I mean I've never had to pay that much for a ticket bought in advance. 25ish was usually enough, including for much longer routes.
I mean I've never had to pay that much for a ticket bought in advance. 25ish was usually enough, including for much longer routes.
Hope is the denial of reality
Definitely can depend upon you book in advance etc. I bought a rail ticket for about £10 for a Virgin one way trip to London, about £13 for the return trip. Not bad for a three to four hour journey, would have spent more than that on petrol alone if driving. If I turned up the station and had bought it on the day it would have been about £100 each way.
However I'm guessing if this line has a tendency to sell out there's less of a need to deep discount the advanced tickets. Hence supply and demand.
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Season ticket Cambridge to London King's Cross prices:
7 Days - £117.30
1 Month - £450.50
3 Months - £1,351.30
6 Months - £2,702.60
12 Months - £4,692.00
Wow. €386 gets you unlimited public transportation for a month in The Netherlands.
Congratulations America
Rail transport is ridiculously expensive in the UK.
Scratch that. All public transport is ridiculously expensive in the UK.
Scratch that. Transport is ridiculously expensive in the UK. Petrol isn't cheap here.
A return trip of Cambridge to London would be about £620 miles a week for which in my car you would be looking at pretty close to the £90 a week the trains annual cost works out at. That's before you take into account the other costs and the wear and tear on driving a car so much. Rail commuters are not that harshly done by in comparison.
Those seats were reserved though right, so he couldnt sit in them?
Its a bit of a mix of the two. airline-style seats but no tables. Just little fold-down things. Since he is travelling quote far and to a terminus (possibly between termini(?) if he actually lives in cambridge then he shouldnt have much trouble settling into a seat and doing some work. If he goes first class he will get plenty of room and be able to work. In my opinion thats the only chance hes got of getting anything more than emails and admin done. Personally I just sleep both ways and did so when commuting from Brighton as well.Spawnie/Unheard Of: It could be worth clarifying what style of train it is that is available from Cambridge to London. Is it this style with reserved seats or is it more like Timbuk2's tube pictures?
My conclusion is that its doable but it would be very much worth looking at things like work from home days, flexible working, train ticket paid, first class, living between Lon/Cam rather than just in one. All of those things will make life much easier.
"Son," he said without preamble, "never trust a man who doesn't drink, because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.
The running costs for our bikes couldn't be better.
Last edited by Unheard Of; 08-25-2016 at 02:59 PM.
There's a man goin' 'round, takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Again thanks to all of you for your (generally) useful discussion.
Hmm - based on this (and the various responses) I think this is going to be an important point for me to figure out. I don't expect to do fiddly data analysis or the like, but I'd love to be able to read a paper or two in peace, and maybe do email and the occasional powerpoint. During inclement weather I currently take a ~45 minute commute by public transit to and from work (for, I kid you not, 3 miles of distance) and things are quite crowded, especially in the morning - I do light reading like the news or the like. But there's a reason I bike most of the time, since I view this as wasted time. We'll have to see.
Thanks for the sites, I had found a few different ones that were pretty terrible implementations. I'll look at these. As far as location inside Cambridge, for obscure reasons I would want to be in (short) walking distance of approximately Bridge St and the River Cam, which makes locations closer to the train or the Science Park largely irrelevant. But as you say, it's a small place and biking or even walking probably works most of the time.
Again, thanks for the useful resources. 8-6 is kinda crappy but I guess that's just how these things work (we chose our daycare for its fantastic 6:30-6:30 hours, of which we use about 7-5:45). It's a shame because it would probably force my wife to make both dropoff and pickup, which may be challenging since she travels ~20-30% of the time. Maybe we could do a nanny of I could finagle partial wfh so I don't have to commute every day.Same ballpark. Full time for us is 8am to 6pm. It's difficult to get back from London for 6pm, but should be fine if your wife is working nearby. There are nurseries that only do something closer to the school day (~9-3), and close for school holidays.
Here's a couple of examples of full time nurseries in the area:
http://www.cambridgedaynursery.co.uk/ (Milton Road)
https://www.brighthorizons.co.uk/our...-and-preschool (Science Park)
Google does a reasonable job of suggesting bike routes, but this can be more useful - https://cambridge.cyclestreets.net/
All right, we'll see. Given other constraints we might use it even if we live in Cambridge but I don't think it would substantively change the calculation either way.This will change in May 2017. There is a new station under construction walking distance from the science park. It's on the main line to London Kings Cross. It will be here:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/...352!4d0.158065
Thanks for the info. I think the 'midway' option has been ruled out already but there would be no intracity leg in London since the office is a block from Kings Cross station. So maybe with the biking on the Cambridge end I could keep the commute to 75 or so minutes. Feasible though not ideal. I also might explore off-peak commuting - e.g. get in really early to avoid crowds, get back home at a reasonable hour to make it in time for pickup/dinner/bath/bedtime.
Yeah I'll try to get a feel of the train style but it seems from a quick look that seating would be possible, wifi maybe.
