Forget 5.9% – some train fares rise today by four times inflation
Today, rail fares go up by an inflation-busting average of 5.9%, to howls of outrage from commuters and groups like Passenger Focus. But what many people don’t realise is that 5.9% is just an average. And while Passenger Focus came across individual fare increases of up to 11%, I have scraped data from National Rail ...
Train times v. house prices: the commuter belt, on a graph
We’re house-hunting. And for me, like most coders, house-hunting involves lots and lots and lots of screen-scraping. As well as crawling Rightmove listings, I’ve been looking at transport and house-price data. Specifically, I’ve scraped travel times to London by train versus house prices, to examine the theory that houses get much cheaper once you escape ...