Official government figures reveal more than half of all England’s bus journeys are now made in London. 

Outside the capital, Brighton and Hove had the most journeys per head of population in 2018-19.

The Campaign for Better Transport said the new funding was a “significant step change” and welcome news for communities that had “borne the brunt” of cuts to services and “poor or non-existent local public transport in recent years”.

A 2019 study by the charity found more than 3,000 local bus routes had been lost or reduced over the past decade.

Crispin Truman from countryside charity CPRE said rural communities had been “at the end of the queue” for too long and the funding could be a “lifeline”.

He said: “If properly targeted, this investment could help tackle loneliness and isolation, reduce car dependency and slash our carbon emissions.”

Patrick Cox’s patience with London snapped when he was charged £3.50 for a cup of tea. For Amy Everett, it was the overcrowded commutes on trains that broke down so often she regularly worried she might never get home.

The pair are part of a rising tide of Londoners moving out of the capital, revealed in new figures suggesting the popularity of settling in or returning to northern England has more than doubled since 2014. While in 2009 only 1% of people leaving London bought or rented homes in the north, in 2019 that figure reached 13%, data from the Countrywide network of estate and lettings agents shows.

Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle upon Tyne are experiencing the fastest rises among northern cities in the number of escapees arriving from the capital, according to separate data from the Office for National Statistics, which indicates a possible shift east of the London escape route from the well-worn path to Manchester. Sheffield had a 12% rise in Londoners moving to buy or rent in 2018, followed by Newcastle and Leeds, which both recorded 5% increases.

Nearly half of Greater Anglia’s rural trains failed to arrive on time during the Christmas period.

In the four weeks to 4 January, 54.9% of those services did not arrive at the station within 59 seconds of schedule, according to the operator’s statistics.

Cabinet minister Therese Coffey MP previously criticised the “catastrophic performance” of Greater Anglia’s newly-introduced trains in December.

Greater Anglia said it was “very sorry” for the problems in December.

Figures showed that the number of rural services arriving within 59 seconds of schedule dropped by 14 percentage points in December, compared to 69% arriving on time across the previous 12 months.

More than 10% of those services also experienced cancelations or arrived at their final destination more than 30 minutes behind schedule.

 “Every single day,” says Paresh Raichura, “I’m on the lookout for something new to read.” On his hour-long commute to Canary Wharf, where he works for the Financial Ombudsman, he picks up Time Out or a local paper or the freesheet Metro, but says: “I’ve stopped reading all the long novels I used to read.”

Why?

He shrugs. “Too long. Lack of time. Once you start, you can’t stop.”

And so he is delighted by a new initiative close to his workplace where, at the push of a button, he is delivered a bitesize short story, printed on to a long spool of paper, that takes no more than a few minutes to read.

 “I’m old-fashioned, I like something to hold in my hands,” he says approvingly, looking at the scrolls. He has printed off one each of the one-, three- and five-minute stories offered by the new fiction vending machine, “just to test them out”.

There can’t be many people who feel they need more things to command their time and attention. But for those who do feel insufficiently entertained, distracted or assailed, the Canary Wharf estate has installed three “short story stations” in the shopping malls and green spaces around the commercial district.

Books are too long, the development offers by way of explanation, citing research that more than a third of Britons have abandoned a novel or nonfiction work in the past year. Give us a something that we can read in the time it takes to hum a pop song, goes the logic, and we might actually make it to the end.

And to judge by the reaction of early morning commuters this week, they might be on to something – though the fact that the stories are free and print off in a few seconds undoubtedly helps.

The essential guide to leaving London: five top areas with good schools, well-priced homes and commutes of less than an hour

Record number of Londoners left the capital last year in search of a family home they could afford in a pretty village or lively market town. The aim for most was to find somewhere with good schools, countryside on the doorstep, and a commute of no more than 60 minutes.

The big question for those 66,000 “Lexit” families was where to go — there are hundreds of locations within an hour of London that can offer everything from life by the seaside, or close to a busy city centre, to a get-away-from-it-all rural idyll where, perhaps, you could raise rare-breed pigs on a smallholding.

To make the decision a little easier for this year’s new commuters, Homes & Property has compiled its expert guide to some of the top locations for all price ranges and lifestyles. Here, we unveil our first five areas…

“Transport minister Norman Baker has admitted the current rail fare structure is “not ideal” and said the government wants to end above-inflation rises as soon as possible, as commuters returned to work after the Christmas break to face sharp fare increases.

Campaigners claim that fares for season ticket holders have risen by as much as 50% in the past decade, making travelling to work by train an extravagance that growing numbers of people struggle to afford.

Commuters returning to work face average season ticket increases of 4.3% and an overall rise on ticket prices of 3.9%. The Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) says these are just the latest in a series of fare increases, which are having an “appalling” impact on commuters.

Baker said a fares and ticketing review was examining the balance of regulation and which fares are regulated. Approximately 40% of fares are regulated by the government. The other 60% are unregulated and decided by the train companies themselves, he said.

“It’s not ideal – there are over 100,000 rail tickets and different prices each year to deal with,” Baker told Radio 4’s Today programme. “It’s a hugely complicated issue.”