that they are doing it all wrong 🙂

I hate it when people take the high ground about how people should take a pay cut and work near home! I do an 11 hour day 5 days a week including 2.5 hours commute by road as there is no financially viable rail route to take. I work in quite a niche area of IT and if I wasn't in my current job I would be contracting somewhere far from home where I wouldnt see my baby daughter or missus all week. So I commute and suck it up, cos its a better option for me than being away. Yes I could ditch it all and go work at McDonalds, but I am also trying to provide for my family and I would love to live close to work. I used to have a 3 mile bike commute each way to work and loved it, but things change and you need to go where work is.

Christ.....it's an oft' used expression but it really is an other world down south ain't it?.....as an example of why i find that sort of expense for sitting on your arse pretty disgusting/unbelievable and i apologise for the rant/explanation but there's no short way of saying it or writing it down........ that £20000 they could save if they travelled standard class would pay for schooling costs/fees and breakfast and lunch for at least 60 kids in India per year.

I know this as i've sponsored one kid who's mother we met out there in 2001, she's from Uttar Pradesh and had been sold into a street begging gang in Mumbai as a child by her parents and selectively burned on purpose to show massive scarring on her arms/face and chest by the gang she was sold to as the more heavily scarred the street beggar is then the more money they can raise - she was found by the charity after being left for dead near to Chowpatty beach, she had being gang raped by the gang as she eventually got too old to beg effectively at 12 yrs old (yep...12 yrs old, still a child), We met her one evening playing on the beach with her 3yr old son, (born from the rape) and struck up a conversation wi her as she was just radiating smiles and giggling/laughing as her son ran round and hid behind our legs and played with my GF's hair, we found out from her what happened as she was a mass of scars and for the sake of £1 or so a day we found we could sponsor her child through school and take the worry from her. His name is Prakash Amaken and he's now 14 years old and on his way to achieve his dream of becoming a teacher through further sponsorship by the charity and i hear from him a few times a year at least, and from his mother who now helps out at the school (Amaken as his family second name, named by his mother as amanda and kenny, us/we sponsored him, Prakash means Sun-light or source of enlightenment in sanskrit).

Every time i go to buy or purchase something i hesitate and consider ....."What could this do for someone else" , it hasn't stopped me spending thousands on bike kit or suchlike but if everyone had to give a percentage of their salary then the world would be a better place, I know it's an overtly simplified reason but i attempt to live by it.

I'll shut up now and have another drink of the malt whisky i bought t'day so i'm just as fallible i guess 😉

I presume that they save more than this amount on account of cheaper housing etc.

I remember in the 80's when there was a building boom on the outer London areas
and a lot of people moved out to get a bigger place etc and then rail travel was cheap
within 1 year rail travel went up by 35%

One thing I never understood was when I went to Manchester a few years back
the return ticket cost me £ 55 pounds, but including in the cost it was only £ 1 pound to return ?
and this return ticket was bought on the day.

somafunk, you are making a massive assumption that all these people who commute, spend massive amounts on trains and earn even more money sitting in a office don't contribute to charities as you do....

Perhaps they give away more than you ever could to charity & still have plenty to live on themselves...?

I've scarificed better pay etc, to stay at the place I work because its so close. More important to me is that I get to take my kids to school by bike every day, & pick them up again. I've done this right from Nursery, ferrying them round in a trailer, & now on a cargo bike. They wont be kids forever & these are the golden years to me. In summer we can stop off at the park for an hour & still get home before 6:30. But times are changing. The company is moving this summer. This will double my commute to almost 2 miles... 🙂

FWIW the two people concerned did seem very happy with their decisions

It's their life but if they spent 44 grand a year on a mortgage they could have a flashy pad within walking distance of Kings Cross as well as their pad in York...

Well they could...... But they don't want to Live in London.

They want to live in York.

And writing off train travel as a business expense is obviously working out for them.

cash rich, time poor

I know which is more valuable to me

I struggle with long sentences

anyway:

Presumably if you earn £16k and work in London you don't choose to live in Birmingham...?

if you earn £16k a year can you afford to live anywhere near London?

personally, I'm now inclined to look at commute [i]time[/i] as well as cost. my daily commute is between 24 & 30 miles depending on route; the longer route mostly uses motorways and is generally quicker, but if there's a problem - and being M62 there usually is - then the journey time can easily double from 50mins on a good run. slower route is more consistent* but less fuel efficient, until there's a problem on the M62.

* consistently slow 1h20 became 2h20 several times in Nov/Dec due to problems on the M62 not immediately on my route home. I'm sick of it. I want a job that I can [i]walk[/i] to inside an hour if it comes to it

Stumpy01 : I wasn't making an assumption like that in any way possible nor inferring i am some holier than thou pios saint...gawd knows i am anything but. I was merely making a point regarding the absolutely ridiculous amount spent on train travel, or the ridiculous amount they could possibly save by traveling in normal class.

I've not traveled on a train for over 15 yrs so perhaps i'm not best placed to pass judgement eh?.

cash rich, time poor

I know which is more valuable to me

Do you really think that someone who is home by 7pm every night, and doesn't work weekends is time poor ?

If that's the case, I am worse off than I thought !

