Spring 2026: The Commute That Costs You 27 Days a Year

Everyone compares house prices and season tickets, because both come with a number attached. The third cost does not, so most people never add it up.

This quarter we did. Here is what each of our 118 commuter towns costs in hours.

The bill nobody prices

Take the train time, double it for the return, and multiply by 220 working days. That is a five-day week with your holiday and the bank holidays taken off.

Eastbourne costs you 27 days a year. Not 27 working days. Twenty-seven whole days, awake and asleep, sat on a train. Watford costs five.

Folkestone is the one to look at twice. It has the most expensive season ticket on our list at £10,240, and yet the train takes 57 minutes, half an hour less than Eastbourne's. You are paying the most money on the list to spend less time than most people on it. That is the high-speed line, and whether it is worth £10,240 a year is a real question rather than an obvious yes.

There is a way out, and it is not moving. The same 88-minute trip on three days a week instead of five costs 387 hours rather than 645. That is 16 days instead of 27. If your job allows it, going in twice less often is worth more than moving twenty minutes closer.

The most house for the least of both

If you want a short train and a cheap house, five towns do better than the rest. This adds ten years of fares to the asking price, because that is how you actually pay for a move.

Grays is our pick of the four. Thirty minutes to London, a £3,008 season ticket, and a crime score of 58, which is the lowest of the group by some way. Chatham is cheaper on paper but scores 80, near the top of our range.

All four are worth a visit before a viewing. They are cheap for reasons, and the reasons are easier to judge standing in the high street than reading a table.

What changed this quarter

Very little. Sixty-six of our 118 towns moved on the crime score, and every one of them moved by a single point or two. Nothing moved further than that.

Kettering, Thatcham and Princes Risborough each got two points safer. Radlett, Beaconsfield and Windsor each went two points the other way. Our score reads a full year of police reports, so it is slow on purpose, and a two-point move is not a reason to change your mind about a town.

Where these towns sit

All 118 towns, by train time against yearly season ticket. Fares are frozen until March 2027, so this holds for a while yet.

What to do with this

Work out your own hours before you shortlist anywhere. Train time, doubled, times the days you actually go in. If the answer is more than about 400 hours, ask whether going in less often would buy you more than moving would.

Then check the ten-year number rather than the asking price. You can compare all 118 towns side by side. Our next report covers summer.