On 15 Jan, 23:22, Will wrote:

In article ,
says...

"Will" wrote:

Thanks for the replies so far. The friends are leaving from Polegate
('twixt
Hasting and Eastbourne) area. Looking at the map, there's a station at
Sanderstead (which would take them to Victoria) that looks a
possibility --
anyone know that area? Any idea too of the taxi fare from Victoria
station to
Queen's Gate (2.5 miles, apparently)? TIA

So why don't they just catch the train from Polegate to Victoria (every
30 mins). I don't see the point of driving to some random station on the
outskirts of London and then getting the train from there.

Peter Smyth

Thanks for further replies. Perhaps I should have pointed out that
there's four of them and that they're travelling at peak time (to arrive
at Queen's Gate at 9-9.30am for a visa application) so part-drive seemed
to them to be the cheaper option. Perhaps, though, I should look up
rail advance booking for them instead.


OK, so travelling during peak time, ouch! A somewhat less than ideal
situation but there you go, the real world is all about less than
ideal situations!

We'll get one thing out of the way to begin with - there aren't any
Advance fares available on the line from Polegate ("Advance fares/
tickets" are what all advance purchase tickets are now called
regardless of train company). Firstly, generally in the south east the
railways don't go in for cheapo Advance fares for specific trains,
though Southern have just made them available on a few routes - see:
http://www.southernrailway.com/main.php?page_id=499

Secondly cheapo Advance fares elsewhere on the railways (e.g. on
intercity routes) are generally available for off-peak journeys as
opposed to those during peak times, i.e. at times when the train
company wants to get bums on seats and has spare capacity. That said
there are sometimes Advance fares for peak time(-ish) journeys so it's
worth checking anyway.

So looking at normal fares - the 'Anytime' (valid morning peak hours)
adult return fare from Polegate to London is £42.60, child fare is
£21.30. If one gets an inclusive Anytime Day Travelcard then it is
£46.30 for an adult, £23.15 for a child.

If they were to be travelling on the Tube *or* on the bus and none of
them was in possession of an Oyster card then the Anytime Day
Travelcard *from* Polegate is the ticket they'd want (it is combined
return ticket to Polegate plus unlimited travel in London that day on
buses, Tubes and trains - and as it is the 'Anytime' version then,
you'll never guess, it is valid any time including the morning peak).

If one were to get closer to London then the price of the fare will
come down. If they were to get on a train within the London zones then
again they'd still want an Anytime Day Travelcard as opposed to buying
separate rail and Tube or bus. The price of a zones 1-6 Anytime Day
Travelcard would be £14.30 for an adult, £7.40 for a child - though if
the child was under 11 then they can travel free on the Tube or the
bus, in which case they'd just need an Anytime return rail ticket for
£4.90.

You can see what stations fall within the London zones on this map -
all the stations that are within the coloured shaded bands are within
zones 1-6 (PDF):
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/system...onnections.pdf

Of course there's the issue of where to park, and furthermore the
issue of actually getting into London, even the outskirts, during the
morning rush hour when a whole lot of other people are attempting to
do the same. It's not impossible of course, and obviously the earlier
one travels on the roads the better, but it's not something I'd be
over joyous about! I suppose that looking to park at a station car
park would be one option, though these will generally cost (especially
the closer one gets to London) and can fill up pretty early with
commuters too.

Information on car parking can be found on Southern's website he
http://www.southernrailway.com/car_parking.php

If they were travelling off-peak (basically after 0930 though
sometimes earlier on some routes) then things would be rather cheaper
as one could buy Off-Peak fares (both from Polegate and within
London), and also benefit from Railcard discounts (if anyone in the
party held a Railcard) and possibly benefit from GroupSave discounts
as well.

Hope that is of some help.


P.S. I forgot to mention earlier about the free bus travel for those
60+, anyone who holds a concessionary National Bus Pass for England
can get free bus travel in London as they can anywhere else in England
so this might change the calculations a little on whether to buy
Travelcards or not if there were enough members of the party who had
such a pass and were willing to travel by bus.

On 16 Jan, 01:00, "tim....." wrote:

"Will" wrote:

Thanks for further replies. *Perhaps I should have pointed out that
there's four of them and that they're travelling at peak time (to arrive
at Queen's Gate at 9-9.30am for a visa application) so part-drive seemed
to them to be the cheaper option. Perhaps, though, I should look up
rail advance booking for them instead.

There are no Advanced discounts for ex-Southern region stations to London in
the morning peak.

