At work's Christmas meal, I was sitting opposite our support guy, who left fairly early, because it was going to take him 1þ hours to get home. It occurred to me that if he's prepared to commute for that long each way each day to get to work, that things are definately going to get interesting once the Channel Tunnel Rail link is finished, because then Calais will only be 1 hour 15 minutes from St Pancras. So it seems likely that people will be tempted to live in northern France and commute to London. Kent is crowded and property is expensive. Northern France has neither of these downsides, so the cost savings on housing should more than pay for the extra fares.
However at the pub last night acme corrected me. It will only take 15 minutes to get from Calais to London. Sure, it will take 2 hours 15 minutes to get back home, but people worry a lot less about that then about getting up early in the morning. Mmmm. Things will be more interesting than I had first thought...
Living 4 miles from the office has its advantages. But by public transit, it doesn't shorten the commute that much
