Here's an example of a station 54 minutes by train from London. Fields within 2 minutes walk. Anyone living here could be in the heart of the city an hour after leaving home.
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I learnt from the Audley End estate, the the owner wanted the line to cross his estate so he could easily access the trains. We lucky in the fact because of electrification, EMUs are not a problem as they once were.
One of my favourite examples of this is Bunbury Way in London, right next to Epsom Downs station (2tph to London Victoria, Zone 6) with nothing but fields behind and is just an absolute picture of sleepy suburban peace:
Audley End estate lies to the north of the station, but the bits nearest the station (in the photo) are just ploughed fields, same as many others. I'm not aware of any streams nearby (chalk drains fast, so there aren't many) but can't see how you couldn't plan around these for new housing.
Have a look at their local plans?Get some background information. Stations like this on many lines as they are simply in between two other key points. I believe that social housing is key to our current situation but it might work for this.
That’s what “they” said about Wokingham- (risking sounding like a nimby)yes they’ve built thousands of houses but done nothing about the infrastructure- heavy traffic, lack of doctors etc. empty fields don’t = good living prospects.
Not really - the rail service has dramatically reduced and so, unless your hours fall exactly within the single hour Greater Anglia run fast trains on that line, it’s significantly longer.
Infuriating, I once considered moving to Saffron Walden to be able to commute to either London or Cambridge, before I'd passed my driving test only to get the shock of "the nearest station's where!?!?"
While in principle I agree, I think you've got to be careful with how far out you carry these rules. Lots of villages/towns with stations and few commuters might look like good prospects, but closer into London those trains get *packed*. Adding riders further out means those closer in can't fit on!
Nice, definitely room for expansion up that way then! I'm on the south west main line and when I go in it's basically empty, but Fleet/Farnborough etc pack it like a sardine. Definitely not opposed to more houses round here, but would appreciate some more trains with them!
Yes, I'm quite lucky with catching these trains. Appreciate that we need more trains on many routes (or cheaper fares on Mondays and Fridays to encourage people to travel on the quieter days)
Capacity is key. It’s definitely not fun on the occasions I’ve had to stand as far as Winchester on the way back to Bournemouth.
It would help to reinstate the Bournemouth-Salisbury line which would enable access to the West of England & Wessex lines and bring rail to a string of towns on the way.
Interesting idea but for the love of God, the housing needs to be made *actually* affordable, like, say x4 the average salary of the area so people might be able to save up a deposit & have a sustainable mortgage
You do need infrastructure too. Though having good public transport links (and in this case a major road too) is a good start. The national shortage of GPs will also remain an issue whether we build new homes or not.
The closest stations to me growing up were Beaconsfield and Amersham. Both stations were a mile from the towns they served and new towns were built around them. It seems sensible to follow this pattern. I can imagine the howls if they were to try to build them now though.
Err.... it's normally used to refer to previously developed land. (Though actually we probably should distinguish between land that's green all year round - eg woodland or nature reserves - and farmland which lies barren and brown for half the year, and not call them both greenfield)
So long as they build more than houses. I've visited those estates built on fields because of their proximity to London.
It's just houses on fields. You can't walk to a shop or a pub or a theatre or a school. There's no buses. There's nothing for miles. Just the all important train to London.
Thanks Andrew - I'd not seen that. It's good to see that get some focus. I've seen plenty of corner shops and community centers included in new developments - but even those large enough to have new secondary schools don't always seem to have a pub. Yes it's something people do look for.
Wondered if the reason is that having a pub round the corner is nice, but having it immediately next to your house is more of a problem - so do developers avoid building pubs because it devalues the homes immediately next to the pub? Or is there some other barrier?
What’s the train fare like though. Commuting in sounds great until you hear the dent it’s going to make in your salary. We urgently need to review our rail system. It’s so expensive compared to other countries.
Not too bad on the Liverpool Street line. Costs me around £35/day from Cambridge, which is further out. As I said, the train's half empty - might get a bit cheaper if they could fill it!
So about £8k a year if you commute 5 days a week. That’s a big chunk of salary. It’s ridiculous for a train journey that length. Rail should be so much cheaper it’s the most efficient way to move large numbers of people long distances and it’s not used enough because it’s too bloody expensive.
No, it would be less than that if you went in 5 days a week as you'd get a season ticket - would be about £5k. Agree it's not cheap and we should put fuel duty up and train fares down.
It does become more of an option if you work on a hybrid model though and can work some of your time from home. I agree we should use our commuter towns more but we need the government to bring the railways back into line and stop price gouging.
FWIW, there’s already a huge amount of house building completed or underway on the London to Brighton line at places like Hassocks, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and Three Bridges. First three on the way to becoming one single town.
That's because we can't develop to the north of Haywards Heath (High Weald NL) or to the south of Hassocks (South Downs NL) to my mind, development being focused along that line between HH and Hassocks is a sign of the system actually working (I say this as BH resident aware it's an unpopular view)
We may get some more good examples with green belt relaxation - but I imagine there will be some of these stations with other good reasons not to develop. Will be interesting to see how it all works in practice!
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I know - I take this line every day.
One can’t consider commuting just by the “fast” train times when the services is so heavily reduced.
Post Covid timetables have been a real problem.
Even the later fast train home is usually 10-20 mins late because of how finely the table is balanced
It would help to reinstate the Bournemouth-Salisbury line which would enable access to the West of England & Wessex lines and bring rail to a string of towns on the way.
“there’s an underused rail station"
*sweats*
“no one wants to live here, look at the empty rail station”
It's just houses on fields. You can't walk to a shop or a pub or a theatre or a school. There's no buses. There's nothing for miles. Just the all important train to London.