Commute or Live Locally – what’s the best option?

It’s the classic dilemma – move house to be closer to your job, or spend time and money on commuting into the city, eating into your working day as well as your pocket.

With the opening of the Borders Railway, new housing developments are springing up to make the decision less difficult, offering easy access to the new railway line without the cost of living in the city. One example, Shawfair, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, is expected to become a development of 4,000 new homes over the next few years. The railway will be at the heart of the new town, which offers a tantalising opportunity for regeneration of an area that used to be dominated by slag heaps and old mining buildings.

The new developments which promise to spring up along the railway line may be a Godsend for those who live in the Borders but want to work in Edinburgh – commuting will now be possible and less time consuming with a regular train service that will take workers directly into the city on a regular and hopefully reliable route. Given the soaring costs of property in Edinburgh, both to rent and purchase, this can only be a positive thing.

Even as far back as 2012, it was reported by the Bank of Scotland that while people who worked in Glasgow or Motherwell could save money by living in their city of work, Edinburgh was considered too expensive for average earners, while commuting, expensive and inconvenient as it can sometimes be, could save enough money for it to be worth doing. Even before the hikes in house prices that have been reported in the past year, people who lived in towns around 30 minutes away from Edinburgh, like Dunbar, Falkirk and Livingston, would have paid an average of £1,500 a year in rail fares, but saved on buying a home because house prices were 34 per cent lower than in the capital.

Of course, not everybody agrees with the Borders Railway. Tory MSP, John Lamont, complained that the project cost too much and that the money should have been spent on better roads instead. The majority of the local community seems to disagree with him, though. Campaigners such as Richard Crockett, a retired mining expert, believe that the railway isn’t just going to be good for commuting, but that it will exceed everyone’s expectations. Others can see that it’s not just Edinburgh’s working population that will benefit, but tourists can also make the most of the new line. It can only be a bonus for home buyers if more properties are built along the line that make getting into the city easier for all, taking congestion off the roads and hopefully keeping the housing market moving.

What do you think – is it better to live where you work, or is commuting the only way for you?