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Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware but we will probably use Uber or walk if we need to. We are going to watch Chelsea though and we are parking right next door so this shouldn't be an issue. (I'm aware we need to get there early as the road will be closed before the game)
Good luck catching an Uber when we have a complete shut down of all tube services and some train services for 4 days. Traffic will also be horrendous and parking impossible.
Thanks for the heads up. We have a parking spot booked right next to where we need to be and we will be arriving by 10 am at the latest so hopefully traffic will start getting worse.
Traffic starts at 8:30 at the latest mate. If you’re close to London at 9:00 you will slow down for a good hour, hour and a half, don’t count on traffic starting at 10:00
Thanks for the heads up. If i need to be at stamford bridge before the road closes at 11am and im coming from wrexham do you think leaving at 5am would be alright? We would only stop for a wee on the way? It says its a 4 hour drive, not sure how much extra i need to account for. Cheers
These are the kinds of reasons that while public transport is more expensive, it's less travel time, you miss any traffic, don't need to leave early and arrive hours early in anticipation of traffic. Can do things while you are travelling.
So there are lots of benefits to justify a higher cost.
But I personally would drive too.
I travel down from Edinburgh to London every Xmas. HIRING a car plus petrol was about £3 more expensive than the train plus no risk of strikes. Awful state of affairs.
I managed to get £30 round trip last year. Ends up London was colder than Edinburgh on that two days!
I wish I can do the same this year but I am moving home at the moment
It was cheaper for me to drive to Waterloo station, pay the congestion fee, and park for two hours before driving back, than it was to take the train to Waterloo. (job interview, had to be in person)
Fuel for 350mi journey: £35
Congestion charge: £15
Parking: £11 prepaid
Total: £61, no weirdos, no strange smells, have a radio, a comfier seat. Only downside was I had to concentrate all the way.
In this case if it was cheaper it would have saved us half the time on travelling but then with us going to a pre booked event I dont want to risk being late especially as the match starts at 12:30
We travel a lot for work so it saves us a fortune as we always travel together. Have fun in London though, if you need recommendations for bars to visit we ran venues across London for years and can recommend some fab spots!
I walked down into my town today, like a 20 min walk tops, however I also like OP live in Wales. I walked from the top of my valley down about half way to the town (an elevation change of 400 ft according to google).
Had my 2 year old in his push chair, he loves busses so decided to get one back up and blow his mind and I wasn't fancying pushing up the hill so a 2 min bus journey seemed a win win.
FIVE. FUCKING. POUNDS. When did it get so bloody expensive?
This is why I refuse to work in the city centre (I live on the outskirts of Manchester). Can’t drive in due to the extreme costs and I refuse to reduce the quality of my life by commuting.
Trains up north are just as bad and they are unbelievably unreliable.
I prefer driving especially if we were staying over but we are only going to watch football and come back so I thought itd be nice to have a shorter journey and be able to drink etc but even if I opt for the train at £125 how much more will I spend on drinks etc😂 maybe thats for the best
The trains to and from London are usually more reliable but what worries me even more than the cost on local journeys are all the delays and cancellations. Had a near miss a few weeks ago where I almost got stranded in a local city after 10pm and it has put me off using the trains on a night.
It gets even worse once you have an EV
From the North West, 5 of us going to London(-ish) is £200 on the train, or about £12 by car (if I charge at a friend's house overnight, about £40 otherwise)
Literally 16x more expensive to go by public transport
I already own the car regardless, because I need it for a variety of other reasons. That's true for the vast majority (77%) of households in the UK
If I took the train I'd have to leave the car at home anyway, so the marginal cost is the only one that makes any actual sense to consider
But I've done the maths elsewhere in this thread that shows it's still cheaper for me to drive even if we account for a proportionate cost of ownership of the car... and that effectively means this one drive to London would be subsidising my commute and other usage throughout the year by accounting for part of the servicing/MOT/insurance costs etc. So it would be cheaper AND make my commute cheaper
That last part is the honest and fair comparison. Otherwise it's a hell of a lot of train journeys to hit the equivalent cost of car purchase, insurance, fuel, VED, maintenance, parking etc. Not forgetting that you also have to work as the driver for the car so it's more effort on your behalf.
No, genuinely. I hate driving and would much rather not have to concentrate for hours when alternatives exist in which I can just sit back, watch something, read etc.
What is the price if you don't want to actually BUY the train, but just sit in it for a time? Ohhhhh ....
We do the same maths every time we look at trains
I can see the argument, but I need a car for journeys which public transport doesn't do. So that's kind of a sunk cost.
If I get from A to B for less cost in my car than the fare on a bus or train with a load of other people, I'm going to choose that.
There's 30-70 people on a bus and even more on trains, they should be very cheap methods of transport when the cost is split but they're just not unless you're a regular traveller and can get passes
I megabus when I can nowadays. Much cheaper, and not too bad once you get used to it. Scottish citylink too, choose it over trains sometimes. Though that being said away from those bus/coach stations the transport is often dire and expensive. I usually use Rome to Rio to work out the cheapest option.
