Written August 2026
Someone can drive you part of the way, and a train can do the rest. The only question is where to swap. Most people guess the nearest station to wherever the conversation happens, and the nearest station is usually the wrong one.
Partway is a free iPhone app that answers this properly. You tell it about the drive and where you need to end up, and it checks every station along the route. Here is what it weighs up, because the logic is useful even on the back of an envelope.
A drop-off only works if it barely costs the driver anything. A small station five minutes off the motorway beats a big famous one that adds half an hour, every time. Think of the driver's goodwill as a budget, and spend as little of it as you can. Partway shows the driver exactly what each option adds to their drive, and nothing else.
Ticket prices are set route by route, not by distance, so they jump about more than anyone expects. Two stations twenty minutes apart can want wildly different money for the same destination. We wrote up why the same trip can be cheaper from a different station, with a real example that saved £61.50.
A cheap fare is no comfort on a cold platform. What matters is which trains actually leave after you arrive, so Partway looks up departures around the time the drive would get you there, and never quotes you a train that left before you were dropped.
Riding to the end of the drive is always on the shortlist, and sometimes it wins. Sometimes the honest answer is that no drop-off beats simply catching a train from where you started, and if that is the case the app says so straight. A lift usually saves you money rather than time, and it should never be a favour wasted.
Got a lift on the table? Get Partway on the App Store, free. Tell it about the drive, and it does the envelope maths with real trains and real prices in about ten seconds.