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Comment by johndunne | Hacker News Reader

This is very interesting. It looks like most of the London train stations have a regional focus. I often travel to London from Leeds, so Kingscross is the terminating station (true for Scotland and the North East), Euston seems to be mostly North West, St Pancras is the midlands and South East, Paddington is South West and Victoria is South/South East. Fascinating to see this illustrated in Graph form. Nice!

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Yes, that's exactly how train stations were built around the centre of London. It's the same in Paris, for instance, where the stations' names make it more obvious.

It's also interesting to see the reach of London. Many people as far as Oxford and Cambridge seem to commute into London.

And weirdos like me who commute out from London into Cambridge, via London Liverpool Street mostly.

That must be a nice quiet commute.

I used to commute out of London. It was anything but nice and quiet. I actually had to buy a car, because using train was not viable (expensive, always late and crowded or trains cancelled, often impossible to board). After coming late nth time, manager said either improve this or we will be looking at letting you go. Getting a car was the best thing I've done.

Our country really need to focus on improving the public transport as at its current state is not fit for purpose.

That is so sad. Here in North America (with the odd exception) we don't even have a choice. Its the car only. The only good thing about a car is autonomy: you leave when you want to leave, and you have control of the environment => no noisy cell phone chats and you can choose whatever music you want to listen to or not.

Many commuters in London also leave when they want to leave, or close to it. Metro trains run every 2-10 minutes on most of the network (I'm including the ends of the lines there), urban/suburban/regional trains around every 10-20 minutes.

Personally, if the service is at least every 10 minutes I won't check the time when I leave. If it's 20 or more I will, and in-between probably depends on the weather and if the station is indoors or not.

Yeah it's cheaper to drive here rather than take a train which is just sad. Hell, it's always cheaper to fly to say Scotland, etc than take a train.

It's bc the UK gov doesn't care in the slightest for rail anymore, which is weird bc it's the foundation of public transport in UK.

During pandemic local branches of foreign airlines got bailed out, but any rail company? Nah, nothing for them.

For a year I commuted out of London, and it was wonderful — usually 1-4 people per carriage, almost always on time, very quiet. Returning to London was busier, but I always had a seat.

There is probably a political discussion based on when I did this vs. the sibling comment, but HN isn't the place for it.

Unlike varispeed's unfortunate experience my commute is indeed very chill and consistent! Train that I catch comes in full, unloads, a total of maybe 50 people board, leaves. Coming back in the evening is a bit more crowded, but it's very rare that I don't get a seat. I use that time to work or read and can enjoy the wonderful English countryside as a background :) Almost the opposite of what a dear friend has to experience in his reverse commute from Cambridge to King's Cross.

Many moons hence, when I was working for Logica, they had a campus out in Cobham ("Cobham Park"). The place was gorgeous, an old mansion on its own land, peacocks in the grounds, Chesterfield leather sofas in reception etc.

Cobham is just off the A3, so my commute from South London was outbound, on a clear road, watching the traffic jam start in the other direction, a few miles outside the M25 (the orbital motorway around London).

Coming back in wasn't quite so clear, London being London, but still a comparatively serene drive compared to the other direction :)

There was a policy in the early part of the 20th century to establish a green belt of preserved space around London.

This didn’t stop people from sprawling ever further, they just skipped over the green belt.

Leaving the gap was also policy. Stevenage was the first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage#Stevenage_New_Town

Reminder to non-UK people: when people in England refer to the “North East” and “North West” and so on, they are referring to only England, even when talking in the context of the UK.

The stations were all originally built by separate private railways companies which, naturally, served different parts of the country. Euston, for example, was built by the London and Birmingham Railway.

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