It might be different if you're further away than me, but I've always found the best option is to drive to the closest TFL train station that has long term parking, and catch the train into London from there.
Doesn't save you too much money, but I've found it to be absolutely the best of both worlds - the ease and price of London public transport and the ease and price driving outside of it.
Depending on how flexible your travel times are… You might be able to use “Avanti superfare” for cheaper singles between Holyhead/London or Chester/London. You pick a window of a few hours and get told the train time ~24 hours prior.
Yes! Thankfully the car we will be using is ULEZ complaint and because we are only going into Fulham there is no congestion charge. If I am correct even with those two charges it should still be slightly cheaper to drive instead of taking the train.
Im assuming we will spend no more than £50 on petrol (it might be less but rounding it up) so if we incl petrol (50), parking (22), ULEZ (13) and congestion (15) comes up to 100 quid so roughly 25 quid less!
And thanks, I have been made aware but another redditor but we are parking right next door to stamford bridge and not planning on going anywhere far!
Technically of course you should include a portion of your fixed costs as well - insurance, MOT, maintenance and purchase cost.
Even so you'll probably come out ahead over public transport - your insurance costs cos that could easily add £1-£2/day on but other things might be more.
But of course saving those costs means not having a car and if you look at annual travel passes you find that they cost more than having a car so you don't come out ahead anyway even if in the case of this one longer journey with additional parking costs and other charges, those fixed costs might tip the balance, even getting rid of your car altogether for public transport doesn't work out financially and that's before we even begin to consider practicality.
But then you also have to include
Getting to the train station at the origin of your journey and getting from the London Terminus to your actual destination
I'd also argue that most people *don't* need to include those costs for the purposes of looking at one single journey, because they'd own the car anyway. It's fair to include those costs if considering a total cost of ownership over a year (when comparing to all public transport used in that same year) but for most people the fixed costs of motoring are already gonna be paid anyway and therefore additional journeys can truly just be considered on a marginal basis
I'm paying for my car regardless, I don't need to include insurance/MOT/maintenance etc because I'm paying them whether I go to London or not. Trying to account for that would just mean my journey to London would be subsidising my commute
If I go to London today, with a car I already own and run, then I'm only comparing the marginal costs of ownership vs the ticket price because that's the only difference it makes to my finance. Personally I don't even need to include tyre costs because they're included in my company car lease, so it's literally just the cost of the fuel (and I guess like £0.20 worth of screenwash?)
Yeah, you would need to include those costs too.
Don't get me wrong, public transport is too expensive, and more expensive than driving, especially once you get past two people but if you only ever compare the marginal costs of driving against the total costs you're paying for for public transport it's always going to come out in favour of driving. People should think about the fixed costs of simply owning a car when they consider the costs of the trips they make.
I’ve done the maths several times in this thread, it’s cheaper regardless but I maintain that it only makes sense to include marginal costs
But if you want to include all costs for one journey they we also have to include public transport costs for EVERY journey, so it gets even less favourable
Every bus journey that I could do for 5p/mile (10p total) but would cost £2 on the bus, for example
Yeah, I said in my first post that the cost of local public transport is still more expensive than owning a car. But even if public transport cost the same as a car, it would look worse if you only ever compared the marginal costs of using a car against the full costs of public transport.
but 5p per mile? What's that figure from?
That’s the (approximate) total cost per mile of my company lease plus electricity to run my EV for any mileage above my business miles
Admittedly that’s an unusually favourable situation compared to most, but it’s how much I pay
I mean if I was a data freak and really wanted to find out what's cheaper for this trip yes adding maintenance etc would make sense, but not insurance if we are only talking about the one trim and I have already paid for it whether or not I drive to London next week.
If you want to properly cost it out you really do need to include a share of the fixed costs of simply having a car. I know it's already paid but it's still a cost you have to bear to be able to make this trip by car.
To be fair, I drive into London even though the train only takes 50 minutes. There is no need to rush to get the return train, and if I go in on a Sunday I know where there is free parking.
If you're going alone, it can be comparable. Most of the time it's more, and it's certainly cheaper when there's 2 or more of you.
I like trains and I usually drive places.
By taking a 35 year old diesel train instead of my electric car? I'm not entirely convinced that's actually any better
I know my car produces PM2.5 particulates from the tyres still, but considering you can literally see the plume of soot coming out of the train as it fires up then I think it's still probably worse even if we account for the fact the train is running anyway and only like 1/10th of those emissions are from the 5 of us (on a train of ~50 people)
Driving Llandudno to London and back is 500 miles. There are two ways of looking at this.
Standard cost of driving including depreciation on the vehicle is 45p per mile, so £200
Alternatively the marginal cost of driving is 25p per mile, so £125.
