Tuesday, Jul 24, 2007
Would more dispersed industry lower house prices?
Telegraph: Commuting: the real cost
Exclusive research shows how every minute on the train cuts £1,000 off the average house price. That's why Londoners seeking quality of life are travelling further than ever, writes Caroline McGhie
Posted by lvmreader @ 03:36 PM (1011 views) Add Comment
12 Comments
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1. david20040_0 said...
Further pushing up prices outside of London, oh yay!
2. tyrellcorporation said...
Duh! How much does 'commuting' cost though?!? - surely it negates these 'savings'? Some sorry suit has to spend 2-3 hours every day on a train at enormous cost both in money, time, time away from family, potential for an accident, cost to the environment, etc, etc.
A similar lazy article in the vien of: These property developers 'made £75,000 profit in just 8 months'. No they effing didn't because they spent 8 months doing the work themselves and haven't factored in their time or the opportunity cost of doing that work!
An article to help those poor saps feel slightly better as they meander at 1880,s speeds through sh8tholes like Slough to reach their barn conversions in the stix. It also shows how amazingly London-centric the media have become - it is a state within a state.
3. tipping point said...
"That's why Londoners seeking quality of life are travelling further than ever"
True journalistic tosh. Tell me, which Londoners do not fall into this category.
The problem are (a) London is the only place with enough high paid jobs to guarantee that a couple can both pursue challenging careers and (b) the underfunded rail system. House prices therefore take this into account. Live outside London and you have to factor in the cost of travelling, and I'm not just talking the train ticket. At a very conservative £20.00 an hour for your average city office worker, an extra hour a day spent on a train equals £4,600 per year in lost income plus £3,000 in train tickets. Multiply that by two people and you can soon see why London property is so expensive.
If you want quality of life go and live in mainland Europe where high paid jobs are distributed more between the cities and where trains are reliable and fast. (PS the food is better as well)
4. dohousescrashinthewoods said...
I commute. It is rubbish.
Prices go up, quality comes down.
It wastes hours of your life - every day - wears you out and puts you in a rubbish mood.
"Improved quality of life" only happens for a few hours at the weekend when you areawake and can really enjoy the fact that the town you choose to live in doesn't stink of pee.
It is the biggest hidden human cost in this country. It really really wears people out.
Most other nations would balk at anything upwards of 45 minutes - in Oz, apparently, if you did an hour you could work in the city centre and live on the beach, (and that really would be quality of life) but no one does it because there you'd be mad to do an hour's commute!
Roll on another slap-in-the-face wakeup call we need in the UK (England?).
5. lvmreader said...
@dohousescrashinthewoods
Would you mind commuting if you were picked up in a nicer vehicle?, e.g. a Mercedes Viano and you could choose who was in there with you (from the set of availale commuters).
I was in Zurich last week visiting some Private Bankers. Folk there do extreme commutes because of the low cost, high quality tram network. I am trying to find out how much this affects house prices further out.
But what if every city had an equal quality of transit network - this would give people more options of where to live and thus reduce house prices.
6. dohousescrashinthewoods said...
72 virgins and plush first class could be tempting..
7. tyrellcorporation said...
72! that's just being greedy!
Anyway I thought you were tired after all your commuting! ;)
8. Scott said...
I was in Los Angeles last year. I travelled 60 miles in one day on their underground for 3 dollars. It was spotless clean and quiet (apparently because people prefer their cars)
9. The Capitalist said...
I commute too - it's hell...
mind you a little victory today I told a surly teenager to GET YOUR FEET OFF THE SEATS! And they obliged - mind you I looked stern and haven't shaved for a couple of days and also 6 feet 2 tall. The one thing we seem to tolerate - along with people who think it's OK to share the banalist conversations on their mobile with the rest of the carriage. (God I feel sorry for the person that lives with them)
10. lvmreader said...
Stagecoach tried this in the Edinburgh-Fife Corridor.
Yellow Taxibus
Executive summary
Stagecoach has developed an innovative, value-for money demand responsive transport (DRT) service, branded Yellow Taxibus, which could be used as a model across the UK to boost social inclusion and cut congestion.
A two-year experiment by Stagecoach in Scotland has demonstrated the Yellow Taxibus concept can develop a sustainable core market and improve public transport options for customers.
While the pilot project was focused on a congested urban environment, Stagecoach believes the Yellow Taxibus approach could also be used to boost social inclusion in more isolated or less populated areas.
The product is extremely popular with customers, particularly women, and offers local authorities a value-for-money option to improve transport links in both an urban and rural context.
Crucially, the Yellow Taxibus model delivers “phone and go” services at significantly lower cost to the taxpayer than existing publicly-funded DRT schemes, which often require a high per-passenger public subsidy.
Launched by Stagecoach on the heavily-congested Fife-Edinburgh corridor in August 2003, Yellow Taxibus is a high-frequency demand responsive transport (DRT) operation that combines a fixed bus route with flexible pre-booked taxi pick-ups.
The service is operated with upmarket people carrier vehicles and has been introduced on a corridor already served by frequent traditional bus and rail services.
Yellow Taxibus runs seven days a week between Dunfermline and Edinburgh, and includes night-time services. Bookings are made through a dedicated phoneline and the manual booking system means there is no requirement for investment in costly computer-based GPS systems.
Conclusion
While Yellow Taxibus did not reached the stage of becoming a profitable, commercial operation in its own right by the conclusion of the two-year trial, Stagecoach believes a sustainable market and an improved public transport offering can be developed in partnership with local authorities at substantially lower cost to the taxpayer than other DRT or conventional products in both a rural and an urban context.
Stagecoach Group
September 2005
Launch marketing campaign, August 2003
The launch marketing plan included:
• Direct mail pack
• Press advertising campaign
• 48-sheet billboard advertising
• A3 and A4 posters at bus stops and Ferrytoll park and ride
• Leaflet distributed at Forth Road Bridge tolls
• Targeting businesses and chambers of commerce
The direct mail pack included a fold-out leaflet with a complete guide to the Yellow Taxibus service, including route, timetable and price information, and vouchers offering a discount on the single fare. The pack, which was distributed to 25,000 homes, also included a fridge magnet with the booking line number and a hotel-style door handle tag to help drivers identify pick-up points (see Appendix 3).
A six-week advertising campaign was developed by the in-house marketing team. This included two weeks of pre-launch advertising raising the awareness of the booking line number and the fare from Dunfermline to Edinburgh. Week three focused on the booking number, the cost and the “fast, frequent and convenient” aspects of the service. Week four advertising used the strapline “direct from your door….to the heart of Edinburgh”, while the final two weeks of the campaign stressed the £4 fare between Dunfermline and Edinburgh.
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12. Lvmreader said...
Now imagine if more cities had better transport options. We owuldn't have London sucking the life out of everywhere.
This may have as much effect on house prices as interest rates - if we could make more places more desirable to live in, people would spread out more, putting less pressure on
New Lewknor Taxibus
31 January 2005
A new service based around the Oxford Tube stops at Lewknor (junction 6, M40) starts on 31st January 2005.
http://www.stagecoachbus.com/oxfordshire/news2_368.html
http://www.gner.co.uk/GNER/PressCentre/PressReleases06/DOOR-TO-DOOR+TAXIBUS+MAKES+THE+RIGHT+CONNECTIONS+IN+PETERBOROUGH.htm
http://www.peterborough.gov.uk/page-7696
http://www.gner.co.uk/GNER/YourJourney/_taxibus_tandc.htm