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We all know what makes a good commuter town (and if you don’t, you can find out here), but what makes a good commuter train station? If we’re being honest, it likely pretty much all boils down to reliability. A good station is one you can rely on to get you from home to work and back, day in day out.
And that’s what was basically taken into account in an annual report on London’s commuter stations by On Time Trains. The analysis looked at 30 commuter stations outside the M25 – all within an hour of the capital and with over a million passenger journeys per year – and examined them based on performance, speed, frequency and costliness.
Top spot went to Chelmsford in Essex. Served by Greater Anglia, apparently Chelmsford saw a whopping 88 percent of its trains run on time – and only one percent of services were cancelled. Not bad, eh?
Second place was awarded to High Wycombe, while third was awarded to another Greater Anglia station, Shenfield.
Down the other end of the ranking, the title of ‘worst’ went to Sevenoaks in Kent. Despite running every eight minutes, the Southeastern-operated route received low marks for both price and performance. Only 31 percent of Sevenoaks services ran on time.
Other stations at the bottom of the pile were Welwyn Garden City and Chatham, while Reading on the Elizabeth line was let down by ‘dire performance’. Apparently only 20 percent of Reading services ran on time.
You can read On Time Trains’ full report for yourself here.
Commuter wars with Time Out
Keen to find out more about London’s many commuters and commuter towns? There’s plenty more where that came from on Time Out. Check out this city named London’s cheapest commuter town, this surprising one named the best and a report which revealed Londoners are the UK’s unhappiest commuters.
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