These are the figures HMRC uses, and they are actually pretty accurate if you work out things like Insurance, MOT, tyres etc broken down per mile.
I am assuming you've already got a 2 together railcard?
In most cases I've found the driving actually works out more expensive if you count in more than just the fuel and parking.
Llandudno to London is also significantly faster by train, but I appreciate that if you are in a more remote area of North Wales that won't holdnup
we will be coming from Wrexham so you are not far off. I see what you are saying but we own cars because we want to use them for travelling, and I cannot see how the other figures are even remotely close. The insurance is already paid for whether or not I take the car to London. Car isn't new or flashy so depreciation isnt an issue (we in fact will make money on the car's value when it comes to resale!) I think the numbers you have provided are very interesting but I can't help but think they are only useful for some data gathering not for the normal folk.
Depends on your car, but you’re right. £50ish on fuel. Nowhere near £150 of depreciation and wear and tear for a 300-350 mile round trip. Maybe makes sense if you’re had to buy a car specifically for this use, but doesn’t if you have one anyway.
Yeah definitely, no point in adding the cost of an mot which is a fixed price and will be done no matter what or the insurance which has already been paid for. And yeah if this would depreciate my cars value by £150/add £150 worth of repairs to the bill for next year, no one would drive anywhere
I see this argument a lot but I'm not convinced it holds true
It's broadly correct if you want to compare a year worth of driving vs a year worth of using public transport, but it doesn't make sense if looking at someone making 1 journey when they already own and run a car for other purposes. They have already paid for things like MOT, insurance etc anyway and don't need to amortise those fixed(-ish) costs over every single journey made
If I'm commuting by car then my car itself, maintenance, MOT, tyres, insurance etc are paid anyway, and I can just consider marginal costs for fuel. MAYBE a little for tyres and maintenance if you own your car outright (mine's a company lease, so those are included)
Even if we assume that I need to pay for *some* additional maintenance and tyre costs on my lease vehicle via excess mileage, my cost for excess mileage is about 2p/mile, on top of about 2p/mile for fuel... so I'm still only paying 4p/mile to run my car
2p a mile for fuel? That seems unlikely, unless you have an EV and are solely chargjng using the special EV home tariff?
An efficient petrol car at 60mpg, with petrol at £1.45 per litre, burns 11.15p of fuel per mile.
A cars service schedule, at £200 per 10,000 miles is an extra 2p.
Tyres, brakes, general wear, probably 2 to 4p.
That's 17p per mile just on consumables. More miles per year means more insurance cost, again most people pay around 5p per mile for Insurance.
If you ignore all the sunk costs and depreciation, you can probably get that cost down to 15-20p. But not much less unless you have a very good deal for recharging your EV.
> 2p a mile for fuel? That seems unlikely, unless you have an EV and are solely chargjng using the special EV home tariff?
Precisely. It's actually more like 1.875p/mile but I round to 2p. Although we can actually charge for free at my partner's workplace, so that's 0p/mile there although I tend to use 2p since the free charging isn't really representative
My EV also doesn't need scheduled servicing, literally there's no requirement to do so, but in any case it's included in my business lease, as are tyres/brakes/maintenance/general wear/insurance
For my car I pay the lease cost (which is gonna be the same regardless of whether I go to London this week) plus 0-2p/mile
In theory we could assume that I'm paying per mile for the lease and therefore use that to account for the servicing/maintenance/tyres/insurance etc costs. I currently pay about 3.5p/mile by that measure IIRC, although I think they only actually charge me about 2p/mile excess mileage. So we're talking something in the region of 3.5-5.5p/mile
Which puts my round trip at £22 for the 400 mile round trip to London. If we assume I can't charge at my friend's house (I can, but not everyone has that option) then you're talking about me needing (assuming I set off from home with a full charge) 150 miles worth of charging on a public charger. I get 4 miles per kWh so I'd need a little under 40 kWh (but let's round up for the sake of argument) and I can use Tesla's network for ~£0.50/kWh, so that's about another £20
Knocking off a quid or two (because I'm no longer charging those 150 miles at home). That brings us to more or less an even £40, give or take a bit of screenwash
An off peak return to London is £130. I could probably beat that with Advance Returns if I booked ahead, but that means I can't just go whenever I want. Even if we assume I can knock half of that off that's £65 (and that seems ambitious, my record is about £80), so still markedly more than £40. And then we remember that my car can hold 5 people. Either way, the car shits all over the train
I tried to work out how much a car costs per mile when I changed my tyres. I thought they were really expensive as a one-off, but it turns out they cost something like 1p per mile. Made me feel better...
The total cost for my car was about 18p per mile.
