Afamily member is thinking of moving and asked for commuting advice.
Well, first add 25 per cent to any journey time estimate containing the phrase ‘door to door’. When commuters cite journey time to work, the journey they have in mind is one which happens with the frequency of a solar eclipse: when every traffic light is miraculously green and the train draws in just as you reach the platform. Generally the words ‘door to door’ can be replaced by ‘in a parallel universe’ without altering the meaning of the surrounding sentence.
I also advised asking the estate agent what is the second-best way to get to work. No one ever thinks of asking this, but it is vital. For a variety of reasons (leaves, signalling failures, strikes) your main route will fail occasionally. If there is a tolerable fallback option, this doesn’t matter much.
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