Train season ticket help ?

vickyj

Hi all
am hoping that someone "train savvy" can help me out here. After husband getting made redundant this month he has just been offered a job in London. The company have offered to fund half of his train fares thankfully. What is the best value train ticket to buy. Is it the season ticket or can he use a network rail card? Does the season ticket cover underground ??
We live the other side of the country so the departing station would be Worle any he would be working in knightsbridge.an early shift is 10-7 and a late is 11-8 working any 5 in 7.
I would really appriciate any help.thank you
Vj x
BTW happy new year to all

tripled

I don't know the answer myself, but if you look on the national rail website there is a season ticket calculator which will tell you the costs of a season ticket. If you also run a few sample journeys through the journey planner with the railcard you will know if it effects the price or not.

Livingthedream

Wow, that's one massive commute, on average 2 1/4 hours from Worle to London Paddington, therefore 4 1/2 on a train a day :eek:

Season tickets workout as follows;
Via Warminster/Salisbury
1 month £725
1 year £7552

But it takes over 4 hours one way that way :eek:
direct
1 month £1084
1 year £11300

for more advice and perhaps different options would advice reposting on the RailUK website

dzug1

The network railcard is not valid from Worle

spiro

You also need to remember that a monthly ticket can be for more that a month. With careful planning you can use monthly tickets to travel for a year that work out at less. You always start the monthly ticket on a Monday, end on a Friday. Plan in Bank Holidays and annual leave. I did this for several years when I commuted from Stevenage to Reading, but it does require you to plan the year out.

vickyj

Thank you for your replies folks. It is going to be a horrid commute but he hates being away from home and he think if he was not on a train he would just be sat in a hotel room. He is a defo home bird. Spiro your commentd were really interesting could you maybe help me out a little here please :-))
Thank you
Vicky

rdwarr

spiro wrote: »

You also need to remember that a monthly ticket can be for more that a month. With careful planning you can use monthly tickets to travel for a year that work out at less. You always start the monthly ticket on a Monday, end on a Friday. Plan in Bank Holidays and annual leave. I did this for several years when I commuted from Stevenage to Reading, but it does require you to plan the year out.

That's got me confused - can you elaborate a bit please? If I buy a monthly ticket starting next Monday (23rd) it will be valid until 22nd Feb which is a Wednesday.

Or are you talking about the fact that you can buy a season ticket for a specified period rather than a month - that may be worth exploring further?

wealdroam

You can buy a season ticket at the monthly rate for any period over one month up to one year (although you would be silly buying a monthly ticket for ten months or more as an annual ticket would be cheaper).

So for example, if you work Monday to Friday, get a monthly ticket starting on Monday 23 Jan and ending on Friday 24 feb.
Start your next monthly ticket on Monday 27 Feb. That's the shortest Mon-Fri period over one month. Using the shortest period over one month maximises the number of weekends that you don't pay for.

Also try and end a ticket on the thursday before Easter, and start the next one on the day after Easter Monday.
With a bit more planning you can avoid having a ticket valid during your annual holiday, or during other known absences.

Hope that helps.

violettasomerset

Would he consider getting a lodging in London, rather than a hotel, so he's got more of a "home" with regular company, even if he only used it a few nights a week? If he's got to get to work for 11am, he'll have to get on the train at 8am, or earlier, to get there on time, and won't get home until 11.30pm - even assuming no delays, that's barely enough time to sleep, let alone do anything else. What will he do about meals as well, if he's travelling so much of the day? Perhaps the company would be willing to pay part of a lodging, if it worked out cheaper than the rail fare.

rdwarr

wealdroam wrote: »

Hope that helps.

It does, thanks. Not sure it will benefit me as I'm in London 45 weeks of the year so have an annual ticket. But it's a great tip for people for whom this is not the case.

pinkteapot

If he is always travelling at peak time, a season ticket is always the cheapest way to travel. National Rail season ticket calculator says that Worle to Paddington is £725 per month or £7,552 per year. You can normally pay extra to add an Underground travel card to your season ticket, which is cheaper than buying it separately or using Oyster.

However, this is slightly complicated by his hours/days. If he's working Saturday or Sunday then it's off peak travel. Depending on what time he has to get a train to be in by 11am, he may be travelling off-peak on his late shift days. Off-peak travel is cheaper than on-peak but season tickets aren't available. Someone with more brains than me may be able to work out if he's better off simply buying a season ticket or paying separately for his on-peak days (expensively using day returns) and off-peak days (cheaply using off-peak day returns). Of course, then you have the hassle of buying a ticket every day.

Has he ever done a commute like this before? A friend of mine works in an exceptionally specialised area and managed to get a job in this country (looked unlikely at one point) but has a commute of just over 2 hours each way. If your OH's journey is 2 1/4 hours plus Tube he's looking at 2 3/4 hours each way. My friend has said he's going to move closer to work within a year - he's coping but he's barely living if you know what I mean. He said he can't handle it for more than a year. I have a 1.5 hour commute each way and went down to part time (3 days a week) last year as it was getting to me. Now it's bearable because I just accept the fact that I have no life three days a week (get home from work, have dinner, watch TV for half an hour, go to bed, get up, go to work). When I was full time I was trying to get chores done at home and have a social life on work nights - it didn't work.