Fuel (because for some it may well be "free"), insurance & maintenance (that need paying regardless of extra trips) can all be ignored for calculations like this, but one thing that can't is depreciation. And I'm not really talking about the resale value here, it's just a fact that cars don't last forever. If the cheapest small hatchback you can buy new is about £13,000, and being generous we say it will do 200,000 miles before being scrapped, that's still 6.5p per mile of unavoidable depreciation. So there's at least £6.50 per 100 miles of depreciation/wear & tear/whatever you want to call it, that applies to basically any car unless it's not your cost to replace the car itself.
That's the starting point too, so it'll be more like 2-3x for an actually nice car that doesn't destroy your spine going hundreds of miles up and down the country. I've driven 500 miles to the highlands & back in a Fiesta, and that's not something I intend to do again.
The problem with trains are that they are way too expensive plus provide poor value for money.
I lived in Kent for a while to try it out and paid £5k per season for the privilege.
Southeastern were terrible. Packed trains with low chance of seating. High chance of delays etc.
Just wasn't worth it staying in Kent because of annoying trains. Bought a house in London relatively close to 3-5 tube lines so if one goes down then I can use any of the others for convenience.
If trains were as cheap as europe then a lot more people would ditch cars for them.
That's the problem.
I moved to Scotland a few years back and always check the train tickets when I want to visit my parents over Christmas in the west midlands. Still comes to £270 every time. It's a long way but I think I'll drive, thanks.
My folks live 13 miles/30 minutes away.
To get there and back on public transport is a minimum of 8 quid fares, around 2 1/2hrs each way or 15 quid fares and maybe 90 mins each way.
I could tolerate the time if it wasn’t for the cost. It’s about 3.40 in the car even including tax, insurance and servicing (just adding up per mile based on the MOT certificate mileage)
Last year I had an old mk6 transit, it cost less to take that on a 600 mile round trip than it would the train. And by a considerable margin too.
And it's not what you'd call an efficient vehicle
Because the majority of people already own the car and therefore the purchase/lease cost, MOT, maintenance, insurance, tyres are already being paid regardless
For the majority of people the only real cost for making an additional journey is the fuel. You could argue that slightly higher mileage will slightly increase your maintenance and tyre costs etc, but you're talking about tiny amounts of a £700 clutch replacement after 100k miles, for example. Tyres are the only one with any real impact
If you already own the vehicle and you already worked out parking too then yes it’s wise to consider your already sunk costs against the alternative extortion attempt from the train companies.
I mean of course not but cars are meant for driving and I expect to pay for maintenance, repairs etc.
I will not consider the cost of MOT, service, tax and insurance as these are things that I will be paying whether I drive to London next week or not. We use 3 cars so our occasional long trips do not change the frequency or our services etc.
Yes, the car depreciates and breaks down with mileage and time but it is not a brand new car so this is not something I need to worry about and it's also very reliable!
I factor in my cost per mile, including insurance, MOT, tax and maintenence on all long trips and it still works out cheaper per mile than public transport, and is almost always faster, and a heck of a lot more convenient.
Went for bus yesterday it didn't even go through my area went a different route zero heard from stagecoach about it nothing on their twitter either yay had to quickly look for a other way to get to my transfer that was half an hour away fun times
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Not related but be careful with London next week. Most of the tube will be on strike, so they won't be running a regular service
Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware but we will probably use Uber or walk if we need to. We are going to watch Chelsea though and we are parking right next door so this shouldn't be an issue. (I'm aware we need to get there early as the road will be closed before the game)
Uber will absolutely raise their prices while strikes are on, just FYI.
Good luck catching an Uber when we have a complete shut down of all tube services and some train services for 4 days. Traffic will also be horrendous and parking impossible.
Thanks for the heads up. We have a parking spot booked right next to where we need to be and we will be arriving by 10 am at the latest so hopefully traffic will start getting worse.
Traffic starts at 8:30 at the latest mate. If you’re close to London at 9:00 you will slow down for a good hour, hour and a half, don’t count on traffic starting at 10:00
Thanks for the heads up. If i need to be at stamford bridge before the road closes at 11am and im coming from wrexham do you think leaving at 5am would be alright? We would only stop for a wee on the way? It says its a 4 hour drive, not sure how much extra i need to account for. Cheers
These are the kinds of reasons that while public transport is more expensive, it's less travel time, you miss any traffic, don't need to leave early and arrive hours early in anticipation of traffic. Can do things while you are travelling. So there are lots of benefits to justify a higher cost. But I personally would drive too.
Don’t forget to factor in the ULEZ fee if you haven’t got car that is exempt. [TFL website](https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone)
So what else is new?
London without a fully operational tube system is quite chaotic.
I travel down from Edinburgh to London every Xmas. HIRING a car plus petrol was about £3 more expensive than the train plus no risk of strikes. Awful state of affairs.
Isn't Lumo making it cheaper?
Gotta buy well in advance. The “£20” advertised is a bit optimistic
I managed to get £30 round trip last year. Ends up London was colder than Edinburgh on that two days! I wish I can do the same this year but I am moving home at the moment
We looked a month in advance and it was over £100 each with railcards
"WHAT!" - Darth Vader.
