Distance and time

Stuck on the train this morning with no paper to read (See Bletchley shop post) and unable to sleep, I thought it might be interesting to work out how far and for how long a typical commuter probably travels on this line in a year.  The numbers are sobering...

Journeys

365 days in the year, minus 104 Saturdays and Sundays, minus another 40 days for holidays, sickness, etc.  This leaves a possible 221 commuting days, or 442 round trip journeys.

Distances

The distance between Bletchley and Euston stations is approximately 46 miles, so in a year we potentially travel 20,332 miles.  It's around 3,500 miles between London and New York so this is the equivalent of three round trips across the Atlantic...

Time

Journey times vary depending on the service and delays, but I'm going to assume an average of 50 minutes.   Total journey time on London Midland trains equals just over 368 hours or 15 days 8 hours.   It takes around 11.5 hours to fly from London to Hong Kong so we spend the same amount of time on a train as someone would on a plane flying to the Far East 32 times (16 round trips).


Matters arising

The above is all pretty depressing stuff, but it's when you dig deeper into the numbers that things really start getting disturbing.

I pay £3,320 for my season ticket to travel between Bletchley and Euston (no tube).   Focusing on the 3 round-trips to New York, I could easily do those flights with a decent airline (economy but with meals and movies included) for around £350-£400 each.  Why should the cost of rail (supposedly heavily subsidised by the UK tax-payer) cost three times as much as flights to New York?!!!

368 hours a year on the train.  If a commuter starts travelling down to London from the age of 22 and retires at 65 then he or she will have actually spent 1 year 9 months and 23 days on the train...

Nooooooooooooooooooooo.....