Also, the "gradient" in housing costs forces people in the London area to live far from the centre, whilst houses in the likes of Warrington or St Helens aren't much different to those in central Liverpool so there's no particular need to live far from work. So in London you have to pay high housing costs, or live farther out in cheaper housing, face a huge commuting cost and have to get up at stupid o'clock to get to work.....
I have to agree with Yorksrob. There's lot of variation in house prices within a few miles. Using the Warrington example given earlier, Padgate is a cheap to live in run down area, while nearby Daresbury and Lymm are more affluent areas.
If you have a job in Alderley Edge there are literally only 3 roads with the standard 3 bed terrace houses. If you can't get one of them then it would be much cheaper to live in Stockport or Crewe, even after the commute. And no salaries in Alderley Edge aren't higher than those in Stockport and Crewe.
Flawed argument? I wasn't arguing for or against anything, I was just highlighting differences in the fare structure within our small nation. One of the reasons I decided to try the Northern network out for myself the other day was to experience the supposedly crammed trains (I moved south before Northern experienced its recent 34% growth in footfall) and compare them with the sardine tins that are rush hour trains on the West Anglia route. It seemed to me that the trains were about equally crowded, suggesting that the "supply and demand" is about the same on all the routes that I tried.
Most normal, non-railway oriented passengers won't even know what the routeing guide is. They just want a quick, reasonably comfortable, affordable journey from A to B and that's what the railway should be 100% focussed on delivering.
For Bishops Stortford to Cambridge I noticed you used the time for the stopping service opposed to the semi-fast. However, there are still some issues with your comparisons:
Chester and Liverpool appear a long distance apart by train because the train stops every couple of miles - a lot of towns served by Merseyrail have multiple stations. If there was a Chester-Liverpool service calling at only Birkenhead then it would look an unbalanced comparison. If you buy a ticket between Bishops Stortford and Cambridge you have the option of travelling on an express or a stopper. People are usually happy to pay more for a faster journey which is why they pay £6 for a return rail journey opposed to £4 for an all day bus ticket.
There's some other points about TOCs serving London which I don't think anyone has made:
1. The South East has more rail lines than anywhere else in the UK. This means you are more likely to be able to go almost directly from A to B by train. There are quite a few examples I can think of in the North where the distance by rail is almost double that of the road. If you have to go 50 miles to get to somewhere 25 miles away you're not exactly going to travel by train unless the pricing is competitive with the 25 miles by road, not another 50 miles journey.
2. In the North we have more balanced commuter flows. There's no such thing as a quiet Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds or a Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield service in the morning peak because commuters are going in both directions. On the other hand in London you get 12 carriage trains leaving London between 6 and 8am with not even enough passengers to fill a 153, but on the return working all 12 carriages are full. So really the higher fares in London are needed to subside all the carting around empty space on the counter-peak flow workings
(except lines they aren't cleared for) and there's no where to put a reservation ticket on a bus seat.