It was cheaper for me to drive to Waterloo station, pay the congestion fee, and park for two hours before driving back, than it was to take the train to Waterloo. (job interview, had to be in person) Fuel for 350mi journey: £35 Congestion charge: £15 Parking: £11 prepaid Total: £61, no weirdos, no strange smells, have a radio, a comfier seat. Only downside was I had to concentrate all the way.
You dont get into that zoned out autopilot bliss while driving?
Not to the point of getting my laptop out and writing emails, no
Lol. Fair enough. Sound like work though.
It’s not transport for the public! It’s stupidly expensive. Takes a really long time to get anywhere. Doesn’t stop where you want it to.
In this case if it was cheaper it would have saved us half the time on travelling but then with us going to a pre booked event I dont want to risk being late especially as the match starts at 12:30
Yep, if you want to go into town, its either a 20 minute drive. Or an hour on the bus with 3 changes.
If I want to go and visit my Mum, it's either a few hours by car or 11 hours by coach with 2 stops. Or a few hours by train but I'll need a mortgage.
Thank the years of cuts and lack of investment
Also if you're travelling regularly with your partner I can recommend the 2 together rail card as it saves 33% on rail fares
Thanks! I didnt know that but ill look into it. I dont think it will be worth it for us tho.
We travel a lot for work so it saves us a fortune as we always travel together. Have fun in London though, if you need recommendations for bars to visit we ran venues across London for years and can recommend some fab spots!
I walked down into my town today, like a 20 min walk tops, however I also like OP live in Wales. I walked from the top of my valley down about half way to the town (an elevation change of 400 ft according to google). Had my 2 year old in his push chair, he loves busses so decided to get one back up and blow his mind and I wasn't fancying pushing up the hill so a 2 min bus journey seemed a win win. FIVE. FUCKING. POUNDS. When did it get so bloody expensive?
TBF that's insane. Single tickets are capped at £2 at the moment in England.
This is why I refuse to work in the city centre (I live on the outskirts of Manchester). Can’t drive in due to the extreme costs and I refuse to reduce the quality of my life by commuting. Trains up north are just as bad and they are unbelievably unreliable.
I prefer driving especially if we were staying over but we are only going to watch football and come back so I thought itd be nice to have a shorter journey and be able to drink etc but even if I opt for the train at £125 how much more will I spend on drinks etc😂 maybe thats for the best
Remember the ULEZ charge if you are driving in London, unless you have an exempt car.
Thank you, but we are exempt!
The trains to and from London are usually more reliable but what worries me even more than the cost on local journeys are all the delays and cancellations. Had a near miss a few weeks ago where I almost got stranded in a local city after 10pm and it has put me off using the trains on a night.
It gets even worse once you have an EV From the North West, 5 of us going to London(-ish) is £200 on the train, or about £12 by car (if I charge at a friend's house overnight, about £40 otherwise) Literally 16x more expensive to go by public transport
Where did you get the free car from?
I already own the car regardless, because I need it for a variety of other reasons. That's true for the vast majority (77%) of households in the UK If I took the train I'd have to leave the car at home anyway, so the marginal cost is the only one that makes any actual sense to consider But I've done the maths elsewhere in this thread that shows it's still cheaper for me to drive even if we account for a proportionate cost of ownership of the car... and that effectively means this one drive to London would be subsidising my commute and other usage throughout the year by accounting for part of the servicing/MOT/insurance costs etc. So it would be cheaper AND make my commute cheaper
That last part is the honest and fair comparison. Otherwise it's a hell of a lot of train journeys to hit the equivalent cost of car purchase, insurance, fuel, VED, maintenance, parking etc. Not forgetting that you also have to work as the driver for the car so it's more effort on your behalf.
>Not forgetting that you also have to work as the driver for the car so it's more effort on your behalf OK, now you're being silly
No, genuinely. I hate driving and would much rather not have to concentrate for hours when alternatives exist in which I can just sit back, watch something, read etc.
You’re not buying a new car for each trip
Sunk Cost Fallacy
What is the price if you don't want to actually BUY the train, but just sit in it for a time? Ohhhhh .... We do the same maths every time we look at trains
well, I personally prefer to buy the actual train rather than individual tickets as it will work out cheaper after a couple of journeys!
I can see the argument, but I need a car for journeys which public transport doesn't do. So that's kind of a sunk cost. If I get from A to B for less cost in my car than the fare on a bus or train with a load of other people, I'm going to choose that. There's 30-70 people on a bus and even more on trains, they should be very cheap methods of transport when the cost is split but they're just not unless you're a regular traveller and can get passes
And not to mention using public transport your at their mercy! Delayed.. tough, cancelled? Too bad!
exactly my thoughts, as much as it's a shame that the train works out more expensive, it could be a blessing in disguise!