Not true. SWT has long offered Apex fares to and from London (not sure
if they were ever offered between other SWT stations though) - in line
with the fares simplification these have now been renamed Advance
fares. For more info see:
http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/SWT...ancedFares.htm

Also Megatrain started offering advance purchase tickets on SWT
between London and Southampton/ Portsmouth back in November '05 -
though these are only available from their website or premium rate
phone line, so they're not conventional Advance tickets which one can
buy from any rail ticket outlet (e.g. booking office or online booking
website).

Southern (the current train company) also started offering Advance
fares for a limited of journeys since at least May last year - see:
http://www.southernrailway.com/main.php?page_id=499

These routes do include Brighton to London.

I did try and check whether there were any such tickets available on
early trains into London but all TheTrainline websites are currently
down for "scheduled maintenance" and the NXEC site didn't find any
such fares even in the middle of the day. I've had trouble with NXEC
finding these fares beforehand but others have managed ok in this
regard [1]... that said I've just tried the raileasy website and it is
offline for "planned maintenance" too - as this is a completely
separate booking engine then I dare say it may be the railways'
central reservation system that is down too... but the plot thickens,
as the NXEC site can find Advance tickets available for both London to
Leeds and London to Manchester. Curious.

OK the raileasy site is back up, the maintenance was only until 0130
whilst TheTrainline remains down until 0700.

And raileasy does indeed find these cheap Southern fares, but the
earliest train they're available for on a weekday morning in February
is the 09:19 from Brighton, arrives in at Victoria at 10:11.


I suppose that you might be able to find one to somewhere beyond that is
cheaper than the London fare.

Apart from Brighton which has the above Advance fares (and which isn't
really any further from London than Polegate) there isn't really
anywhere else.

The other option is to forget the train altogether and look at taking
a coach - a National Express coach Day Return fare from Brighton is
£11.90, and there are cheaper 'funfares' available (from £3 one-way)
if you book far enough in advance. The 06:00 departure from Brighton
arrives in to Victoria coach station at 08:20, which would be the one
to get to be in Queen's Gate for 9- 9:30 am.

London bus fares cost £2 for a single (this is to encourage take up of
Oyster cards with which they cost £1), whilst a one-day Bus Pass costs
£3.80. In central London one needs to have a ticket before boarding a
bus so the correct and exact change is needed in order to get a ticket
from the ticket machine at the bus stop, which also sells one day Bus
Passes (as do Tube station ticket offices and ticket machines).


-----
[1] Two past uk.r threads on the topic of Southern's Advance fares and
their availability (or otherwise) online:
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.ra...9a38fa21287ac9
and
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....ea8083063bb49c

(Will) wrote in
net:

Friends want to go to an Embassy in Queensgate from East Sussex but
want to take the car to a railway station just outside London and then
catch overland train into London then tube to Gloucester Road. Can
anyone suggest somewhere suitable to leave the car, either (cheap!)
car park or quiet road not far from a station? They're thinking
perhaps Croydon or near? TIA

When approaching via the M23/A23 I've sometimes parked in the residential
roads to the west of Brighton Road in Purley - eg Grovelands Road and
Downlands Road. They are only 5-10 mins walk to Purley station.

Alternatively, you can always (in my experience) park in the Fairfields
multistorey in central Croydon, which is very handy for East Croydon
station with its frequent fast trains, but the parking is not cheap.

Peter

--
Peter Campbell Smith ~ London ~ pjcs00 (a) gmail.com

Mizter T wrote

One of the best ways would be to go to Haywards Heath where there is
a
large car park and then take a train from there direct to Victoria -
and
then take a taxi to Queensgate.

Making sure you leave the cabbie a nice tip ;-)

But as to your substantive point then yeah, if you can do something
like go to Haywards Heath as opposed to messing around with getting
into London then that would strike me as the preferable option.

But here again a good, fast service means both a not-all-that-cheap car
park and anti-commuter street parking restrictions

So how about Chessington South, Tattenham Corner, Epsom Downs,
Chipstead, Upper Warlingham (all zone 6) or Ashstead ?

Chessington World of Adventure has lots of parking.

--
Mike D

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 04:46:03PM -0000, tim..... wrote:
"Will" wrote in message
net...
Friends want to go to an Embassy in Queensgate from East Sussex but want
to
take the car to a railway station just outside London and then catch
overland
train into London
You're not going to find reasonable "all day" parking in Croydon, and the
roads are pretty clogged up in the morning.

You're going to have to look further out, Purely perhaps, or Caterham (I'm
outside my area of knowledge now!)

