Alongside the usual furore over A-Level results and
university clearing, the announcement of the forthcoming rail ticket price
rises has become an annual silly-season event.
It seems that the next fare rise, which will take effect in January, is
likely to push the cost of my 12-month season ticket (which covers train into
London and unlimited use of buses and tubes therein) above £4,500, which
amounts to a not insignificant proportion of my salary.
My journey to work in central London takes somewhat over an
hour, door-to-door. I have
managed to achieve it in an hour flat but this feat was achieved under the
most-optimum of conditions, where I stepped onto the platform just as a train
arrived, the fastest of all possible trains (22 minutes), and everything else
fell perfectly into place.
That was done at extreme pace, though, and unless I’m
running dreadfully late (which is rare) and in danger of missing a meeting or
some-such I do prefer a somewhat calmer start to the day.
While there’s some truth in it – the London newspapers take vicarious
delight in highlighting the worst train journeys in Britain, those that are hideously
over-capacity or congenitally prone to delay – my experience of commuting, over
more than a decade, has fallen some way short of the face-in-armpit, strap-hanging
hell on earth of popular legend.
I’m generally a very early riser, dragging myself out of bed
before 6am and catching a train by 7.
The walk to the station is about 15 minutes, downhill all the way,
through the most attractive, if not exactly picturesque, part of town, and, although
it can be a little grim in the dark depths of wind-lashed winter, it is usually
just about right, in terms of stirring the senses into wakefulness. At that time, too, there is rarely a problem of
getting a seat on the train. Not unless
something has gone badly wrong with the service – which does happen but so infrequently
as to be an event.
So, the basic mechanics of the commute are not so bad. What really rankles are the year-on-year
above-inflation (and above the barely notional salary increases I’ve received
of late) fare rises. True, longer and newer
trains have made their appearance and some stations (but not mine) have been
refurbished but all the same…
£4500 divided by the number of weeks I’m probably actually
at work – call it 45, for the sake of simple arithmetic – works out at £100 per
week. Which is rather a lot to pay, when
you think about it, just for the privilege of travelling to work and back. 5 days a week works out at £20 per day or £10
per ‘session’.
But there is a brighter side too. Commuters – professional commuters – are generally a well-behaved crowd. Early in the morning conversation is rare,
above the barely muted, and these trains into London offer one of the calmest
environments possible in a frenetic world, while still being in the close
company of others.
And so, I balance that £20 per day, that £100 per week,
against the opportunity it offers – to spend half an hour, twice a day,
immersed in the depths of a book, absorbed in the sounds of an album, looking
up from time to time at the countryside and the invincible green suburbs
rushing by, calm, peaceful, very occasionally utterly blissed out, until the
train pulls to a halt right above the Thames with the water eddying and glimmering
in the morning sunshine and it’s time for the brain to begin engaging into work
mode.
But first, a coffee.