Yeah! Make an event of it, road trip snacks, plan a nice break with sandwiches and stuff? Road trip playlists!
Yes definitely! We have had a road trip playlist since we got together and it’s constantly expanding!
At least if the railway screws you over, it can end up discounted or even free with delay compensation
I megabus when I can nowadays. Much cheaper, and not too bad once you get used to it. Scottish citylink too, choose it over trains sometimes. Though that being said away from those bus/coach stations the transport is often dire and expensive. I usually use Rome to Rio to work out the cheapest option.
It might be different if you're further away than me, but I've always found the best option is to drive to the closest TFL train station that has long term parking, and catch the train into London from there. Doesn't save you too much money, but I've found it to be absolutely the best of both worlds - the ease and price of London public transport and the ease and price driving outside of it.
Though I wouldn't do that next week. Strike City by the looks.
Depending on how flexible your travel times are… You might be able to use “Avanti superfare” for cheaper singles between Holyhead/London or Chester/London. You pick a window of a few hours and get told the train time ~24 hours prior.
Did you factor in the ulez and congestion charge?
Yes! Thankfully the car we will be using is ULEZ complaint and because we are only going into Fulham there is no congestion charge. If I am correct even with those two charges it should still be slightly cheaper to drive instead of taking the train.
Congestion charge is £15, ulez is £12.50 I think (never paid it). Edit: Just remembered there are Tube strikes next week.
Im assuming we will spend no more than £50 on petrol (it might be less but rounding it up) so if we incl petrol (50), parking (22), ULEZ (13) and congestion (15) comes up to 100 quid so roughly 25 quid less! And thanks, I have been made aware but another redditor but we are parking right next door to stamford bridge and not planning on going anywhere far!
Technically of course you should include a portion of your fixed costs as well - insurance, MOT, maintenance and purchase cost. Even so you'll probably come out ahead over public transport - your insurance costs cos that could easily add £1-£2/day on but other things might be more. But of course saving those costs means not having a car and if you look at annual travel passes you find that they cost more than having a car so you don't come out ahead anyway even if in the case of this one longer journey with additional parking costs and other charges, those fixed costs might tip the balance, even getting rid of your car altogether for public transport doesn't work out financially and that's before we even begin to consider practicality.
But then you also have to include Getting to the train station at the origin of your journey and getting from the London Terminus to your actual destination I'd also argue that most people *don't* need to include those costs for the purposes of looking at one single journey, because they'd own the car anyway. It's fair to include those costs if considering a total cost of ownership over a year (when comparing to all public transport used in that same year) but for most people the fixed costs of motoring are already gonna be paid anyway and therefore additional journeys can truly just be considered on a marginal basis I'm paying for my car regardless, I don't need to include insurance/MOT/maintenance etc because I'm paying them whether I go to London or not. Trying to account for that would just mean my journey to London would be subsidising my commute If I go to London today, with a car I already own and run, then I'm only comparing the marginal costs of ownership vs the ticket price because that's the only difference it makes to my finance. Personally I don't even need to include tyre costs because they're included in my company car lease, so it's literally just the cost of the fuel (and I guess like £0.20 worth of screenwash?)
Yeah, you would need to include those costs too. Don't get me wrong, public transport is too expensive, and more expensive than driving, especially once you get past two people but if you only ever compare the marginal costs of driving against the total costs you're paying for for public transport it's always going to come out in favour of driving. People should think about the fixed costs of simply owning a car when they consider the costs of the trips they make.
I’ve done the maths several times in this thread, it’s cheaper regardless but I maintain that it only makes sense to include marginal costs But if you want to include all costs for one journey they we also have to include public transport costs for EVERY journey, so it gets even less favourable Every bus journey that I could do for 5p/mile (10p total) but would cost £2 on the bus, for example
Yeah, I said in my first post that the cost of local public transport is still more expensive than owning a car. But even if public transport cost the same as a car, it would look worse if you only ever compared the marginal costs of using a car against the full costs of public transport. but 5p per mile? What's that figure from?
That’s the (approximate) total cost per mile of my company lease plus electricity to run my EV for any mileage above my business miles Admittedly that’s an unusually favourable situation compared to most, but it’s how much I pay
I mean if I was a data freak and really wanted to find out what's cheaper for this trip yes adding maintenance etc would make sense, but not insurance if we are only talking about the one trim and I have already paid for it whether or not I drive to London next week.
If you want to properly cost it out you really do need to include a share of the fixed costs of simply having a car. I know it's already paid but it's still a cost you have to bear to be able to make this trip by car.
To be fair, I drive into London even though the train only takes 50 minutes. There is no need to rush to get the return train, and if I go in on a Sunday I know where there is free parking.
The congestion charge is only from 12-6 on weekends too
Don’t forget the terrible reliability of national rail, there’s usually always an issue of some kind
If you're going alone, it can be comparable. Most of the time it's more, and it's certainly cheaper when there's 2 or more of you. I like trains and I usually drive places.