Oh, if I believed in it I could always leverage an investment without exposing myself to market risk in the property space or ongoing costs like property taxes and upkeep. If I buy it will be because we want to buy, with no consideration to currency movement. Definitely need to talk to a tax advisor - I assume we'd return to the US eventually and I would need adequate access to US tax-protected investments to make this a worthwhile move.Indeed. The risk/advantage of a "currency play" in property is of course that your stake is magnified as when you buy a property it is leveraged against a mortgage so will go up or down much more than a standard investment. Most investments are not leveraged like that. If you do move over here then it would be worth speaking to a tax adviser properly and properly researching the UK housing market. Due to our Green Belt laws house prices tend to ratchet ever upwards only and I don't forsee that changing but again it has to be a medium-long term investment not a short term one.
Assuming the 4700 pounds is correct, that works out to approximately 9.50 per leg or 19 round trip (assuming 250 workdays per year). Obviously with conference travel and wfh and sickdays it would end up being more, but it's not crazy high. I know that commuter rail passes in the Boston area aren't too cheap either - about $10 each way for a monthly pass for the further commute. It's the cost of doing business in cities that don't allow enough high density housing near the city center.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Wi-fi on those trains is criminally expensive when you can just tether your phone your laptop.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
It's not free? Acela's is free, albeit a bit slow and restricted. Huh.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Depends upon company and not all services have wifi yet though it seems to be becoming standard, but it seems to be a payable extra unless you're travelling First Class.
If you're planning on using it regularly then with Virgin it's £30 a month which works out at about 72 pence per journey based on your 250 work days you mentioned. On the other hand adding that money to your phone bill could get a ton of data for tethering and work out better. 4G tethering tends to work well.
That's twice my monthly phone bill just for some stinking wi-fi I can only use on a train.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
How many GB of data are you getting for £15 a month?
If you're working (or browsing TWF etc) on that WiFi for 2 hours a day, five days a week then that's quite possibly a significant amount of data usage.
4gb, I think. I never get near my data cap, so I can't 100% recall what it is.
But before that I was on a more expensive plan with unlimited data that was a similar price to Virgin trains WiFi but, of course, I got calls and texts on top of that plus the ability to use it anywhere I can get a signal.
It was a shit deal the last time I travelled by train (which, admittedly, was down to London for the 2012 Olympics) and it's become even shitter since, with the increasing ubiquity of smart phones and the existence of 4g.
Also, what work are going to do on a train that requires a powerful internet connection? Checking your emails? My phone does that all the time anyway. Read some papers, maybe write a document? Don't need an internet connection. Look up something? Not data intensive.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Porn. Duh.
(Actually have seen people watching porn on the subway. Because they can?)
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
This reminds me of the time Dread asked the forum if he should take a job in CA or NY. It was years ago, but the same dilemmas apply.
Hi, Spawnie!
Shouldn't things like shopping and dining out options also be part of this decision process? Seems to me that Cambridge is a bit thin on that.
Congratulations America
We buy almost everything online and rarely eat out. So, no.
Of course, the paucity of baseball nearby is a bit of a downside.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
You can watch the cricket on Parker's Piece in the summer. Is that close enough?
Somewhat off topic, but we're having a great weekend. Spent yesterday picnicking with some of my wife's friends, really lovely group from all over the world. We went to a playground this morning and got talking to a French family who have just moved into the area, then went to a cafe that was mostly full of Italian families. Everyone was very friendly. I didn't think we'd settle here (too expensive, too few hills), but it's such a pleasantly cosmopolitan place to live that I doubt we'll ever leave. (Full disclosure: It's 10000x times easier for me to find a job here than anywhere else in the country).
I'm really proud to be in the least brexity bit of Britain.
There's a man goin' 'round, takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
You live in Scotland?
Of course, I should have fact checked for precise figures.You live in Scotland?
According to the BBC, Cambridge voted 73.8% to remain and was 13 out of 399 areas for remain vote share. I should have said "I'm really proud to be on one of the least brexity parts of Britain".
The least brexity bit is of course Gibraltar, known to Randblade as a small island off the coast of Scotland.
Last edited by Unheard Of; 08-28-2016 at 06:53 PM.
There's a man goin' 'round, takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Gibraltar isn't part of Britain. It voted as it was affected but it isn't Britain.
Oh hush with your tired ideas like "accuracy"
There's a man goin' 'round, takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Got the offer. Suggested the London location was better than the NYC location. Salary not as impressive as I'd like, especially given living/commuting costs, but we'll see. I'll update you guys if I end up taking the job - then looks like I'd have to meet a few UK-based TWFers, eh?
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Good luck, hope it goes well for you. Hope the salary is not too disappointing.
Awesome.
An adventure!
Congrats!
To the Brits: do you guys get any deductions for commuting costs over there?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Deductions for ... being a Brit?
Deducting travel costs from taxes I assume is what he meant.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
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