Or further in. It's usually possible to park a couple of streets away
from stations like Streatham or Streatham Common, or just abuse a
supermarket car park.

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

I hate baby seals. They get asked to all the best clubs.

On 16 Jan, 12:21, David Cantrell wrote:

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 04:46:03PM -0000, tim..... wrote:

"Will" wrote in message:
Friends want to go to an Embassy in Queensgate from East Sussex
but want to take the car to a railway station just outside London and
then catch overland train into London.

You're not going to find reasonable "all day" parking in Croydon, and the
roads are pretty clogged up in the morning.

You're going to have to look further out, Purely perhaps, or Caterham (I'm
outside my area of knowledge now!)

Or further in. *It's usually possible to park a couple of streets away
from stations like Streatham or Streatham Common, or just abuse a
supermarket car park.


Absolutely true. There is a sometimes a belief that all streets in
London are subject to some kind of parking restrictions, which is
simply not true. However the number of controlled parking zones has
grown a great deal in recent years and indeed is still growing in
number, and if there aren't CPZs there are sometimes other
restrictions such as a yellow line only being in force for an hour or
two in the middle of the day that does the job at stopping all-day
commuter parking.

All that said, there are often side streets a little further away from
stations (and high streets) that are totally unrestricted. The other
thing that's quite often the case is that parking restrictions only
apply Monday to Friday, so parking at weekends are not a problem.

Regarding supermarket car parks - most now threaten you with a 'civil
penalty charge' (or some such) if you overstay the maximum stay, and
the companies that enforce these restrictions on behalf of
supermarkets can get your details from the DVLA. I don't really know
the legalities behind this all and to what extent this can be
enforced, but I presume there's something in it. That said, this does
somewhat rely on the enforcement taking place - more often than not it
just seems to be a threat.

The one thing that many people appear to have issues with when it
comes to parking their car on side streets is some fear that it will
get broken into, stolen or vandalised. I think that, with regards to
much of London at least, this is a rather overblown concern. Firstly,
theft of cars is not that common - most modern cars have immobilisers
which are pretty challenging to defeat after all, though it's true
that very high-end cars are stolen to order. Secondly, cars are
generally only broken into if there's a promise that there's something
worth stealing from them - putting bags in the boot so they cannot be
seen (even if there's nothing of value in them) and ensuring one takes
one's wallet or purse and mobile with them plus taking the fascia off
of an in-car stereo system wards this off. Thirdly, vandalism to cars
parked on street doesn't happen that often (and the chances of it
happening can be reduced by not parking in el dodgy street). I and
others have parked reasonable cars (not very high-end but not
rustbuckets either) all over London to no ill effect at all.

Last point - one real issue with parking in somewhere like Streatham
is actually getting in and then back out again on the A23, which is
basically gets pretty clogged up at peak times. It is of course
possible to take a number of alternative routes to avoid the A23 but
these can be a bit involved and I'm not sure I'd recommend these to
people unfamiliar to the side street ways of sarf London.

David Cantrell wrote:
Or further in. It's usually possible to park a couple of streets away
from stations like Streatham or Streatham Common

And if you're really lucky it will still be there when you return!

--
Paul

On 16 Jan, 14:36, Paul wrote:

David Cantrell wrote:
Or further in. *It's usually possible to park a couple of streets away
from stations like Streatham or Streatham Common

And if you're really lucky it will still be there when you return!


Absolute ********! Read my post above - people are so paranoid about
parking their cars in London it's silly.

"Mizter T" wrote ...
There is a sometimes a belief that all streets in
London are subject to some kind of parking
restrictions, which is simply not true.

Not totally, but in the more central boroughs, there are so many
restrictions that you'd be a fool - or have plenty of time on your hands -
to expect to park legally.

A stranger coming to Islington, for example, would drive around most of the
borough before finding a legal parking space. And probably find that it was
already taken. Where there are no yellow lines, there are resident parking
schemes over much of the borough.

Coming to Inner London, hoping to park for free, without getting 'local
knowledge' first, is poor advice.

Mizter T wrote:
On 16 Jan, 14:36, Paul wrote:

David Cantrell wrote:
Or further in. It's usually possible to park a couple of streets
away from stations like Streatham or Streatham Common

And if you're really lucky it will still be there when you return!


Absolute ********! Read my post above - people are so paranoid about
parking their cars in London it's silly.

If it was me, I'd drive to Wimbledon Park station and get a direct train to
GloRo. I believe lots of free parking can be found once you get out of the
immediate vicinity of the station. As for crime, there hasn't been a single
unpleasant act in the area since Cliff Richard sang.