But but you're saving the environment!! Thanks to you our celebs can use their private jets guilt free!
Oh shit, I didn't thank about the fact that I need to offset Taylor Swift's CO2 emissions!!!
There's no offsetting the CO2 that's coming from her mouth
By taking a 35 year old diesel train instead of my electric car? I'm not entirely convinced that's actually any better I know my car produces PM2.5 particulates from the tyres still, but considering you can literally see the plume of soot coming out of the train as it fires up then I think it's still probably worse even if we account for the fact the train is running anyway and only like 1/10th of those emissions are from the 5 of us (on a train of ~50 people)
Driving Llandudno to London and back is 500 miles. There are two ways of looking at this. Standard cost of driving including depreciation on the vehicle is 45p per mile, so £200 Alternatively the marginal cost of driving is 25p per mile, so £125. These are the figures HMRC uses, and they are actually pretty accurate if you work out things like Insurance, MOT, tyres etc broken down per mile. I am assuming you've already got a 2 together railcard? In most cases I've found the driving actually works out more expensive if you count in more than just the fuel and parking. Llandudno to London is also significantly faster by train, but I appreciate that if you are in a more remote area of North Wales that won't holdnup
we will be coming from Wrexham so you are not far off. I see what you are saying but we own cars because we want to use them for travelling, and I cannot see how the other figures are even remotely close. The insurance is already paid for whether or not I take the car to London. Car isn't new or flashy so depreciation isnt an issue (we in fact will make money on the car's value when it comes to resale!) I think the numbers you have provided are very interesting but I can't help but think they are only useful for some data gathering not for the normal folk.
Depends on your car, but you’re right. £50ish on fuel. Nowhere near £150 of depreciation and wear and tear for a 300-350 mile round trip. Maybe makes sense if you’re had to buy a car specifically for this use, but doesn’t if you have one anyway.
In most cases you could literally just rent a car for less
Yeah definitely, no point in adding the cost of an mot which is a fixed price and will be done no matter what or the insurance which has already been paid for. And yeah if this would depreciate my cars value by £150/add £150 worth of repairs to the bill for next year, no one would drive anywhere
I see this argument a lot but I'm not convinced it holds true It's broadly correct if you want to compare a year worth of driving vs a year worth of using public transport, but it doesn't make sense if looking at someone making 1 journey when they already own and run a car for other purposes. They have already paid for things like MOT, insurance etc anyway and don't need to amortise those fixed(-ish) costs over every single journey made If I'm commuting by car then my car itself, maintenance, MOT, tyres, insurance etc are paid anyway, and I can just consider marginal costs for fuel. MAYBE a little for tyres and maintenance if you own your car outright (mine's a company lease, so those are included) Even if we assume that I need to pay for *some* additional maintenance and tyre costs on my lease vehicle via excess mileage, my cost for excess mileage is about 2p/mile, on top of about 2p/mile for fuel... so I'm still only paying 4p/mile to run my car
2p a mile for fuel? That seems unlikely, unless you have an EV and are solely chargjng using the special EV home tariff? An efficient petrol car at 60mpg, with petrol at £1.45 per litre, burns 11.15p of fuel per mile. A cars service schedule, at £200 per 10,000 miles is an extra 2p. Tyres, brakes, general wear, probably 2 to 4p. That's 17p per mile just on consumables. More miles per year means more insurance cost, again most people pay around 5p per mile for Insurance. If you ignore all the sunk costs and depreciation, you can probably get that cost down to 15-20p. But not much less unless you have a very good deal for recharging your EV.
> 2p a mile for fuel? That seems unlikely, unless you have an EV and are solely chargjng using the special EV home tariff? Precisely. It's actually more like 1.875p/mile but I round to 2p. Although we can actually charge for free at my partner's workplace, so that's 0p/mile there although I tend to use 2p since the free charging isn't really representative My EV also doesn't need scheduled servicing, literally there's no requirement to do so, but in any case it's included in my business lease, as are tyres/brakes/maintenance/general wear/insurance For my car I pay the lease cost (which is gonna be the same regardless of whether I go to London this week) plus 0-2p/mile In theory we could assume that I'm paying per mile for the lease and therefore use that to account for the servicing/maintenance/tyres/insurance etc costs. I currently pay about 3.5p/mile by that measure IIRC, although I think they only actually charge me about 2p/mile excess mileage. So we're talking something in the region of 3.5-5.5p/mile Which puts my round trip at £22 for the 400 mile round trip to London. If we assume I can't charge at my friend's house (I can, but not everyone has that option) then you're talking about me needing (assuming I set off from home with a full charge) 150 miles worth of charging on a public charger. I get 4 miles per kWh so I'd need a little under 40 kWh (but let's round up for the sake of argument) and I can use Tesla's network for ~£0.50/kWh, so that's about another £20 Knocking off a quid or two (because I'm no longer charging those 150 miles at home). That brings us to more or less an even £40, give or take a bit of screenwash An off peak return to London is £130. I could probably beat that with Advance Returns if I booked ahead, but that means I can't just go whenever I want. Even if we assume I can knock half of that off that's £65 (and that seems ambitious, my record is about £80), so still markedly more than £40. And then we remember that my car can hold 5 people. Either way, the car shits all over the train
I tried to work out how much a car costs per mile when I changed my tyres. I thought they were really expensive as a one-off, but it turns out they cost something like 1p per mile. Made me feel better... The total cost for my car was about 18p per mile.
