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    Data Is Beautiful

    [OC] Cost of one-way train ticket to London


    Cost of an "Advance Single" to London from every station in England & Wales

    I scraped the National Rail journey planner for every station in England and Wales, looking for the cheapest Advance Single fare arriving into London between 8–9am on 20th May 2026, with a maximum journey time of 4 hours.

    The date was arbitrary but I chose it to show the price of booking a mid-week commuting ticket 1 month in advance, then I chose to remove anything above a 4 hour journey as sometimes the planner will suggest the best route is sitting in a station for 5 hours overnight!

    Tools & data sources:

    by adamjonah

    View 10 Comments

    10 Comments

    2. Dipso88 on

      I understand the colour scale is based on the available range, but really anything over £50 should be firmly red.

    4. The_Dirty_Mac on

      Realistically, the stations around Manchester should only cost a few quid more than Manchester itself since you can split at Manchester. Same with Exeter 

    5. JimmyBallocks on

      It’s a fucking obscenity how much it costs to go anywhere by train in this country. We’re never going to convince more people to go by public transport rather than car with these prices.

    6. douggieball1312 on

      Last time I took a train from Nottingham to London, it was more than half the price to go to Grantham and change there than it was to take a direct service to London. I have no idea how this stuff works but it’s so bizarre.

    7. sammy_zammy on

      It would be interesting to see this same data normalised for journey distance and normalised for journey speed.

    8. sabzeta on

      The color scale being exponential makes it feel like the difference between green and yellow is about the same as the one between yellow and red, when in fact red is **4 times** the price of ticket where the stations are red.

    9. grain_farmer on

      I left the UK and it’s cheaper to visit my mother in Liverpool than it was from London. Often £15 on Ryanair. Bananas 🍌

      The only place in Europe I’ve seen with prices similar to the UK is Switzerland, not the model of affordability

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