What surprises me is that there isn't more reverse commuute -
within shortdistances of King's Cross there are properties
less expensive than Cambridge (I still own one), and there
are interesting possibilities for people who's jobs
involve, say, trips abroad, especially when the
St Pancras Terminal is finished,for Paris, Brussels etc.

I'm guessing that only the rather baroque residence
requirement of the University has stopped some of that
community taking that view but for others,
I already talked to people in some hi-tech companies in
Cambridge who had partners with jobs which were in or
nearer London or involved travel sometimes more easily
started from there (of course we have Stansted, which
is pretty staggeringly good for Europe).

Going the other way, a friend of mine who works at UCL
(where I used to) did indeed move to Cambridge for
life style reasons, and the 70min estimate for
commute time is about right (note -
depending on your work, this is made up of
45 mins of useable reading/working time...so in fact
its very tractable - in his case, he even gets london
weighting on his salary which almost exactly covers
the train ticket costs )

If GNER trains didnt get in the way at the Hitchin junction,
theCambridge-London service for King's Cross could easily be
a tad faster - _ believe there was discussion 3-4 years ago
about speeding the route up further to 35 mins but:

Of course, some people might be discouraged by things
like the Potters Bar disaster (but of course the track
maintenance is now under new management...) -
statistically though its safer than cycling

Oh, the statistics on the train company are one of the least bad for
reliability, which must also be a factor in the increase too
(compared with say going to Oxford

happy new year!

--
Jon Crowcroft