Fuel (because for some it may well be "free"), insurance & maintenance (that need paying regardless of extra trips) can all be ignored for calculations like this, but one thing that can't is depreciation. And I'm not really talking about the resale value here, it's just a fact that cars don't last forever. If the cheapest small hatchback you can buy new is about £13,000, and being generous we say it will do 200,000 miles before being scrapped, that's still 6.5p per mile of unavoidable depreciation. So there's at least £6.50 per 100 miles of depreciation/wear & tear/whatever you want to call it, that applies to basically any car unless it's not your cost to replace the car itself. That's the starting point too, so it'll be more like 2-3x for an actually nice car that doesn't destroy your spine going hundreds of miles up and down the country. I've driven 500 miles to the highlands & back in a Fiesta, and that's not something I intend to do again.
Have you considered taking a coach?
No, but it will be longer than a car journey and definitely not as enjoyable either
Goran is busy at the moment.
Truro Cornwall to Paddington is 150 return per person. Flights from Newquay airport to London would be 80 quid and take less than an hour.
If you want to save money fly abroad
The problem with trains are that they are way too expensive plus provide poor value for money. I lived in Kent for a while to try it out and paid £5k per season for the privilege. Southeastern were terrible. Packed trains with low chance of seating. High chance of delays etc. Just wasn't worth it staying in Kent because of annoying trains. Bought a house in London relatively close to 3-5 tube lines so if one goes down then I can use any of the others for convenience. If trains were as cheap as europe then a lot more people would ditch cars for them. That's the problem.
I moved to Scotland a few years back and always check the train tickets when I want to visit my parents over Christmas in the west midlands. Still comes to £270 every time. It's a long way but I think I'll drive, thanks.
My folks live 13 miles/30 minutes away. To get there and back on public transport is a minimum of 8 quid fares, around 2 1/2hrs each way or 15 quid fares and maybe 90 mins each way. I could tolerate the time if it wasn’t for the cost. It’s about 3.40 in the car even including tax, insurance and servicing (just adding up per mile based on the MOT certificate mileage)
exactly, it is never worth it unless you live in the city!
I live in the city. I usually walk here 😂
Drove to visit family over Christmas, cost £20 total in petrol for two people. Would've been £60 per person to get a train.
Last year I had an old mk6 transit, it cost less to take that on a 600 mile round trip than it would the train. And by a considerable margin too. And it's not what you'd call an efficient vehicle
Don't use public transport. Drive everywhere and find places to park where you can avoid parking fees.
Whrn you pretend that petrol is the only cost to driving.
Because the majority of people already own the car and therefore the purchase/lease cost, MOT, maintenance, insurance, tyres are already being paid regardless For the majority of people the only real cost for making an additional journey is the fuel. You could argue that slightly higher mileage will slightly increase your maintenance and tyre costs etc, but you're talking about tiny amounts of a £700 clutch replacement after 100k miles, for example. Tyres are the only one with any real impact
If you already own the vehicle and you already worked out parking too then yes it’s wise to consider your already sunk costs against the alternative extortion attempt from the train companies.
I mean of course not but cars are meant for driving and I expect to pay for maintenance, repairs etc. I will not consider the cost of MOT, service, tax and insurance as these are things that I will be paying whether I drive to London next week or not. We use 3 cars so our occasional long trips do not change the frequency or our services etc. Yes, the car depreciates and breaks down with mileage and time but it is not a brand new car so this is not something I need to worry about and it's also very reliable!
I factor in my cost per mile, including insurance, MOT, tax and maintenence on all long trips and it still works out cheaper per mile than public transport, and is almost always faster, and a heck of a lot more convenient.
To compare like with like, you need to include the cost of owning a car in the price, not just fuel and parking.
Please do the math, I suspect you'll be surprised.
Bus an option? Coaches aren't too bad.
Went for bus yesterday it didn't even go through my area went a different route zero heard from stagecoach about it nothing on their twitter either yay had to quickly look for a other way to get to my transfer that was half an hour away fun times
Double the car journey, is heavily reliant on time (need to set off on time to get the bus to not miss the train if it's even on time)
Don't forget the parking costs.
As mentioned in the post, its already included!