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  #41  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2017, 7:52 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Supercommuting is one of those myths that is fun for articles, but doesn't exist, for the most part. At the least, it's pretty rare, because it usually isn't worth the massive time and stress. Fastest train line in Europe is Paris-Frankfurt but it isn't like people are supercommuting between France and Germany.

I doubt too many people in, say, Mannheim, are gearing up for their daily train to Paris just because the speeds over the northern French plains are fastest in Europe. NE France and adjacent parts of Germany are dirt cheap and relatively proximate to Paris but doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
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  #42  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2017, 8:24 PM
Jonesy55 Jonesy55 is offline
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I'm sure you will find examples of people doing it, in fact I'm sure you can find occasional examples of people doing that daily commute even now, but it's not going to be a mass thing in my opinion.

It's only going to shave 20 minutes off the time of the fastest current trains between Birmingham and London so it's not a massive difference, the main reason for building it is to increase capacity with the time saving being a bonus.

It will be a bigger change for London to Scotland journeys taking 2 hours off current times once it is all in operation which could well kill the London to Scotland air routes and free up capacity at London airports for more international traffic which will be another bonus.
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  #43  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2017, 12:54 PM
nito nito is offline
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Originally Posted by Jonesy55 View Post
They are going to have to be a lot cheaper than current season tickets if anybody is going to commute using HS2.
As per the previous Financial Times interview with Sir Higgins; they anticipate on accommodating up to 600,000 passengers a day on HS2 through affordable fares similar to the model used by Eurostar/low-cost-carriers to maximise utilisation.

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It's only 75-80 minutes by train now on the Virgin services which are every 20 minutes through the day. There are also slower and cheaper London Midland services which stop at more intermediate stations and take over 2 hours, plus the Chiltern Line services into London Marylebone which take around 1h45.
The standard journey time between London and Birmingham on Virgin Trains West Coast (VTWC) is currently 84mins; HS2 reduces that by 42% to 49mins. HS2 improves on the current frequency to every 15mins at peak, on trains which have twice the capacity.

One other important point to add is that of reliability. The West Coast Main Line has the dubious honour of the being the busiest trunk route railway outside of Asia. Despite significant and costly upgrade works over the years, including grade separation, quadrupling of the tracks all the way to Crewe, and so forth, it is operating at capacity, and fundamentally still a Victorian route. As a consequence, the line has mixed punctuality. That is borne out in Office of Rail & Road statistics for VTWC services running to/from London and Birmingham:
- 57% of services arrived at the right time
- 10% of services arrived >10mins later than timetabled
- 4% of services arrived >30mins later than timetabled or were cancelled

HS2 overcomes the reliability headache of VTWC by providing dedicated tracks and platforms.

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The 50-60 minute trip on HS2 would be fine if you happened to live right next to the new HS2 station in Birmingham and worked right next to Euston but for the vast majority i don't think that would be the case and once you add on extra transport time at one or both ends it's soon going to add up to a long commute anyway. Those few homes right next to Birmingham HS2 are soon going to get expensive too I think, you can see the same in Milton Keynes now, housing there is generally reasonable by Southeast standards but the central apartments right next to the station are a lot pricier than average for the city as you can get into Central London within 35 minutes if you live in one of them.

I'd suggest if you are going to live in Birmingham you might as well get a job there too and save yourself the expense and time of the commute.
I totally agree that the reduced journey times and other benefits of HS2 are not going to make the commute suitable for everyone as not everyone will live/work adjacent to the HS2 stations.

However, you need to consider than in 2015, 1-in-7 (3.7mn) commuted for more than two hours every day, up from 1-in-9 in 2010 (2.8mn). People are taking the decision that a long commute is a sacrifice worth making to own a home. As the following graphic demonstrates, the commuter catchment of London is already pretty vast; HS2 merely increase the catchment of homes that are within a commutable distance of London.


Source: The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/cities/g...-cities-mapped

Another point to make is that the area surrounding the future Curzon Street station is littered with wasteland and low-yield industrial land that could provide a substantial number of new units. The future Birmingham Interchange also provides connectivity in the West Midlands region. HS2 also unlocks substantial capacity on the West Coast Main Line, East Coast Main Line and Midland Main Line for a whole array of improved services to/from London, which in turn makes development in towns north of London far more viable.

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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Supercommuting is one of those myths that is fun for articles, but doesn't exist, for the most part. At the least, it's pretty rare, because it usually isn't worth the massive time and stress. Fastest train line in Europe is Paris-Frankfurt but it isn't like people are supercommuting between France and Germany.

