mazbaz

We are in London for 3 weeks and are interested in the Travel Card or Oyster card. Which would be the best for using the public transport in and around London?

todor

For 3 weeks you can't beat the oyster card

alanRow

<<< For 3 weeks you can't beat the oyster card >>>

Utter and total tosh.

Oystercard isn't a ticket, it's a way for paying for tickets. You can have a 7 days or longer Travelcard (season ticket) on it and/or PAYG money for trips outside the zones the Travelcard is valid for (eg travel from central London to Heathrow).

Travelcards will always be cheaper than Oystercard PAYG if you spend more than 4 consecutive days in London as the cost of a weekly Travelcard is about the 4 times the cost of a one day Travelcard which is also the level Oystercard PAYG will cap to.

The one wrinkle is the offers on www.daysoutguide.com. You can use a Travelcard to get the offers BUT it must have been bought from a London TRAIN station - as such Oystercard wouldn't be useful.

Kate

Mazbaz, as a first step, you should buy an Oyster card (costs £3 deposit for the card) and then you can use it to load on different ticket types.

The London travel area is divided up into 'zones' from 1-6 - this map shows you: http://visitorshop.tfl.gov.uk/english/travel-zones.htm - zone 1 being central London and zone 6 being at the far flung reaches. If you are staying in Central London and visiting the normal sites, then a weekly travel card for zones 1-2 will cover the vast majority of your trips, via any means of transport (tube, overland train, bus, DLR).

You can then also load onto your Oyster pay-as-you-go amounts (in £5 increments) so that if you do end up traveling beyond zone 2, the Oyster card will automatically deduct any additional fare.

You still with me?

If you want to make daytrips via National Rail to towns outside of the London transport network, then you would buy a separate paper ticket at the departure station for that particular journey.

Does that all make sense?

todor

Alan, if I follow what you posted correctly, then I shouldn't have trusted the ticket agents at Heathrow who strongly advised us to buy the oyster card for the initial ticket to downtown and then to load the 7 day travel card on the oyster for the subsequent days. They clearly told us that the oyster card is the most economical way to go regardless. Would you say that we've been had? It's hard to believe they would mislead incoming tourists at the airport counter, mind you it's London not some third world country.

PatrickLondon

They were right if your only interest is the transport. What they wouldn't be obliged to tell you, since it's not their business, is that the national rail companies (who run suburban trains into London) have a promotional scheme related to their (rather than TfL's) ticket sales, which get 2for1 concessions on various sights. So, depending on what you want to see and do, it might pay you to get your London travelcard from one of their stations rather than TfL.

Kate

todor, if I understand Alan correctly, I believe he's responding to the 'Oyster OR travelcard' question. The point being that it isn't a question of either/or, but rather that the Oyster card is just a device for carrying digitally loaded tickets (of any kind). It's entirely up to the user whether they want a paper travelcard or a plastic Oyster with the same travelcard loaded onto it. The advantage of the oyster is that it can carry both travelcards and PAYG amounts, and is intuitive, so will select the most cost effective method.

Another benefit of Oyster is that, even if you don't have the PAYG money loaded onto your card and find yourself traveling outside of your zone, you can complete your journey without penalty. It just means that the next time you try to use the card, it will stop you from going through the barrier until you 'top up' your card at a machine to back pay the amount you owe.

With just a paper travelcard for zones 1-2, you would need to purchase additional paper tickets for journeys further afield, or face a fine if you don't.

alanRow

The main point to make is that "Oyster" isn't a ticket, it's a means to pay for tickets

Therefore talking about "Oystercard vs Travelcard" is meaningless as Oystercards CAN hold Travelcards on them.

freberta

I think the whole Oyster Card/Travelcard issue must result in more threads than any other topic on this board! Every time I think I have it figured out, another question arises as the result of someone else's query.

