Why It Matters Distance to Closest Train Station
Summary
We have captured all the mass rapid transit (i.e. railway/underground) stations across London and your distance from them.
Definition
We have captured overground and underground rail stations and each postcode’s distance from them in metres and kilometres.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Stations | This is the name of the station we have identified as being most proximate to this postcode. |
| Distance (m) | This is distance in metres the named station is from the centre of your postcode. |
| Distance (km) | This is distance in kilometres the named station is from the centre of your postcode. |
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
Commercial inhabitants will find that proximity to a train station is an important consideration when it comes to recruitment and retention of staff, particularly if they are part of an industry where they have competition from other similar employers within London.
Certain lines of industry are able to draw staff from a wider geographical region made possible only due to their being located closer to a station, as this has the impact of lessening the perceived travel distance.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
Londoners will be keen to know how well connected a location is, especially when comparing the accessibility of a range of places to live. How well connected your home is, particularly to your work, tends to be one of the most important considerations when moving to a new house particularly as Londoners have the worst average commuting time in the UK, at 74 minutes per journey compared to the national average of 40 minutes. With the exception of cycle and walking journeys, being located nearer a mass rapid transit station is the most probable factor that will lessen a journey time.
Residential inhabitants may be less aware that there are also benefits to not having a station incredibly close by, in that it can help to preserve their neighbourhood from becoming the intensification of development often associated with transport orientated development.
Waterloo is London’s busiest station (Photograph: Wikimedia Commons)
Commentary
Efficient mass rapid transit has become an indispensable part of urban infrastructure of today’s London. Good access to mass rapid transit lines improve connectivity. mass rapid transit access also helps narrow the rental gaps between the city centre and the suburbs. Moreover, the accessibility benefits of a mass rapid transit are local by nature. People who live near transit stations are more likely to use the mass rapid transit for commuting purposes. Therefore, we, as expected, have seen variations in housing prices between areas that are within and those that are outside the accessibility range of mass rapid transit stations.
Value implications aside, the setup of the tube and train network in London was designed exactly to meet London’s needs. Our network is built on the rapid access monocentric transport model, that is, our trains are designed to take Londoners into zone 1 rapidly for work and back from zone 1 to more peripheral areas.
There is currently much debate as to how the future of mass rapid transit will be. Due to congestion and rising costs in the centre of London, Londoners, some experts say London would benefit from more “hubs” to work from outside the centre, as this would bring a redeemed time benefit which would have been lost to commuting into the centre. This would require housing to be situated nearer stations which permit polycentric or radial travel (i.e. mass rapid transit between London’s villages and not just the centre).
Trivia
The longest continuous tunnel in the network runs from East Finchley to Morden via Bank and is 27.8 km long.
History
In 1836 the London and Greenwich Railway was the first railway to open in London with the first section between Spa Road in Bermondsey and Deptford. After the first signal box in the world was built and erected in Southwark, even more lines could be added with greater safety and efficiency, including the London and Croydon Railway in the late 1830s which was amalgamated with the London and Greenwich system. London’s second railway was the London and Birmingham, subsequently to be absorbed into the London and North Western, which, in its turn was absorbed in the London, Midland and Scottish group.
Following which the first sections of the London and Southampton (later London and South Western) andof the Great Western were opened. Traffic on the former system began between Nine Elms, Wandsworth, and Woking, Surrey. The extension to Waterloo was not brought into use until 1848. With the exception of Waterloo and London Bridge (Brighton section), all the London termini were north of the river. Owing to the engineering difficulties involved in bridging the Thames, many of the stations were not finished until years after the railways by which they were owned had entered London. These delays may serve to explain, at least in part, why the scheme for a central union station, like those found in the United States amongst other places, never came to fruition.
The second main line from the north to reach London was the Great Northern, whose King’s Cross Station was opened to traffic in October 1852. Just as the Great Northern had given hospitality to the Midland, so was St. Pancras at first used as one of the terminals of the Great Eastern Railway the terminus of which was at Shoreditch, half a mile out of Liverpool Street, now a large and busy goods depot.
The immense expansion both in the size and population of London since the second half of last century has been due partly to the underground network, of which there are today only seventy-two route miles in tunnel, as compared with 101 above ground. The extent of this expansion can be appreciated from the fact that when the first section of the Metropolitan Extension line was opened in 1868 from Baker Street to Swiss Cottage, a great part of Hampstead was then so rural that cows used to be driven down the Finchley Road past Swiss Cottage Station every evening.
In 1863 the London Underground railway, which was the first in the world, opened between Paddington (then called Bishop’s Road) and Farringdon Street. What is now part of the Circle and District line opened shortly thereafter. By the late 1800s some of the lines were being converted to run on electricity, with the first section of this sort running from the City of London to Stockwell.