I doubt too many people in, say, Mannheim, are gearing up for their daily train to Paris just because the speeds over the northern French plains are fastest in Europe. NE France and adjacent parts of Germany are dirt cheap and relatively proximate to Paris but doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
There are probably as of right now some 4mn Brits commuting in excess of 2hrs every weekday, primarily due to the silly house prices in and around London. I don’t think that Birmingham will become a dormitory suburb of London, but there is certainly credibility for Birmingham to become a more viable place to call home for those priced out of London or who want their pound to go further.

In the context of the current discussion, I’m not sure Frankfurt to Paris is a good example as the quickest journey time is just under 4hrs, whilst London-Birmingham and London-Manchester will average 49mins and 68mins respectively on HS2.
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  #44  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2017, 1:02 PM
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However, you need to consider than in 2015, 1-in-7 (3.7mn) commuted for more than two hours every day, up from 1-in-9 in 2010 (2.8mn).
That's a normal commute. One hour, each way, is pretty close to standard in large metropolitan centers.
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In the context of the current discussion, I’m not sure Frankfurt to Paris is a good example as the quickest journey time is just under 4hrs, whilst London-Birmingham and London-Manchester will average 49mins and 68mins respectively on HS2.
I'm not talking about commuting from Frankfurt to Paris, but the portion of that line running in France has the fastest rail speeds in Europe. Reims to Paris is 40 minutes. Why, then, aren't there masses of supercommuters, given that Paris is expensive, NE France is cheap, and trains are fast and cheap?
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  #45  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2017, 5:02 PM
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That's a normal commute. One hour, each way, is pretty close to standard in large metropolitan centers.


I'm not talking about commuting from Frankfurt to Paris, but the portion of that line running in France has the fastest rail speeds in Europe. Reims to Paris is 40 minutes. Why, then, aren't there masses of supercommuters, given that Paris is expensive, NE France is cheap, and trains are fast and cheap?
Who knows?

Perhaps it's cultural. The French might not be as willing as Brits and Americans to commute 2 hours each day given their attitude toward work-life balance.
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  #46  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2017, 5:51 PM
Jonesy55 Jonesy55 is offline
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Paris actually has more people commuting from longer distances than London does from figures I've seen. Probably because there are fewer surrounding mid sized cities as alternatives. Surrounding London are Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton, Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge which all have reasonable employment markets so people living in or close to those places usually work there rather than in London. Plus UK rail season tickets in the SE are expensive so that's another factor making more people work locally to where they live.
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  #47  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2017, 5:58 PM
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The model of low-cost airlines offering very cheap fares to people booking far enough in advance is one the UK long distance rail operators already use, you can get from Birmingham to London or vice versa for under £10 if you book ahead and take an off-peak service, the extra capacity from HS2 might well make more of those fares available but if you are commuting daily then booking individual tickets for each day is not practical. The monthly/annual season ticket passes will also need to be cheap if commuting from long distance is going to be a big thing.

There is potential for a lot of development around the Curzon Street site in Birmingham it's true, some is there already from recent years but you could also add several thousand apartments in the area by getting rid of the warehouses etc next to the station site.
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  #48  
Old Posted Oct 11, 2017, 4:27 PM
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Interestingly the UK office of national statistics today released some data on home prices per m2 in the various districts of England and Wales.

Some highlights

Most expensive district - Kensington & Chelsea £19,439/m2 ($2,385/sqft)

London average - £6,639/m2 ($814/sqft)

Cheapest London borough - Barking & Dagenham £3,994/m2 ($490/sqft)

England & Wales average - £2,395/m2 ($294/sqft)

City of Birmingham - £1,837/m2 ($225/sqft)

Cheapest region - Northeast England £1,271/m2 ($156/sqft)

Cheapest district - Blaenau Gwent, Wales £777/m2 ($95/sqft)

Last edited by Jonesy55; Oct 11, 2017 at 4:37 PM.
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  #49  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2017, 10:55 PM
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That data mapped...

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  #50  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2017, 8:35 AM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
That's a normal commute. One hour, each way, is pretty close to standard in large metropolitan centers.
Not really, otherwise it would be more than 1-in-7, but lengthy commutes are becoming a more regular occurrence in the UK.

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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
I'm not talking about commuting from Frankfurt to Paris, but the portion of that line running in France has the fastest rail speeds in Europe. Reims to Paris is 40 minutes. Why, then, aren't there masses of supercommuters, given that Paris is expensive, NE France is cheap, and trains are fast and cheap?
The LGV Est is most certainly fast, but speed isn’t everything as discussed earlier in the thread. I couldn’t find data on the number of people commuting from Reims on the TGV Est – where the journey time to Paris is 45mins – but I suspect an issue could be the low (just seven direct TGV trains to Paris each day) and erratic frequencies.