Here's my question(s), and it's very specific: I am going to purchase several 7-day Travelcards for my family. I wasn't planning on putting them on Oyster Cards because our travel within London was going to be limited to zones 1 and 2. However, now that we are going to Wembley Stadium, which I believe is in zone 4, do I need to get an Oyster Card and load some money on it to take care of the round trip to Wembley? Does it matter that we are going to Wembley on Sunday? Is the penalty for not having an Oyster Card with extra money loaded on it more or less than the deposit on the Oyster Card that we might forfeit if we don't hand it in? Is there any advantage/disadvantage of using a "paper" Travelcard over the Oyster Card? Is it really paper and how do you use it to get on the Underground? Do you have to flash it to get through the turnstile/gate?

The questions never end! Thanks.

DancingBearMD

freberta, one of the locals can chime in with better info, but I believe you can just buy the fare from the end of zone 2 to Wembley--at least that's how it worked with train tickets when we went to Hampton Court.

As for the paper tickets, they go through the reader at the gates--stick it in the slot and grab it when it pops out, and the gate opens and you walk through.

DancingBearMD

Starting at about the 3 minute mark of the below video you can see the barriers and folks using either Oyster cards (which they just touch on a spot at the top of the barriers, or paper cards which they are inserting into the front and retrieving from the top.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ka1Yiqv2cI

mazbaz

Thanks - it is now much clearer than what we read on the "öfficial" information sites which just made us even more confused.

freberta

DancingBear, thanks for the video. It works just like it does here in DC.

I think we'll just have to plan on spending more than a few minutes at the train station sorting out everything when we buy the 7-day Travelcards. I am sure we'll get all our questions answered. It really isn't a big deal, but, just ask my husband, I like to have everything figured out beforehand. I hate surprises.

PatrickLondon

freberta, the choice is between having a cushion of spare money pre-loaded on to an Oyster card, vs. remembering to queue up at the ticket office, before you start your journey, to buy your add-on ticket to go with your other form of ticket.

Arrive at your destination without a ticket covering the whole journey there (or be found by a travelling inspector outside the zones you've paid for) and you might find yourself stuck with a £50 penalty fare. If you play the confused tourist, you <i>might</i> get away with paying what you should have paid, but don't bank on it.

freberta

So before getting on the tube to go to Wembley, we would have to stop at the ticket office (do all Underground stations have manned ticket booths/offices or do some have only automated machines?) and pay the extra amount to go to Wembley? I am sure we can do this for a round-trip, since I don't want to be fussing with adding on to the card at Wembley at the conclusion of the game when there are thousands of people trying to get to the trains.

If we buy a 7-day paper ticket to load on to an Oyster Card and then add money for an instance like the above, then we no longer have a physical paper ticket to use for 2-for-1 vouchers. Is that correct? In order to use the 2-for-1 vouchers we must present an actual paper ticket, right?

xyz123

Correct and the paper ticket must be one issued on national rail stock (orange in colour)...not issued by a tfl agent.

There are, however, workarounds and it's really up to you to decide just how many 2 for 1's you want to do and sort of adhere to a schedule.

The prevailing thought is 4 days or less, use PAYG on oyster, more than 4 days, use a 7 day travelcard (it's loaded onto the oyster card...no paper is issued)...actually I have found there are times I can do better with PAYG for 5 days as on a couple of days I might only do one round trip from my hotel to central London, stay all day, and come back late at night. Runs £3.60 for the two trips on oyster...also there are days I might only do buses...caps at £3.90 but I won't quibble with the general rule as the differences won't be much either way.

So just for argument's sake, let's say you're going to do 2 for 1's during two days of your visit and are going to be in London for 6 days. Bear in mind, the system does not really work well for extension tickets on paper tickets because of how high cash fares are in London (to discourage use of cash) but let's follow my thoughts...

