Advice for future commute

[kasavien]

Hi All,

Looking for some advice for myself and my girlfriend. Currently I'm living and working in woking and my girlfriend is graduating in the summer with a job starting in hertford/stevenage from september. We're looking at renting a place together and I just wanted some advice about our proposed commutes.

We're thinking of renting somewhere in watford, close to watford junction. I would commute to woking by train. This would be watford junction to clapham junction then straight out to woking and would take 1hr 20 mins to 1hr 30 mins door to door. My girlfriend would drive to hertford / stevenage (it's a grad scheme and there are rotations between these two sites. It's around a 25-30 mile drive, so at rush hour probably 1hr.

My questions are, mainly to do with how sensible this sounds. I'm perfectly ok with commuting by train and I don't mind the earlier start. For my girlfriend, does anyone know how long roughly that commute would take at rush hour? Is 1hr realistic? Having separate places isn't really an option because we would both want places on our own, and even though the commute would be less expensive the cost of a single bed place and separate bills etc would probably work out more expensive overall than sharing, plus we can get a much nicer and bigger place if we share.

If anyone has any thoughts, particularly about the commutes, or if you can think of an alternative to watford, I'd really appreciate any comments.

Thanks

Andy

[Andeh13]

What roads are we talking about? Maybe check google maps around the time she would be doing the driving, it shows the traffic density via the layers tab!

[Lucio]

Watford to Stevenge isn't fun in rush hour, up to 1.5 hours. You're better off looking at hatfield or welwyn garden city

[idimmu]

i dont know the area but i think maybe an hour drive is optomistic for 30 miles at rush hour anywhere. for example my commute from reading to bracknell is 10 miles and can take up to 40 minutes in the mornings.

[kasavien]

Thanks for the replies so far, didn't realise watford to stevenage would be so bad. I'm going to see what the tomtom online route planner says tomorrow. It gives route planning taking into account traffic at the time.

I think watford is the only location we can consider at the moment because I have to be able to get to woking for work, and watford is as close to hertford and stevenage as possible whilst maintaining reasonable train commuting times.

Sounds like neither of our commutes will be too good, but at least we can go into it with some knowledge of what to expect.

I've found a bit more information about distances. If we lived near watford junction it would be ~23 miles to stevenage and ~21 to Hertord. Both routes would involve the A1M and the A414. I was hoping that the route would go against the flow of traffic into london.

Does anyone have any other ideas for somewhere inbetween woking and hertford / stevenage?

[chrestomanci]

Thanks for the replies so far, didn't realise watford to stevenage would be so bad. I'm going to see what the tomtom online route planner says tomorrow. It gives route planning taking into account traffic at the time.

I used to commute in the Watford area (from Reading) about 5 years ago.

Rather than speculate, or go by second hand information (from Hexites, or Tom-Tom) why not do a test run? Get up very early one week day, and get yourself over to Watford for 7.30am (or whenever your girlfriend plans to leave for work. Then drive the route and see what it is like. If possible try do repeat the exercise in the evening as well. Listen to every traffic news bulitin on the radio you can find to try to get a clue if the day you picked is better or worse than usual.

Does anyone have any other ideas for somewhere inbetween woking and hertford / stevenage?

Central London?

Seriously, I don't think your arrangement will last long term. I think you especially will find the rail commute quite onerous over time. Assuming you and your Girlfriend stick together, one of you will probably be switching jobs to shorten the commute, so I think you should step back now and consider if either of you can change jobs before you move to Watford or where ever.

(For comparison, I quit the job I had near Watford a few months after getting married because my commute was to long.)

Who's job earns the most? Who has the most job security? Are either of you in a line of work which you can do in any town in the country?

What you don't want to do is to move to Watford where the commute is not brilliant for either of you, then you quit your job in Woking and find a similar one on your doorstep when you could do that now and get a job in the same town as your girlfriend works in.

[kasavien]

Neither of us are in the position to change jobs at the moment, I've only had this job for 18months and it's going really well and I love it so don't want to move yet and this will be my girlfriends first job after uni on a 2 year grad scheme.

We've been together 2.5 years now and most of that time she's been at durham uni and I've been in woking, so it's been long distance for a while, and we're both ready to spend more time with each other!

I think long term north london would suit both of us, but we need to wait a while for our income to increase a little bit and stabilise.

I think we'll just have to try it and see how it goes, whatever it's like, for me it's going to be worth being able to see my girlfriend every day, as opposed to every other weekend! We're planning to do a trial run but I need to get a car first and I think that'll be end of may june time.