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Originally Posted by Jonesy55 View Post
The model of low-cost airlines offering very cheap fares to people booking far enough in advance is one the UK long distance rail operators already use, you can get from Birmingham to London or vice versa for under £10 if you book ahead and take an off-peak service, the extra capacity from HS2 might well make more of those fares available but if you are commuting daily then booking individual tickets for each day is not practical. The monthly/annual season ticket passes will also need to be cheap if commuting from long distance is going to be a big thing.
I suspect that there will be a season ticket offering, otherwise I can’t see HS2 getting close to being used by up to 600,000 passengers a day as Sir Higgins wants the line to manage.
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  #51  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2017, 9:12 AM
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I think people experience more sticker shock with season passes than they would otherwise.

Even the tube costs like £1500/yr if you're using it round trip every workday in Zone 1-2. Of course a commuter train from 50-100 miles away is going to cost 4x that. It would cost at least as much to travel by car, just factoring in mileage and fuel.

If you want a free commute, then walk to work. You better be prepared for a shitty job or very high housing prices.
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  #52  
Old Posted Oct 13, 2017, 6:39 PM
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Unless you run a successful business from home, or have a good job in a low cost area where home prices are not such a problem. They do exist, medical doctors exist everywhere for example.
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  #53  
Old Posted Nov 12, 2017, 11:00 AM
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Breaking news - house builder wants to build houses on greenbelt land.

https://www.ft.com/content/703a1a42-...b-322b2cb39656



Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonesy55 View Post
Unless you run a successful business from home, or have a good job in a low cost area where home prices are not such a problem. They do exist, medical doctors exist everywhere for example.
Medical doctors in the NHS make peanuts though. The private hospitals or (obviously) Harley Street clinics that are more lucrative are in pricy areas.


What UK cities need is densification - more flats close to transport. That is already working to bring down home prices in London, among other factors.
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  #54  
Old Posted Nov 13, 2017, 12:54 PM
Jonesy55 Jonesy55 is offline
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Well if your benchmark for what is or isn't a shitty job is a Harley St doctor then I guess so, but then that means probably >99% of people have shitty jobs.
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  #55  
Old Posted Nov 13, 2017, 3:38 PM
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Well if your benchmark for what is or isn't a shitty job is a Harley St doctor then I guess so, but then that means probably >99% of people have shitty jobs.
It’s certainly more than the £30k or less that most NHS doctors make. As with teaching, the job is rewarding in other ways, but it’s not enough afford a family home even in less expensive places.
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  #56  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2017, 5:01 PM
Jonesy55 Jonesy55 is offline
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£30k or less is only for the most junior of junior doctors in training and if you don't include the various supplements they pretty much all get, GPs and consultants get a lot more as do even junior doctors after the first year or two. Then there are extra payments for working nights/weekends, taking on extra responsibilities etc. Nobody would do the job otherwise as many nurses earn more than £30k.

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/exp...rs/pay-doctors




Last edited by Jonesy55; Nov 14, 2017 at 6:03 PM.
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  #57  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2017, 6:30 PM
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i don’t know much about how the u.k. really works, my perception is terribly warped by london.

i guess i don’t know what the “stepdown” in economic power is from london to say manchester, but i would presume that at some point theres some really substantial overflow to these other cities? the housing situation in london seems intolerable.
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  #58  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2017, 9:39 PM
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I'm not sure there is substantial flow of people from London to Manchester etc, or the other way round either. There is a big net flow of people internally within the UK out of London but the bulk of that goes to the commuter belt surrounding it rather than to other cities. The net flows between London and regions further away are pretty small, some have a slight surplus, some have a slight migration deficit with the capital but the numbers are very small in relation to the population. Likewise people moving out of Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow etc cities are much more likely to move into their own commuter belts than to migrate to London.

Median salaries for jobs in regional UK cities outside the Southeast are around 15-40% lower than in London depending on which city you are looking at, but then housing costs can be 50-65% less or maybe even a bit more in the cheapest places to make up for that.

Where London does excel is for the top 10-20% of workers who earn quite a lot more than the top 10-20% in regional cities, the top 10% in London earn more than around £85,000 gross while the top 10% in Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester etc only earn over around £50,000 gross. If you looked at the top 5%, 2%, 1% then the gap would get exponentially wider.

Then again at the very lowest end of the pay distribution the difference is not much at all, a supermarket shelf stacker or cafe waiter in London only earns a very little bit more than elsewhere, employers often apply a 'London weighting' to jobs like that to help with extra living costs but it's often insignificant compared with the actual extra cost of living there.

Londoners also pay more tax which subsidises other regions, higher average salaries means a higher % paid in tax, more expensive properties means much more % paid in stamp duty every time somebody moves home etc. And as taxation in the UK is almost all nationally based that revenue then gets spent around the country rather than just in the city/region where the tax was paid.
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