Travel Time

Over the past year, much has been made of the HS2 train route, and how it’ll improve transport links in the UK. It’s absolute balls, as most common sense would tell you.  Mind you, what *would* be useful would be a route going across the country, rather than up-and-down it.

An example…

My current contract is in Cambridge, and I live near Milton Keynes. Road-wise it’s an OK run, takes me 45-60 minutes each way.

But by public transport? Oy, fuck me, what a nightmare. For fun, I had a look.

Milton Keynes -> Cambridge isn’t a direct route (because there’s no ‘across’ rail line) Instead, I’d have to go :

  • From Milton Keynes into London Euston
  • From Euston to Kings Cross
  • From King’s Cross to Cambridge.

Now that is madness – it’d be 3 hours in the morning, and at least two on the way home. (Weirdly, trains seem to run better on the return journey)

And then you get to the real madness. The price. Because it’s a ‘via-London’ route, and at ‘peak time’ the cost was always going to be high. But it turns out that a day return comes to £73.70. Yep, just under seventy five quid. Per day. I don’t pay that for a week’s fuel.

And if you think I’m lying – here’s the screenshot from Trainline.com…

mk_to_cambridge


One Comment on “Travel Time”

  1. Z says:

    We had a teenage friend over from Germany recently. Unwisely, her parents had booked her flight to and from Luton rather than Stansted. The coach journey took hours, including a change at Victoria (I think Cambridge was an alternative route) and a long wait between buses. I couldn’t agree with you more, cross-country travel is a disaster.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *