Commuting to london

w211

Have you looked at cheap B&Bs in the area, for your wife to stay during the week? - though understandably it's in London.

yorkie2

hanvyj wrote: »

I checked the season ticket prices and it comes out with a pant wetting £6250 (1 month tickets, ...

Is this a Monday-Friday job or does it require weekends too? Will annual leave, workdays etc be known at least 5 weeks in advance?

For a M-F job, with Bank Holidays and annual leave (which, I admit may not be applicable to this particular case, but for many commutes it is), there is no need to purchase 12 consecutive 1-month tickets.

Instead, buy tickets in roughly 5-week blocks, e.g. if starting work on Mon 14 October, you'd get a Season for 1 month & 2 days, expiring Fri 15 November. Then from 18 November you'd do a similar thing, and so on, and if you have longer periods off work then the savings become even greater.

A ticket to London Terminals routed Any Permitted is valid for changing at Waterloo/Waterloo East into Charing Cross, so providing there are no health issues preventing walking, then no extra needs to be paid for LU.

So the yearly cost could be reduced to around £4900ish.

Cycrow

if its just for a short time, perhaps you could reduce the cost a bit by using up any holidays you have remaining

Marmiter

Whereabouts in Portsmouth are you? Have you looked at National Express coaches from The Hard (also there's a stop at the continental ferry port).
OH was working in London for a bit, and this worked out cheaper than getting the train. You could maybe do this in combination with what Yorkie2 has suggested above.

pjread

Or put up with Southern and go via Hove/Gatwick/etc, you can get a weekly daysave (7 days unlimited southern travel and valid during peak - so fine for victoria/london bridge/etc) for £87. And yes it covers peak. You'd need underground or a boris bike etc on top, but probably just saved £2-3k.

at £8 an hour, that's about 375hrs or nearly 2hrs per working day even before looking at tax - so drop hours to cover the extra commute if it's that bad....

I_have_spoken

1 month tickets, we can't be sure she will be working 12 months there, hopefully not!)

You can buy a longer season, possibly at lower price per day, then get a pro-rata refund when you finish sooner.

pjread

I_have_spoken wrote: »

You can buy a longer season, possibly at lower price per day, then get a pro-rata refund when you finish sooner.

Not really, they don't pro-rate but instead work out what it would have cost you with other available tickets, then deduct that (plus an admin fee) to work out your refund. Unless they've changed the rules recently...

If this is serious, weekly daysave looks the only plausible way to me.

joolsybools

Have you looked into car-sharing websites to see if there is anyone else regularly driving into London from Portsmouth?