And I don't have the "cash rich" bit to make up for it either 😐

I'd rather commute by bike and train if I could, even if it was circa £4k it would be a damn good saving on what I'm paying to run a car.

But they don't want to Live in London.

They want to live in [s]York[/s] a train carriage.

And writing off train travel as a business expense is obviously working out for them.

You can't write off commuting costs against tax and if the employer provides it, it would be a taxable benefit, wouldn't it?

Even if you can write off commuting costs as a business expense, you can't write off 4 hours a day against the time you're dead. 😉

Do you really think that someone who is home by 7pm every night, and doesn't work weekends is time poor ?

sorry mate but yes... i really really do... i work in the office 3 days a week, on them days i'm home by 4.15pm. On Thurs/Fri i'm at home. Today i'm sitting here playing Uno with my 4 year old now. I've just made him Eggy bread for breakfast, i'll have mine in a min when he goes to childminder... He'll be home at 3.30... i'll be waiting to go bicycling in the park with him. We'll have all weekend free.

Like most IT nerds, i could double my salary going contracting in London... working the 6am-7pm.... However, i'd really rather not... i want my life, i want his life and my wifes life... to be full of good memories... not recall how we had a nicer house we never saw.

Should have clarified, no kids so being at home all day isn't really as important.

Even if you can write off commuting costs as a business expense, you can't write off 4 hours a day against the time you're dead.

Four hours a day working or four hours a day on a train.

No difference as far as I can see, apart the train seat is more comfortable.

And they will more than likely retire 15 years earlier than I will too.

Do you really think that someone who is home by 7pm every night, and doesn't work weekends is time poor ?

sorry mate but yes... i really really do...

Me too, I'd consider anything much after 6 as not something I'd willingly endure.
I want to be watching the news with my feet up by then

konabunny - Member

You can't write off commuting costs against tax and if the employer provides it, it would be a taxable benefit, wouldn't it?

Even if you can write off commuting costs as a business expense, you can't write off 4 hours a day against the time you're dead.

Actualy it's a yes to both surely?

If you're set up as a .ltd company doing contracting/consultancy work for another company then you can claim travel from your own company. Ok it's not free, but you don't pay tax on it.

And on the 2nd point, you can't but I probably spend an hour reading a book in the evening, or tidying the house, or cooking, or tinkering with bikes, or 101 other things I could pay someone to do if I had the money. And if I was working 4 hours extra per day on the train then they probably get more per hour for that than it costs to employ a cleaner, take their bike to the LBS, or eat out. Or they could just read a book.

Four hours a day working or four hours a day on a train.

I want to know what portion of my tax gets spent on train fares as I haven't been on one for over 10 years

Eh?[b] That's not the choice at all. [/B]It's 4 hours commuting a day or 4 hours spent doing something much more interesting.

It is for some people.

As I said earlier, I'm comparing my 12 hours out of the house, with the two people who commute to London.

As I run my own business, I don't always get the luxury of "doing something much more interesting" as I need to make the business work.

If I had the option to do that while spending 4 hours of the 12 hour day in a First Class seat on the East Coast Mainline, I would happily take it.

As long as that's ok with you 😉

I had a colleague who did the York-London commute.

He studied for his MBA and I think he achieved it in about 14 months due to having 4 hours per day to do the work.

Once you've sorted the cost out (accepted it as a life expense, or even set it up as a business expense) the 4 hours per day can be a chore or an opportunity depending on your approach - how many on here whinge about the crap on telly but watch it for 4 hours a day?

As I said earlier, I'm comparing my 12 hours out of the house, with the two people who commute to London.

Again though - you're assuming you (as in 'one') can get a job paying enough to drop £22k on a season ticket, (I'd want £200k+ to be spending that on a whim), and still only work 10-4.

More realistic would be a 9-5:30 (still reasonably short by City standards, and assuming you work right near the station), which would involve leaving York at 6 (with a change, so not conducive to getting work done etc), and getting home at 8, so that just became a 14 hour day...

Again though - you're assuming you (as in 'one') can get a job paying enough to drop £22k on a season ticket, (I'd want £200k+ to be spending that on a whim), and still only work 10-4.

I'm not assuming anything.

I'm just saying that I would happily swap my 12 hour day for theirs.

And as it happens, they both earn well in excess of 200k a year.

But I'll let them know you want them to do more hours as theirs aren't realistic enough 😉

They wont be kids forever & these are the golden years to me. In summer we can stop off at the park for an hour & still get home before 6:30. But times are changing. The company is moving this summer. This will double my commute to almost 2 miles.

You know thats an utterly beautiful paragraph. You are doing te best thing 🙂

Tyne and Wear Metro just raised the price of a day saver 20p 😯

I'm just saying that I would happily swap my 12 hour day for theirs.

Do you really think that someone who is home by 7pm every night, and doesn't work weekends is time poor ?

If it was me, yes. That'd be rubbish and I'd miss out on a lot.

But you and me are not the same are we. My comment was just me punting out my view and not meant to be a commentary on someone else. It's a question of what we find rewarding and worthwhile. And that differs from person to person.

It's not trolling to ask what portion of a person's tax gets spent on rail fares - the rail subsidy costs the taxpayer £4bn annually. Just to line the pockets of Virgin and First Group 😆