Use Oyster PAYG as your basic transportation. The day before yu might want to use a 2 for 1, stop by a national rail office and buy a one day paper travelcard for the next day (I believe you can buy in advance but I wouldn't stake my reputation on it)...so the day you're going to do the 2 for 1, you use the payer one day travelcard and leave your oyster card at home! Yes it requires some thought but given the situation with paper 7 day cards (extension fares will cost you an arm and a leg if you go beyond zone 2 or else you have to buy an appropriate 7 day job for the all the zones and prices do rise pretty dramatically).....I think my workaround will work okay and if something happens on the day you had intended to do a 2 for 1, well the 1 day travelcard you bought is certainly valid and the oyster card now caps at the same price anyway!

xyz123

See..here's the deal....you would need as somebody noted, if you have a paper 7 day ticket, a paper ticket paying for a zone 3-4 trip....as I said above cash fares are very stiff (either £3.50 or £4 for the above......payg fares loaded on oyster are much much cheaper..I'll stick with what I said, I think it'll work...for the most part in your London travels use Oyster PAYG...on any day you're going to do a 2 for 1, get (the day before if possible) the appropriate 1 day paper card at a national rail station...maybe some local can see if I'm missing something....

todor

After reading all the complicated posts and explanations, I really think that the OYSTER card IS still the BEST card to buy simply because there is no risk of penalty which can happen with just the travel card. I'd rather spend my time enjoying London with the oyster card than chasing discount travel card in certain train stations and then having to watch how far I go to avoid penalty.

You just can't beat the convenience of these multi transport smart cards. I bought similar cards to get rid of all the transport headaches when I was traveling in Tokyo & Hongkong last year.

flanneruk

Freberta's transport problem is this:

1. If she wants the 2for 1 deals, she needs a paper travelcard which can be bought only at National Rail ticket offices (of which there are dozens on central London). That's quite separate from the Oyster system.

<b> For many tourists the 2 for 1 advantages of a paper Travelcard outweigh its inconvenience. Wild generalisations about "Oyster's lots better" merely demonstrate that the generaliser can't understand that not everyone's like them. But paper travelcards are almost always a total pain in the arse for most Londoners </b>

2. For 99.999% of journeys tourists are likely to take, a zone 1-2 travelcard is the right travelcard to buy. But it's not valid for journeys to any of the Wembley stations (zone 4)

3. The apparently easiest solution for Wembley if you've got a Z1/2 travelcard is a return ticket (£8). But that's more than a one day Z1-4 offpeak travelcard (£6.30, and in this case available from ALL tube and National Rail ticket offices and many convenience stores).

4. So Freberta needs to do the sums about whether a 7 day Z1/2 travelcard (£25.80) really makes sense, since the cheapest way to get to Wembley during its validity is to buy another one-day card. One apparent workround (go to Wembley by bus) is totally absurd when there's a big match on.


5. All tube stations have manned ticket offices. Some of those offices are virtually impossible to get to, as they're rammed by queues of tourists too dumb to use the machines. In fairness to most readers on this forum, the queuers are usually from our technologically illiterate European neighbours.

freberta

flanneruk. You have been so helpful because now I think I know what I have to do. Because I spent some time last night printing off 2-for-1 vouchers that we are going to be using on our trip, I think I will still get a 7-day travelcard as well as a 1-day Z1-4 off-peak travelcard. We planned our itinerary in such a way that we won't be going to the Tower of London the same day that we'll be going to the Churchill War Rooms. I just want to have the 7-day card for that kind of flexibility. And since it's actually cheaper to buy a 1-day Z1-4 pass than to pay the penalty for using the 7-day pass, that's what we will do. We'll get the 1-day pass from the tube station on the way to Wembley.

Since we are taking a car service from the airport to our hotel, we won't be needing any kind of pass at that time. When we get to our hotel, we'll walk to Euston Station to pick up our rail tickets for later on in our trip, a Family Pass, Oyster Youth Cards for my kids that I ordered online weeks ago, and, of course, the 7-day paper travelcard.

I have another question about the 2-for-1 vouchers. One of the attractions says that they accept only rail tickets, not paper travelcards, for the 2-for-1 deal. Is that common? I thought the paper travelcards can be used for all the 2-for-1 attractions. Maybe I need to read the fine print again.

Thanks.

Roberta