Cost to communte (MK to Brackley)

Sara93

Hi
My partner and I will be working in Brackley, .....which is a dead town honestly. We struggled to find accommodation and commuting to other cities even a nearby trip is at least 1.5 hr, plus  public transportation and railway are almost  non existent.   If not for the job, I wouldn't recommend anyone to live there .. * it's what is is *

We found Milton Keynes to be a quite liveable area with a lot to offer and honestly thinking about moving there.  Wit that, a car will be a must to commute for the ~40 miles per day outside the town.

Would it be worth it to buy a car to commute between the two? How much of extra cost we will be looking at? 

Both over 25 yo, local UK DVLA license (exchanged Dutch DL).. so I assume insurance will be a lot less. But need to figure out the est. car monthly budget assuming it's 5-6 days per week driving to work and essentials ~250 miles per week. Vauxhall 2015ish or similar.

Any thoughts?

lookstraightahead

There are probably many people on this forum who live in Brackley and like it.

As far as I'm aware there is no train service from Mikron Keynes to Brackley so you would have to have a car anyway? Do you mean is it worth commuting in general, or is it worth living in Milton Keynes? 

Sara93

lookstraightahead said:

There are probably many people on this forum who live in Brackley and like it.

As far as I'm aware there is no train service from Mikron Keynes to Brackley so you would have to have a car anyway? Do you mean is it worth commuting in general, or is it worth living in Milton Keynes? 

Thanks lookstraightahead!  I'm aware there are many ppl living in Brackley (from what i see day to day here ) but to each their own (family, old friends,  settlement, etc).  We came from Amsterdam so it isn't as the place we expected esp with housing and transportation..  

Would it be worth it to live in MK and commute every day to Brackley? Anybody's doing it or commuting from elsewhere?

lookstraightahead

Lots of people commute much further. You could live somewhere like Buckingham to reduce your journey time.

ukri

Amsterdam to Brackley is quite the move!

A 40-45 minute car commute is quite normal for a lot of Brits.

Having driven up and down between Utrecht and Amsterdam for a few months just beware that British roads are quite poorly surfaced compared to Dutch ones and prone to a lot more disruptions than I saw there. I often heard my newly arrived European colleagues complaining about it hence the warning. 

Having said that, traffic is likely to be towards MK in the mornings and away in the afternoon, so perhaps it won’t be too bad.

michelle09

Brackley doesn't have a train station so that commute isn't possible.

It's a straight drive but the length would massively depend on where in MK you lived, and I wouldn't take a job where I had to commute through Buckingham, the roundabouts on the ringroad are rammed during rush hour.

I've commuted in and around that entire area (and lived in it for 20 years). Try the drive before you make a decision.

But then I quite liked Brackley growing up and have refused to live in MK since I could afford my own place so I may not have advice you're interested in.

sammyjammy

why not post on a local forum?  Do either have a nextdoor local site?  You''ll likely get many more informed opinions.

https://nextdoor.co.uk/news_feed/

gozaimasu

I've never been to MK, but from the map it seems to have an excessive number of roundabouts!

Why not Banbury? Or down towards Oxford? MK is cheaper I suppose.

lookstraightahead

gozaimasu said:

I've never been to MK, but from the map it seems to have an excessive number of roundabouts!

Why not Banbury? Or down towards Oxford? MK is cheaper I suppose.

MK is easily commutable to London and the villages are very expensive. 

There are very few major traffic jams in Milton Keynes because of the road network. It's much quicker than most cities.

Slinky

lookstraightahead said:

Lots of people commute much further. You could live somewhere like Buckingham to reduce your journey time.

Not a lot for 25 year olds in Buckingham. MK is a much livelier place and is forever growing - it's quite easy to be able to find a lot of things to do there without having to look outside the area. We moved away a couple of years ago.

I'd recommend living on the western side, the grid roads are far more congested now than they used to be and commuting across from the east side to west can take 20-25 minutes easily. Having said that our old neighbour used to commute from east MK to Brackley for many years but the traffic was less then.

AdrianC

Sorry, are you asking whether to buy a car to commute, and how much will it cost?

Work on 45p/mile for a newish one, all things included - fuel, depreciation/finance, insurance, maintenance.
An older one may work out cheaper - more maintenance, less depreciation/finance.

This is a question that would be better asked over here ->
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/motoring